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Yentl Syndrome: A Deadly Data Bias Against Women

Yentl Syndrome: A Deadly Data Bias Against Women

The science of medicine is based on male bodies, but researchers are beginning to realize how vastly the symptoms of disease differ between the sexes - and how much danger women are in.

Thousands of Universities Join Wave of Climate Emergency Declarations

Thousands of Universities Join Wave of Climate Emergency Declarations

The climate emergency movement is heading to school. Global higher education networks tying together more than 7000 universities and colleges from across the globe declared a climate emergency and published a three-point plan to confront the escalating environmental crisis.

ELife Introduces First Demonstration of the Open-source Publishing Platform Libero Publisher

ELife Introduces First Demonstration of the Open-source Publishing Platform Libero Publisher

The working example represents a major milestone in the development of Libero Publisher, a community-supported tool to help modernise academic publishing.

The Plan to Mine the World's Research Papers

The Plan to Mine the World's Research Papers

A giant data store quietly being built in India could free vast quantities of science for computer analysis - but is it legal?

Nutrition Science Is Broken. This New Egg Study Shows Why.

Nutrition Science Is Broken. This New Egg Study Shows Why.

At turns lauded and vilified, the humble egg is an example of everything wrong with nutrition studies.

Textbook Analysis Uncovers Erroneous Explanations of Statistical Significance

Textbook Analysis Uncovers Erroneous Explanations of Statistical Significance

An examination of introductory psychology textbooks suggests that prospective psychological researchers may learn to interpret statistical significance incorrectly in their undergraduate classes.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: the Frustration of Diversity Efforts in STEM

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: the Frustration of Diversity Efforts in STEM

Keynote at PyData LondonJuly 14, 2019https://pydata.org/london2019/schedule/presentation/47/DescriptionTech has spent millions of dollars in efforts to diversify workplaces. Despite this, it seems after each spell of progress, a series of retrograde events ensue. Anti-diversity manifestos, backlash to assertive hiring, and sexual misconduct scandals crop up every few months, sucking the air from every board room. This will be a digest of research, recent events, and pointers on women in STEM.AbstractTwo years ago, a Google engineer attended a diversity program. He had such an adverse reaction to it, that he proceeded to write a 10-page anti-diversity manifesto that he circulated on internal channels. It later became public, furor ensued, and the engineer was fired. Far from being the end of the story, this engineer played the victim of political correctness and became a darling of conservative media outlets. What happened here? One tech company's attempts to educate its employees and improve the internal culture mightily backfired and as a result the cause for women in STEM was choked back. While a general sense that moving toward gender parity is desirable (though some still disagree with this premise), what actions to take remains unclear. Diversity trainings have been scarcely evaluated, and when they have, they seem to change awareness but not behavior. Sometimes, they create a backlash. More assertive action, like quotas, engender open resentment. Women in science and technology are underestimated by peers and teachers, pressed by stereotypes, disadvantaged in hiring and career progression, sexually harassed, disheartened as their expertise is ignored…and now they are resented for diversity initiatives. Science and technology needs its leaders to be fully committed to diversity and in frank understanding of the social-justice underpinnings. Two vehicles for change are: men leaders who are allies, and more women in leadership. The recent DataCamp debacle shows that a whole community's action was needed to right the wrongs of one harasser and one company's reticence to make him accountable. I aim to elicit your commitments to hire and promote women affirmatively, and to get educated and empower activism with evidence.

In Act of Brinkmanship, a Big Publisher Cuts off UC's Access to Its Academic Journals

In Act of Brinkmanship, a Big Publisher Cuts off UC's Access to Its Academic Journals

Elsevier, the world's largest publishers of academic journals, just stepped up its fight with the University of California by cutting off UC's access.

Establishing, Developing, and Sustaining a Community of Data Champions

Establishing, Developing, and Sustaining a Community of Data Champions

While research data support units now exist in many universities, these are typically not able to provide discipline-specific expertise or resources. This article focuses on the Data Champion Programme at the University of Cambridge, which empowers discipline-specific expertise already embedded within each unit to advocate for good RDM and to deliver support locally.

Interdisciplinary Comparison of Scientific Impact of Publications Using the Citation-Ratio

Interdisciplinary Comparison of Scientific Impact of Publications Using the Citation-Ratio

Article shows that the Citation-Ratio is more consistent across disciplines than total numbers of citations.

Releasing a Preprint is Associated with More Attention and Citations

Releasing a Preprint is Associated with More Attention and Citations

Preprint examines whether having a preprint on bioRxiv.org was associated with the Altmetric Attention Score and number of citations of the corresponding peer-reviewed article.

The Definition of Reuse

The Definition of Reuse

Article postulates that a clear definition of use and reuse is needed to establish better metrics for a comprehensive scholarly record of individuals, institutions, organizations, etc. Hence, this article presents a first definition of reuse of research data.

Who Gets Grant Money? The (gendered) Words Decide.

Who Gets Grant Money? The (gendered) Words Decide.

New research finds that even under blind review, women score lower than men when applying for grants. The reason? The words they use.

Scandal-weary Swedish Government Takes over Research-fraud Investigations

Scandal-weary Swedish Government Takes over Research-fraud Investigations

The Research Misconduct Board is one of the first national agencies tasked with investigating serious research misconduct.

Generalise, Don't Specialise: Why Focusing Too Narrowly is Bad for Us

Generalise, Don't Specialise: Why Focusing Too Narrowly is Bad for Us

The 10,000-hour rule says intense, dedicated practice makes perfect - at that one thing. But what if breadth actually serves us better than depth?

Journal Producation Costs

Journal Producation Costs

This dataset provides a granular, step-by-step calculation of the costs associated with publishing primary research articles, from submission, through peer-review, to publication, indexing and archiving. It is found that these costs range from less than US$200 per article in modern, large scale publishing platforms using post-publication peer-review, to about US$1,000 per article in prestigious journals with rejection rates exceeding 90%. The publication costs for a representative scholarly article today come to lie at around US$400. The additional non-publication cost items that make up the difference between publication costs and final price are discussed. The dataset refers to calculations about the scenarios described in a publication about that topic.