Junior researchers often ghostwrite peer reviews
A new survey reveals the alarming extent of a practice that is universally considered unethical.
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Report Gauges Potential Risks to Scholars and Universities if Publishers Capture Research and Student Data
Report Gauges Potential Risks to Scholars and Universities if Publishers Capture Research and Student Data
Analysis commissioned by advocacy group documents how major companies' business strategies could help them lock up research and learning data that colleges and scholars need.
Stanford Moves to Stop Providing Funds to Its University Press
Stanford Moves to Stop Providing Funds to Its University Press
Scholars question decision -- particularly as it comes from one of the world's wealthiest universities and will limit publishing by a highly respected press.
Productivity, Prominence, and the Effects of Academic Environment
Past studies have shown that faculty at prestigious universities tend to be more productive and prominent than faculty at less prestigious universities. This pattern is usually attributed to a competitive job market that selects inherently productive faculty into prestigious positions. Here, we test the extent to which, instead, faculty's work environments drive their productivity. Using comprehensive data on an entire field of research, we use a matched-pair experimental design to isolate the effects of training at, versus working in, prestigious environments.
Fearing No-Deal Brexit, European Funder Orders U.K. Researchers to Transfer Grants
'Nature's Emergency is Our Emergency Too'
Critical scientific assessment of humanity's impact on nature to be released after Paris negotiations.
The Government Is Planning To Make EU Students Pay Much Higher Fees To Study At English Universities
The Government Is Planning To Make EU Students Pay Much Higher Fees To Study At English Universities
Home fee status and financial support for EU nationals is planned to be withdrawn from 2021 in a new crackdown on foreign students by Theresa May.
Elsevier Strikes Its First National Deal with Large Open-access Element
Agreement with Norwegian consortium allows researchers to make the vast majority of their work free to read on publication in Elsevier journals.
Should We Trust Meta-Analyses with Meta-Conflicts of Interest?
There are a couple of angles to look at researcher conflict of interest from. One is that a conflict could distort their work, tilting findings and claims away from "the truth". The other is for the way the work is received, not how it is done: authors' perceived conflicts could damage credibility. How does this translate to authors of systematic reviews and meta-analyses? Are the issues the same, no matter the type of study? I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I was one of the external stakeholders consulted as part of the Cochrane Collaboration's review of its conflict of interest policy for their systematic reviews editorial teams. As they explain, they are looking to strengthen their approach to financial conflicts, and "consider a wider range of possible inherent biases". In biomedicine at least, systematic reviewers/meta-analysts are widely seen as arbiters on the state of knowledge. Their work often guides individual decisions, policy, and funding. I think that
New Preprint: Scholar-Led Publishing and the Pre-History of the Open Access Movement
New Preprint: Scholar-Led Publishing and the Pre-History of the Open Access Movement
There is an often-neglected pre-history of open access that can be found in the early DIY publishers of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, including involvement of the humanities and social sciences. Policymakers are advised to keep in mind this separate lineage in the history of open access as the movement goes mainstream.
What a Deleted Profile Tells Us About Wikipedia's Diversity Problem
What a Deleted Profile Tells Us About Wikipedia's Diversity Problem
Clarice Phelps may have been the first African-American woman to help discover a chemical element. For Wikipedia, that wasn't enough.
Swiss Consortium Pledges 216,000 Eur to DOAJ and SHERPA/RoMEO
The Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries, comprising sixteen libraries and the Swiss National Science Foundation, is the third national consortium to commit to the SCOSS initiative.
Rein in the Four Horsemen of Irreproducibility
Threats to reproducibility, recognized but unaddressed for decades, might finally be brought under control. The four horsemen of the reproducibility apocalypse being: publication bias, low statistical power, P-value hacking and HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known).
It's 2019. Academic Papers Should Be Free.
Libraries and funding agencies are finally flexing their muscles against journal paywalls. Authors should follow suit.
Towards Persistent Identification of Conferences
Conference talks are a key element in scholarly communication. It is the primary mechanism for sharing research results and getting feedback. However, conferences in most disciplines never reached the same level of maturity as traditional journal publications in terms of quality management, which led to challenges like fraudulent conferences. There is need for a better control mechanism that can deliver credible information about conferences.
"A New Form of Plagiarism:" When Researchers Fake Co-Authors' Names
There’s a new publishing trend in town, says Mario Biagioli: Faking co-authors’ names. Biagioli, distinguished professor of law and science and technology studies and director of the Center for Innovation Studies at the University of California, Davis, writes that it’s “the emergence of a new form of plagiarism that reflects the new metrics-based economy of scholarly publishing.” We asked him a few questions about what he’s found, and why authors might do this.
Elsevier Agrees to First Read-and-Publish Deal
A Norwegian consortium has signed a new kind of subscription deal with Elsevier that includes open-access publishing - a first for the publisher. But the new rights come at a cost.
Meta-Research: Tracking the Popularity and Outcomes of All BioRxiv Preprints
Meta-Research: Tracking the Popularity and Outcomes of All BioRxiv Preprints
The growth of preprints in the life sciences has been reported widely and is driving policy changes for journals and funders, but little quantitative information has been published about preprint usage. Here, we report how we collected and analyzed data on all 37,648 preprints uploaded to bioRxiv.org, the largest biology-focused preprint server, in its first five years.
Plagiarizing Names?
A new trend in scientific misconduct involves listing fake coauthors on one’s publication. I trace some of the incentives behind faking coauthors, using them to highlight important changes in global science publishing like the increasingly important source of credibility provided by institutional affiliations, which may begin to function like ‘brands’.
EU Students Could Face Higher Fees to Study in UK from 2020
Higher education groups call on government to clarify its policy on tuition costs
Making Reproducibility Reproducible
Modern data science requires reproducible and functional work environments, not just ephemeral re-execution for validation.
Congress Wants to Protect You from Biased Algorithms, Deepfakes, and Other Bad AI
Only a few legislators really know what they're talking about, but it's a start.
Open Access Publishing: New Evidence on Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors
On Friday, Ithaka S+R released the latest cycle of our long-standing US Faculty Survey which has tracked the changing research, teaching, and publishing practices of higher education faculty members on a triennial basis since 2000. Here, some of the key findings around open access are higlighted. Especially among early career researchers, real-world incentives remain misaligned — and indeed appear to be moving further out of alignment — with the drive towards open access.
Researcher to Reader (R2R) Debate: Is Sci-Hub Good or Bad for Scholarly Communication?
Researcher to Reader (R2R) Debate: Is Sci-Hub Good or Bad for Scholarly Communication?
Transcript of a debate held at the 2019 Researcher to Reader Conference, on the resolution 'Sci-Hub Does More Good Than Harm to Scholarly Communication.'
Think You Can't Negotiate Your Job Offer or Postdoc Position? Think Again
Think You Can't Negotiate Your Job Offer or Postdoc Position? Think Again
Advice for early-career researchers from a negotiation expert.
Figure Errors, Sloppy Science, and Fraud: Keeping Eyes on Your Data
Figure Errors, Sloppy Science, and Fraud: Keeping Eyes on Your Data
Recent reports suggest that there has been an increase in the number of retractions and corrections of published articles due to post-publication detection of problematic data. Moreover, fraudulent data and sloppy science have long-term effects on the scientific literature and subsequent projects based on false and unreproducible claims. The JCI introduced several data screening checks for manuscripts prior to acceptance in an attempt to reduce the number of post-publication corrections and retractions, with the ultimate goal of increasing confidence in the published papers.
Universities and Research Transparency: Are Times Changing?
As journals, societies, and funders have engaged with the reproducibility movement, we are starting to see early signs that university policies are moving in the right direction as well.
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