Research papers

Research papers published by Slop University.

All research outputs of the University are published open access under CC BY 4.0, with persistent identifiers minted by the Office of Research Outputs.

Published outputs

Paper

Absent, Not Believed

Casimir Beng, Mirela Hanke, Dagny Okafor · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.m1vrow

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement tests whether a prior labelling-confidence finding from a meeting-room marker-caddy study reproduces at Commencement's photography opt-out wristbands. Across six ceremonies and 812 guests, wristband-wearers appear in the official photo set at roughly a third the rate of non-wearers, but post-ceremony confidence in the opt-out system is statistically unmoved by wristband status, even among wearers independently confirmed absent from every published photo.

Paper

The Door Remembers, the Desk Moves On

Sten Okwuosa, Bram Ntuli · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.8dleq5

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement audits nine shared postdoctoral offices' sliding-tab door nameplates against the weekly hot-desk booking calendar across a full teaching period, finding the tab matches the roster in 71% of the 504 desk-weeks audited but accounts for 74% of the semester's misdirected mail, parcels, and visitors when it doesn't. A laminated reminder card left the match rate statistically unchanged.

Paper

High Score, Low Scrutiny

Marek Solheim, Anouk Mensah · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.j1l7f6

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities compares two matched car-park boom gates, one displaying its automatic number-plate reader's confidence score to staff and one logging it silently, finding console-linked intervention converges between the gates overall but nearly disappears in the top confidence band only where the score is shown to staff --- a divergence an independent desk audit finds is not explained by that band actually being any more likely to belong there.

Paper

Resolved, Not by the Panel

Renke Sabel, Mirela Hanke · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.dhr8bu

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement hand-codes a full year of shared kitchenette kettle fault tickets into a four-stage resolution-pathway taxonomy, finding the Adaptive Metrics Lab's Asset Retirement Panel's own procurement pathway resourced only 8% of resolutions and took a median of 71 days, while the Panel's self-reported quarterly throughput figure credited itself with 94% of the year's closures regardless of pathway.

Paper

Present at the Muster, Missing from the Roster

Mirela Hanke, Renke Sabel, Osei Vandermeer · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.hq8wqq

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement audits a nine-storey administration building's fire-drill assembly-point headcount against its own swipe-card occupancy log across seven drills and nine floors, finding the two readings correlate only moderately and diverge in a floor-banded pattern that a marshal refresher briefing does not close. The building's floor-warden roster, sized each term from the headcount alone, would be assigned differently on three of the nine floors under the swipe-derived figure.

Paper

Slower to Request, Same to Choose

Osei Vandermeer, Casimir Beng, Bram Ntuli · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.jac264

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement evaluates a request-and-charge-status tool built for Grounds' shared golf-buggy fleet against ten weeks of prior paper sign-out records, finding no significant change in buggy-selection behaviour and a roughly sixfold increase in decision-to-departure time, isolated with a four-week ablation that hid the charge figure itself.

Paper

First Referral, Last Complaint

Kwame Lindqvist, Anouk Mensah · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.fkv8do

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities matches 348 students' first library noise complaints into 174 pairs on venue, time of day, and severity, comparing an informal silent-study-pod referral against a verbal-warning-only response from the duty librarian rostered at the time. The referral arm's complaint record closes within twelve weeks at a substantially higher rate than the warning-only arm's (75.9% against 56.9%), and reopened files in the referral arm take longer to reopen; the effect holds regardless of whether the referring librarian is senior or junior staff.

Paper

Held, Not Escalated

Dagny Okafor, Renke Sabel, Thandiwe Solberg · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.ll5xcj

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement cross-references the University Library's four-stage Lost & Found disposal-tier register against a hand-coded physical audit of the same items across six stock-take rounds. The register reports a rising share of items cleared for release or disposal over a fourteen-week term; the physical count finds most of those items still in Hold, a gap interviews trace to a front-desk workaround that resets an item's intake clock rather than complete a stalled sign-off.

Paper

Repainted, Not Rerouted

Renke Sabel, Bram Ntuli, Dagny Okafor · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.cz30jf

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement audits two Facilities zone-renaming events across three semesters at the University's three largest visitor car parks, finding aggregate occupancy and individual bay-switching behaviour unaffected by the relabelling while the hand-built crosswalk linking old zone codes to new ones grows markedly less reliable with each successive cycle.

Paper

Flagged for Jams, Cited for Staffing

Sten Okwuosa, Thandiwe Solberg, Joost Nwosu · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.nrugpq

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement builds and deploys the Return-Chute Sentinel, a load-cell-and-break-beam sensor for the University Library's after-hours book-return chute, cutting fault-detection latency from an hour-bound manual round to a couple of minutes and reducing night staff's walk-through rounds by three-quarters across a fourteen-week deployment, with an ablation finding its break-beam channel makes little difference to detection accuracy. The paper separately traces how the sensor's alert log, which counts only mechanical chute events, came to be cited by Facilities' after-hours staffing review as evidence of sustained patron demand for a staffed desk, a use the instrument was never built to support.

Paper

Signed, Not Secured

Dagny Okafor, Bram Ntuli, Mirela Hanke, Renke Sabel · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.k7y0kk

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement builds an in-house handwriting-divergence tool to test whether Improvement Grand Rounds' reinstated paper sign-in sheet is actually harder to fake than the tap-card system it replaced. Cross-referenced against the retired card reader's still-active passive log, flagged signatures show a modestly higher rate of missing corroboration, a gap the paper characterises as suggestive rather than decisive.

Paper

Sited, Not Chosen

Fenna Okoro, Anneke Tolan · July 2026 · doi:10.5555/slop.2e6ud1

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities evaluates a Horizon Register siting recommendation against a 12-week term of bike-rack occupancy counts and 42 cyclist interviews. The forecast-sited West Wing bank averaged 22% occupancy against an existing, unforecast Library bank's 115%; the Register's precinct-demand index correlates weakly with realised occupancy (r = 0.34, unchanged by an ablation removing its trend term), while a post-hoc measure of walking distance to cyclists' stated destinations correlates far more strongly (r = 0.79).