Blogs

The unsustainability of the “pay-as-you-go” publishing model

May 12, 2023jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Abel Polese

This blog was originally published at The Research Whisperer on the 7th of March, 2023.

Recently, Zhejiang Gonggong University announced that articles published with MDPI, Frontiers Media & Hindawi, the three largest open access publishers, would not be included in research performance statistics.

Universities have discouraged or banned staff from publishing in individual journals in the past, but this is the first report of whole publisher catalogues being excluded. I’ve seen discussions about whether these journals are worth publishing or whether they should be considered predatory. I’m concerned that the boundary between a predatory approach and the approach of pay-as-you-go journals is blurring.

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Critical health and neurodivergent awareness

March 22, 2023FranciskaLeave a comment

By Kathryn McGuigan

Neurodivergent awareness week internationally was March 13-19 (www.neurodiversityweek.com). This was a week to celebrate neurological differences, to raise awareness of the strengths and challenges that neurodivergent face.

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Moving from mainstream health psychology towards critical health psychology: Reflections of an early career researcher

March 15, 2023jessicatappin1 Comment

By David Healy

I am a final year PhD student at the University of Galway, Ireland, conducting research in psychology and digital health. In this blog, I want to share some reflections about my experience conducting research in an academic environment that foregrounds traditional research perspectives in health psychology and the different challenges I have faced on account of this.

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Insiders, outsiders, and insider-outsiders: Navigating positionality in community-based research

March 1, 2023March 1, 2023FranciskaLeave a comment

By Gloria Fraser

When asked about my sexual orientation I tend to hesitate, offering up an answer ranging from a firm “straight” to a questioning “pretty much straight?”, depending on who I’m with. It’s become a joke amongst my friends—after years of doing research as a (mostly?) straight cisgender woman about rainbow peoples’ experiences and wellbeing, I’ve become less sure of my answer over time. And maybe this is what we’d expect: that the more time we spend thinking about the labels people use to describe themselves, the more our own labels shift and change.

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Carving My Own Space for Critical Psychology in British Columbia

January 18, 2023jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Jem Tosh

“Critical psychology? Oh that sounds so negative, let’s call it ‘reflective psychology’ instead!”

This was the first response I received when I told a psychologist that I was starting a PhD in critical psychology. It was a weird combination of toxic positivity and misunderstanding about what critical psychology actually is. It was a failure to acknowledge that it’s a particular space and perspective ‘within’ and ‘without’ psychology’s disciplinary boundaries (Parker, 1999). So you can’t really go around renaming it just because you don’t like the sound of it.

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Doctors often aren’t trained on the preventive health care needs of gender-diverse people – as a result, many patients don’t get the care they need

November 23, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Jenna Sizemore

A blank piece of paper, black stethoscope and a black pen are all sitting on a light blue background. — *Photo by Tara Winstead*

Preventive health care – such as cancer screening – is a critical tool in the early detection of disease. Missed screening can result in a missed diagnosis, delayed treatment and reduced chances of survival.

But the medical system is poorly equipped to meet the needs of gender-diverse patients.

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So, you’re new to research impact?

October 27, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Joann Cattlin, Wade Kelly, Ken Knight, David Phipps.

The impact that research generates in society is a hot topic internationally. It can be a complex topic and poses different challenges depending on whether you are a researcher, research professional, funder, or research user.

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Taking on the mainstream – Our symposium at the EHPS conference

October 4, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Wendy Stainton Rogers

*Arial view overlooking Bratislavský hrad (Bratislava Castle). Photo by Martin Katler on Unsplash*

Bratislava in Slovakia is a beautiful city, and this was my initial motive for getting to the EHPS 2022 conference. I know it well, having first visited in 1990, not that long after the massive ‘Velvet Revolution’ student protest filled the streets there, following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall a few days earlier. In a matter of weeks the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe overthrew communism – a move made possible by the Russian President, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his policies of perestroika and glasnost (Do look them up if you don’t know them, they paint a very different Russia from Putin’s Soviet Era today).

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Human-Dog Companionship and Wellbeing: Decentring the human in critical health psychology?

August 24, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Elizabeth Peel

‘We are who we are as much because of our relationships with non-human animals as because of the human ones, and we do ourselves a great disservice – and probably great harm – by denying or ignoring this.’
Podberscek et al., 2000, p. 2

In embarking on a new research adventure we often construct accounts (rationale / scientific justification) for the why, what, and how of the project. These accounts are recipient designed, tailored to the audience – whether that be a funding body, key stakeholder, or curious colleague. I’ve said before that it is important to have a ‘passion project’. The simply labelled Dog Talking and Walking project is currently mine, and I hope to convey the value of, and enthusiasm for, taking connections with canines seriously in this blog (see Haraway, 2003).

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Psychology’s participatory problem and five things you can do right now to fix it!

July 28, 2022FranciskaLeave a comment

By Brett Scholz

couple holding hands — Photo by Marcus Aurelius on Pexels.com

Critical health psychologists generally want to practice acts of allyship through and beyond their work. In this post, Brett Scholz presents a call to go beyond thinking of consumers as participants in your research practice, and to instead ensure you collaborate and engage with consumers in epistemic practices.

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The devil’s in the framing: language and bias

June 22, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Ella Whiteley

How we say things can be as important as what we say. In this post, Ella Whiteley explores the “framing effect”, its implications for education and research communication and in particular, its salience to discussions of sex and gender.

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Who Decides Women’s Best Interests? Examining patient-provider power relations in counselling on long-acting reversible contraception

May 30, 2022May 30, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Tracy Morison

Long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) is widely accepted in most public health and family planning approaches. However, power imbalances between healthcare providers and patients make many women feel as though they are coerced into taking LARC. There is little research that considers the nature and quality of patient-provider interactions, including issues of power and women’s agency, as most scholarship in the field focuses on access. Concerns about the potential for coercion, lack of patient-centeredness, or uncritical LARC promotion are therefore under-explored, especially among ‘high-risk’ women who experience poor health and social outcomes. This study takes a much-needed look at how providers’ perspectives influence their recommendations to patients and the changes that must be implemented to help patients regain autonomy over their reproductive choices.

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Fat Pain is Not Your Profundity

May 12, 2022January 19, 2023jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Rachel Fox

*Photo by AllGo – An App For Plus Size People on Unsplash*

Rachel Fox explores how doctor-writer narratives often depict fat people in dehumanising and hurtful ways, and argues they need to be reframed with empathy.

During my six years as a student in the medical humanities, I’ve become quite familiar with the “doctor reflecting on a memorable patient encounter” genre of publication. These stories often follow a similar structure: anecdotal introduction, explanation of patient/case/doctor’s own training, dramatic or otherwise significant event, then conclusion with a broader lesson and/or resolution for the author. Stories that take this form are compelling and familiar; readers get to vicariously experience the stakes of medicine with the security of closure awaiting them at the end, while the doctor-writer gets a cohort of witnesses for their perspective on some significant part of their practice. At their best, these stories “humanize” the experience of medicine, giving a personal voice to the intimacies within a seemingly indifferent system. But I have yet to see a story of this genre that humanizes fat people.

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International Society of Critical Health Psychology

a global community of members interested in critical health psychology

The unsustainability of the “pay-as-you-go” publishing model

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Critical health and neurodivergent awareness

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Moving from mainstream health psychology towards critical health psychology: Reflections of an early career researcher

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Insiders, outsiders, and insider-outsiders: Navigating positionality in community-based research

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Carving My Own Space for Critical Psychology in British Columbia

“Critical psychology? Oh that sounds so negative, let’s call it ‘reflective psychology’ instead!”

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Doctors often aren’t trained on the preventive health care needs of gender-diverse people – as a result, many patients don’t get the care they need

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So, you’re new to research impact?

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Taking on the mainstream – Our symposium at the EHPS conference

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Human-Dog Companionship and Wellbeing: Decentring the human in critical health psychology?

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Psychology’s participatory problem and five things you can do right now to fix it!

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The devil’s in the framing: language and bias

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Who Decides Women’s Best Interests? Examining patient-provider power relations in counselling on long-acting reversible contraception

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Fat Pain is Not Your Profundity

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