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WHO Calls for Emergency Meeting on New China Virus, As Cases Spread

WHO Calls for Emergency Meeting on New China Virus, As Cases Spread

The WHO's annnouncement came as China confirmed cases in Beijing and in Guangdong province, as well as a confirmed incident involving human-to-human spread.

First Patient With Wuhan Coronavirus Is Identified in the U.S.

First Patient With Wuhan Coronavirus Is Identified in the U.S.

A man in Washington State is infected with a new respiratory virus. Federal officials plan to expand screenings for the infection at major airports.

Future of UK Science Hangs in the Balance in Crucial Year

Future of UK Science Hangs in the Balance in Crucial Year

Promises to double funding and create new blue skies research agency sit uneasily with likelihood of crashing out of EU science programmes.

Strengthening the Open Science Ecosystem Through Preprints

Strengthening the Open Science Ecosystem Through Preprints

Preprints, or versions of manuscripts posted online by authors ahead of peer review, are seeing a strong increase in adoption and recognition among many communities in the biomedical sciences.

Data Without Software Are Just Numbers

Data Without Software Are Just Numbers

Great strides have been made to encourage researchers to archive data created by research and provide the necessary systems to support their storage. Additionally it is recognised that data are meaningless unless their provenance is preserved, through appropriate meta-data. Alongside this is a pressing need to ensure the quality and archiving of the software that generates data, through simulation, control of experiment or data-collection and that which analyses, modifies and draws value from raw data. 

Childhood Obesity Is a Major Problem. Research Isn't Helping.

Childhood Obesity Is a Major Problem. Research Isn't Helping.

Childhood obesity is a major public health problem, and has been for some time - but something is missing with many study methods.

Journal Brand and Research Culture

Journal Brand and Research Culture

Opinion: Things are not right in the culture of research, and that this is ultimately to the detriment of research. Two issues emerge: the huge complexity of the research ecosystem, and the related problem of collective action that this complexity creates.

Putin Wanted Russian Science to Top the World. Then a Huge Academic Scandal Blew Up.

Putin Wanted Russian Science to Top the World. Then a Huge Academic Scandal Blew Up.

Eight years ago, President Vladimir Putin decreed that Russia must become a leading scientific power. That meant at least five top-100 Russian universities by 2020, and a dramatic increase in the number of global citations of Russian scientific papers. Now a group at the center of Putin’s aspirations, the Russian Academy of Sciences, has dropped a bombshell into the plans. A commission set up by the academy has led to the retraction of at least 869 Russian scientific articles, mainly for plagiarism.

Learned Societies Turn Against Scholarship and Join Publishers for Profit

Learned Societies Turn Against Scholarship and Join Publishers for Profit

In a recent letter to the White House, a group of corporate publishers and scholarly organizations implore the president to leave intact…

Meteorite or Volcano? New Clues to the Dinosaurs' Demise

Meteorite or Volcano? New Clues to the Dinosaurs' Demise

Twin disasters marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and scientists are presenting new evidence of which drove one of Earth's great extinctions.

The Data Science Revolution: An Interview with Xiao-Li Meng

The Data Science Revolution: An Interview with Xiao-Li Meng

An interview with Xiao-Li Meng, Professor of Statistics at Harvard University, about the increasingly central role data science is playing in research and teaching - and how journals, publishers, societies, and librarians fit in this emerging ecosystem.

What Researchers Think About the Culture They Work In: Quantitative Dataset

What Researchers Think About the Culture They Work In: Quantitative Dataset

Here we present an anonymized version of the dataset that we collected in the quantitative phase of Wellcome's research on research culture. Additionally, we present a document detailing how the data was transformed to protect anonymity. We also present a flowchart that indicates how participants were guided to answer questions in the survey.

Universities Must Overhaul the Toxic Working Culture for Academic Researchers | Anton Muscatelli

Universities Must Overhaul the Toxic Working Culture for Academic Researchers | Anton Muscatelli

A survey has warned that researchers are too stressed. It's up to universities to improve their working environment