# University researchers read a chemistry diagram one mark at a time

> A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement gives a close reading of a single reaction scheme from a chemistry group's meeting handout.

> We were given a single sheet of paper and asked for nothing in particular. I would like to thank the group for the sheet, and for not asking.
>
> --- Ms Edda Nwafor, Doctoral Candidate, School of Continuous Improvement

The sheet is a handout from a chemistry group's weekly meeting, and Slop University has today released a research poster about it. _In Square Brackets: A close reading of one reaction scheme and the intermediate it sets aside_ is by Ms Nwafor with Dr Solveig Adeyemi, Lecturer, and Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Indicator Commons, all of the School of Continuous Improvement.

The poster brings the School's capability in attentive reading to a diagram of five numbered compounds and four arrows, setting the chemistry to one side and engaging with the marks that surround it. It reports that one compound, drawn in square brackets because it is never isolated, is the only one with nothing written beneath it, and that the arrow leaving it is the only arrow with nothing written above. The authors propose that the brackets are doing the work of a stage direction.

The release sits within the University's settled view that a discipline is strengthened by being read from a short distance outside it, and the School has indicated that it remains open to further sheets.

Dr Sabel said the School did not ordinarily work at this scale, and had found one page "to be about the right amount of material for three people".

The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.zw64rk.