My 2020 year in review

Originally published on eve.gd on 16 December 2020, last updated 6 September 2026.

Read this post on the web (with images, PDF and citation details)

I wrote, last year, that 2019 was pretty bad for me. Little did any of us know of the grimness that 2020 would bring with the coronavirus pandemic. I have spent almost all of this year “shielding”, which can feel somewhat isolating, although I am fortunate to live with my wife, which ameliorates this greatly. I only venture out every day to walk Toby, the fifteen-year-old Jack Russell terrier whom we adopted from the rescue shelter, two days before going into lockdown. Most problematically, I have not been able to have a battery of required hospital tests that could make me feel a lot better, because the risk is too great. Before lockdown started and the pandemic struck, I also began to suffer from serious depressive symptoms. These were not linked to the pandemic – although that would have been reason enough! – but were rather a result of the medications that I must take for my autoimmune conditions. This has, obviously, made this year even tougher. Writing about some of the good things can, every year, feel a little like bragging/showing off. It actually helps me to feel good about what I’ve done, though, and to take stock of what I have achieved.

2019 was pretty bad for me

The work schedule this year has been hectic to say the least. I will update this graph when the year is done as I still have some hours to add to it, but the green and blue lines represent the hours for which I am contracted, minus annual leave. So, that is: if I had precisely hit the green line or kept pace with the blue, I would have worked all the hours for which I am contracted and taken all my annual leave/College closure days. The red line is the hours I actually worked. The demands of pivoting to online teaching, while I am Birkbeck’s Strategic Lead for Digital Education, stacked up. The work on COPIM also took a lot of my time. Perhaps most worryingly, my time tracking points to having spent 79 full working days this year answering email.

I had some successes that I want to highlight for attention. In particular, my work package on COPIM launched Opening the Future, its project to convert university presses to OA business models. This really does represent a way that existing presses could move to OA. If it has widespread uptake, it could be the most significant thing I do in my entire academic career. I also released a music track with one of my all-time musical heroes, Jon Fugler, of 90s electronic band, Fluke. This – Night Train – was dream-come-true territory. Of course, the sadness is that there are no nightclubs in which to hear it played. Close Reading with Computers was also republished this year, in an open-access format. OLH was “highly commended” at the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers and won Small Digital Publisher of the Year at the Association of Online Publishers. I was elected a Fellow of the English Association.

Opening the Future
Night Train
Close Reading with Computers

Books

2022 Eve, Martin Paul, The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) [submitted]

Eve, Martin Paul, The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)

Eve, Martin Paul, Warez: The Economic Artforms and Illicit Crafts of the Pirate Topsite Scene (New York, NY: punctum books, 2022) [two weeks left until it's submitted]

Eve, Martin Paul, Warez: The Economic Artforms and Illicit Crafts of the Pirate Topsite Scene (New York, NY: punctum books, 2022)

2021 Eve, Martin Paul, Cameron Neylon, Daniel O’Donnell, Samuel Moore, Robert Gadie, Victoria Odeniyi, and others, Reading Peer Review: PLOS ONE and Institutional Change in Academia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021) [to be published in January]

2020 Eve, Martin Paul, and Jonathan Gray, eds., Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020) [Download]

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Peer-Reviewed Articles

2020 Hosseini, Mohammad, Martin Paul Eve, Bert Gordijn, and Cameron Neylon, ‘MyCites: A Proposal to Mark and Report Inaccurate Citations in Scholarly Publications’, Research Integrity and Peer Review, 5.13 (2020) [Download]

Severin, Anna, Matthias Egger, Martin Paul Eve, and Daniel Hürlimann, ‘Discipline-Specific Open Access Publishing Practices and Barriers to Change: An Evidence-Based Review (Version 2)’, F1000Research, 7.1925 (2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, Paula Clemente Vega, and Caroline Edwards, ‘Lessons From the Open Library of Humanities’, LIBER Quarterly, 30.1 (2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Equivocationary Horseshit: Post-Correlationist Aesthetics and Post-Critical Ethics in the Works of David Foster Wallace’, Open Library of Humanities, 6.1 (2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Textual Scholarship and Contemporary Literary Studies: Jennifer Egan’s Editorial Processes and the Archival Edition of Emerald City’, LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 31.1 (2020), 25–41 [Download]</span>

Book Chapters

2021 Eve, Martin Paul, ‘‘Non’-Fiction’, in David Foster Wallace in Context, ed. by Clare Hayes-Brady (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021) [accepted]

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Open Access in the Humanities Disciplines’, in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Digital Humanities, ed. by James O’Sullivan (Bloomsbury, 2021) [accepted]

2020 Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Violins in the Subway: Scarcity Correlations, Evaluative Cultures, and Disciplinary Authority in the Digital Humanities’, in Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research, ed. by Jennifer Edmond (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020), pp. 105–22 [Download]

Conference Papers/Events

2020 Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Basic Instinct: On Relatively Simple Computation and Literary Study’ (presented at the ATNU/IES Virtual Speaker Series, Newcastle University, UK, 2020)

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Doing It to Ourselves: Pandemic-Proofing Humanities Scholarship’ (presented at the CHASE Virtual Encounters, Birkbeck, University of London, UK, 2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘A New Funding Model for Open-Access Monographs’ (presented at the The 15th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing, Norway, Online, 2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Opening the Future: Revenue Models for Open-Access Monographs’ (presented at the OPERAS Conference: Opening Up Social Sciences and Humanities in Europe: From Promises to Reality, Online, 2020)

Eve, Martin Paul, and Joanna Taylor, ‘Interview on Close Reading with Computers: Textual Scholarship, Computational Formalism, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas’ (presented at the New Books Network, University of Manchester, UK, 2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, Heather Staines, Emily Farrell, and Vivian Berghahn, ‘OA Books and Business Models’ (presented at the University Press Redux, University of Cambridge, UK, 2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Distance and Depth, Computers and Close Reading’ (presented at the CDH Seminar, University of Cambridge, UK, 2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Beyond APCs’ (presented at the Beyond APCs: Exploring new, more inclusive business models for open access publishing, Digital Webinar, 2020) [Download]

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘The Open Library of Humanities and COPIM’ (presented at the Seeking Sustainability: Publishing Models for an Open Access Age, Society for Scholarly Publishing, 2020)

Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Plan S and Alternative Business Models’ (presented at the Modern Law Review meeting, London School of Economics, London, UK, 2020)

Eve, Martin Paul, Chris Banks, and Carrie Webster, ‘Plan S: Understanding Challenges and Resolving Conflicts’ (presented at the Research Professional Live 2020: Shaping the Future: Research in an Age of Uncertainty, The Royal Society, London, UK, 2020)

References

This reference list has been generated, in many cases, through an automated process and may therefore contain errors or incomplete metadata. It is provided purely as assistance for finding the items mentioned within this post.

1. Afford OA Humanities EUA Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/151439>

2. Beyond APCs webinar Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/159252>

3. Bisson, Robin, and Martin Paul Eve, ‘Open access payments pose tracking problem’, Research Fortnight, 9 April 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/31623>

4. Bisson, Robin, and Martin Paul Eve, ‘F1000 buyout may have 'strange consequences'’, 23 January 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30661>

5. Close Reading with Computers OA reprint Birkbeck <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/158876>

6. COPIM Revenue Models Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/200061>

7. Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research, Open Book Publishers, 30 January 2020 <https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0192>

8. Distance and Depth Cambridge talk Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/169535>

9. Distance and Depth Stanford blog Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/134065>

10. Egan textual scholarship Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/132295>

11. Equivocationary Horseshit Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/153804>

12. Eve, Martin Paul, The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies, 10 February 2022 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/26645>

13. Eve, Martin Paul, Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy, 15 December 2021 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30956>

14. Eve, Martin Paul, Cameron Neylon, Daniel O'Donnell, Samuel Moore, Robert Gadie, Victoria Odeniyi, and Shahina Parvin, Reading Peer Review: PLOS ONE and Institutional Change in Academia, 3 January 2021 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/27709>

15. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Equivocationary Horseshit: Post-Correlationist Aesthetics and Post-Critical Ethics in the Works of David Foster Wallace’, Open Library of Humanities, Open Library of the Humanities, 2020 <https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.538>

16. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Textual Scholarship and Contemporary Literary Studies: Jennifer Egan’s Editorial Processes and the Archival Edition ofEmerald City’, Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, Informa UK Limited, 2 January 2020 <https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1709713>

17. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘“Non”-Fiction’, 1 October 2022 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/32199>

18. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Open Access in the Humanities Disciplines’, 27 November 2022 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40856>

19. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘On Reassembling Scholarly Communications’, BoOkmArks, 16 November 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/41598>

20. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘The future of humanities research work and OA monographs’, Wonkhe, 6 November 2020 <https://wonkhe.com/blogs/the-future-of-humanities-research-work-and-oa-mongraphs/>

21. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘The open-access monograph conundrum can be solved’, Times Higher Education, 3 November 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/41119>

22. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘How to Fake a 19th-Century Novel’, Public Books, 28 September 2020 <https://www.publicbooks.org/how-to-fake-a-19th-century-novel/>

23. Eve, Martin, ‘Open access in the plague year’, Research Professional News, 9 September 2020 <https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-views-of-the-uk-2020-9-open-access-in-the-plague-year/>

24. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Basic Instinct: On Relatively Simple Computation and Literary Study’, 16 December 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/42165>

25. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Doing it to Ourselves: Pandemic-Proofing Humanities Scholarship’, 4 December 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/41970>

26. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘A new funding model for open-access monographs’, 18 November 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/41619>

27. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Opening the Future: Revenue Models for Open-Access Monographs’, 2 November 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/41117>

28. Eve, Martin Paul, Heather Staines, Emily Farrell, and Vivian Berghahn, ‘OA Books and Business Models’, 25 June 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/32208>

29. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Distance and Depth, Computers and Close Reading’, 27 May 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/32045>

30. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Beyond APCs’, 9 April 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/31622>

31. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘The Open Library of Humanities and COPIM’, 2 April 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/31537>

32. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Plan S and Alternative Business Models’, 12 February 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30929>

33. Eve, Martin Paul, Chris Banks, and Carrie Webster, ‘Plan S: Understanding challenges and resolving conflicts’, 5 February 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30834>

34. Eve and Gray, Reassembling Scholarly Communications MIT Press 2020 <https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4933/Reassembling-Scholarly-CommunicationsHistories>

35. Eve, Distance and Depth Stanford University Press Blog 2020 <https://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2020/01/distance-and-depth.html>

36. Fluke Night Train YouTube video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut5_DA7Cihg>

37. Future of Humanities OA Monographs WonkHE Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/216935>

38. Grove, Jack, and Martin Paul Eve, ‘Humanities scholars warn over UKRI's plan for open-access books’, Times Higher Education, 17 February 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30969>

39. Hosseini, Mohammad, Martin Paul Eve, Bert Gordijn, and Cameron Neylon, ‘MyCites: a proposal to mark and report inaccurate citations in scholarly publications’, Research Integrity and Peer Review, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 17 September 2020 <https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00099-8>

40. How to Fake a 19th-Century Novel Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/231598>

41. Lem, Pola, and Martin Paul Eve, ‘Evolve or Perish’, Research Professional, 1 October 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40968>

42. Lem, Pola, Craig Nicholson, and Martin Paul Eve, ‘Resolving Plan S conflicts’, Research Fortnight, 20 February 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/31032>

43. Lessons from OLH Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/154720>

44. ‘Martin Paul Eve, "Close Reading with Computers" (Stanford UP, 2019)’, New Books Network <https://newbooksnetwork.com/martin-paul-eve-close-reading-with-computers-stanford-up-2019/>

45. Matthews, David, and Martin Paul Eve, ‘Research funders urge caution over demanding 'excellence'’, Times Higher Education, 23 July 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/32719>

46. McIntyre, Fiona, and Martin Paul Eve, ‘REF could demand compliance with Plan S in future’, 5 February 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30836>

47. MyCites article Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/201170>

48. New Books Network interview Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/231603>

49. OA Books Business Models Cambridge talk Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/172505>

50. OA in the Plague Year Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/200313>

51. OA Monograph Conundrum THE Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/216014>

52. OA Monographs Munin talk Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/219419>

53. On Reassembling Scholarly Communications Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/219218>

54. ‘Opening the Future’ <https://ceup.openingthefuture.net/about/>

55. Pandemic-Proofing Humanities talk Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/228519>

56. Pells, Rachael, and Martin Paul Eve, ‘UKRI move 'could be huge blow' for Plan S’, Research Professional, 14 February 2020 <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30955>

57. Penier, Izabella, Martin Paul Eve, and Tom Grady, COPIM – Revenue Models for Open Access Monographs 2020, Zenodo, 7 September 2020 <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4011836>

58. Reassembling Scholarly Communications Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/214156>

59. Severin, Anna, Matthias Egger, Martin Paul Eve, and Daniel Hürlimann, ‘Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: an evidence-based review’, F1000Research, F1000 Research Ltd, 26 March 2020 <https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.17328.2>

60. Severin OA practices Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/155005>

61. Violins in the Subway Birkbeck download <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/document/134537>