Licence Restrictions: A Fool's Errand
Objections to the Creative Commons attribution licence are straw men raised by parties who want open access to be as closed as possible, warns John Wilbanks.
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eLife Innovation Sprint 2018: Project Roundup
From gamification of sample-size identification to a decentralised lab notebook: a showcase of the projects developed at the eLife Innovation Sprint.
EU Ministers Endorse Commission’s Plans for Research Cloud
The European Open Science Cloud, which will support EU science in its global leading role by creating a trusted environment for hosting and processing research data.
Loss of Trust? Loss of Trustworthiness? Truth and Expertise Today
Loss of Trust? Loss of Trustworthiness? Truth and Expertise Today
A discussion of how trust in expertise is placed or refused, highlighting the affective dimension of epistemic trust, and discussing the danger of a 'context collapse' in digital communication.
Effects of Copyrights on Science
A unique WWII-era programme in the US, allowed US publishers to reprint exact copies of German-owned science books, to explore how copyrights affect follow-on science. This artificial removal of copyright barriers led to a 25% decline in prices and a 67% increase in citations.
China to Crack down on Fraud in Scandal-Hit Scientific Research
China to Crack down on Fraud in Scandal-Hit Scientific Research
New national guidelines spell out punishment for plagiarism, fabrication of data and research conclusions, ghostwriting and peer review manipulation.
What Motivates Reviewers? An Experiment in Economics
Shorter deadlines, email reminders, and cash incentives can speed up the peer review process and minimize unintended effects, a recent study suggests. Can it work for other disciplines?
All Publishers Are Predatory - Some Are Bigger Than Others
The assumption that the publication of an article in a high-impact factor, indexed journal somehow adds value to international science is a collective illusion - one that is unfortunately shared by funding agencies, institutions and researchers. This illusion - which serves as an excuse to delegate the evaluation of science to for-profit companies and anonymous reviewers for the sake of false objectivity - costs taxpayers dearly.
Citation Analysis Reveals the Game Changers
A study identifies papers that stand the test of time. Fewer than two out of every 10,000 scientific papers remain influential in their field decades after publication, finds an analysis of five million articles published between 1980 and 1990.
Why Thousands of AI Researchers Are Boycotting the New Nature Journal
Academics share machine-learning research freely. Taxpayers should not have to pay twice to read our findings.
Open Science and Its Role in Universities: A Roadmap for Cultural Change
Open Science and Its Role in Universities: A Roadmap for Cultural Change
LERU's paper discussing the eight pillars of Open Science identified by the European Commission: the future of scholarly publishing, FAIR data, the European Open Science Cloud, education and skills, rewards and incentives, next-generation metrics, research integrity, and citizen science.
Report Urges Program Data Transparency and a Focus on Core Competencies in Graduate STEM Education
Prestige Drives Epistemic Inequality in the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas
The role of faculty hiring networks in shaping the spread of ideas in computer science, and the importance of where in the network an idea originates: research from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions.
New Fund to Support Groundbreaking Open Research
Wellcome new Open Research Fund supports innovative approaches that enable data, code or other research outputs to be discovered, accessed and reused.
Questioning Truth, Reality and the Role of Science
In an era when untestable ideas such as the multiverse hold sway, Michela Massimi defends science from those who think it hopelessly unmoored from physical reality.
Who Gets Credit? Survey Digs Into the Thorny Question of Authorship
Most researchers agree that drafting papers and interpreting results deserve recognition — but opinions don’t always match authorship guidelines.
LERU Makes 41 Suggestions for Open Science
The League of European Research Universities has published a roadmap to help universities around the world implement open-science practices.
Ethnic Diversity Increases Scientific Impact
Preprint showing that ethnic diversity consistently leads to higher scientific impact.
Scientists Get More Bang for Their Buck If Given More Freedom
Scientists are more efficient at producing high-quality research when they have more academic freedom, according to a recent study of 18 economically advanced countries. Researchers in the Netherlands are the most efficient of all. The existence of a national evaluation system that is not tied to funding was also associated with efficiency.
Getting Scientists Ready for Open Access: The Approaches of Forschungszentrum Jülich
Getting Scientists Ready for Open Access: The Approaches of Forschungszentrum Jülich
Case report looking at two approaches taken by the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich in 2017.
Effectiveness of Anonymization in Double-Blind Review
In a controlled experiment with two disjoint program committees, the ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM'17) found that reviewers with author information were 1.76x more likely to recommend acceptance of papers from famous authors, and 1.67x more likely to recommend acceptance of papers from top institutions.
Peer Review and Citation Data in Predicting University Rankings, a Large-Scale Analysis
Peer Review and Citation Data in Predicting University Rankings, a Large-Scale Analysis
When citation-based indicators are applied at the institutional or departmental level, rather than at the level of individual papers, surprisingly large correlations with peer review judgments can be observed.
Boycotting All-Male Panel Discussions
A group of renowned economists and academics from Spain have signed a document promising not to appear as a speaker at any academic event or round-table discussion if there are no women experts present as well.
Against Metrics: How Measuring Performance by Numbers Backfires
By tying rewards to metrics, organisations risk incentivising gaming and encouraging behaviours that may be at odds with their larger purpose. The culture of short-termism engendered by metrics also impedes innovation and stifles the entrepreneurial element of human nature.
Call Prix Schläfli 2019
The “Alexander Friedrich Schläfli Prize” of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) is one of the oldest prizes in Switzerland. Since the first awarding in 1866, 108 young talents in different natural science disciplines have been distinguished.
Before Reproducibility Must Come Preproducibility
Most papers fail to report many aspects of the experiment and analysis that we may not with advantage omit - things that are crucial to understanding the result and its limitations and to repeating the work. Instead of arguing about whether results hold up, we should strive to provide enough information for others to repeat the experiments.
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