Introduction

It’s a sunny Wednesday morning, and I want to get lots of work done today—I want this book finished before Christmas. On the other hand, I also want to find time for a proper lunch break so I can do some exercise: I’m putting on weight and I’d prefer to reverse that trend sooner rather than later. Sadly, I put these thoughts to the back of mind as I notice that my youngest son has just been sick on the bed, and I want to get that cleaned up right away....

Report on the ECIR 2021 discussion panel on open access

On 31 March 2021, the Wednesday morning of ECIR 2021, the conference participants joined with seven panellists in a discussion on Open Access and Information Retrieval (IR), or more accurately, on the lack of open access publishing in IR. Discussion topics included the experience of researchers with open access in Africa; business models for open access, in particular how to run a sustainable open access conference like ECIR; open access plans at Springer, the BCS and the ACM; and finally, experience with open access publishing in related fields, notably in Computational Linguistics.

Epilogue

On any given Wednesday morning seven years ago, my routine regularly took me down Main Street in Pennington, New Jersey, driving to the grocery store. I would pass the St. James Roman Catholic Church, Vito’s Pizza, and Kathy’s Korner Salon. A hand-painted sign planted by the sidewalk on the corner of Main and Route 31 announcing an event would momentarily catch my eye, but I wouldn’t pay any attention. I would get to the grocery store, park, do my shopping, and on my way out, see a bunch of fliers on the community bulletin board for various activities, services offered, rooms for rent, and dogs to adopt. I would pick up a copy of ...

Stephen Hawking

Tributes poured in on Wednesday to, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions. He died at the age of 76 in the early hours of Wednesday morning. In a statement that confirmed his death at home in Cambridge, Hawking’s children said: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.