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How Performance Evaluations Hurt Gender Equality

How Performance Evaluations Hurt Gender Equality

Performance evaluations are designed to be meritocratic. Unfortunately, they can exacerbate the very gender inequities they are striving to reduce.

Retracted Papers Keep Being Cited as if they Weren’t Retracted. Two Researchers Suggest how Elsevier Could Help Fix that.

Retracted Papers Keep Being Cited as if they Weren’t Retracted. Two Researchers Suggest how Elsevier Could Help Fix that.

Even after a paper’s retracted, it will continue to be cited - often by researchers who don’t realize the findings are problematic.

Philip Zimbardo Defends the Stanford Prison Experiment, his Most Famous Work

Philip Zimbardo Defends the Stanford Prison Experiment, his Most Famous Work

What’s the scientific value of the Stanford Prison Experiment? Zimbardo responds to the new allegations against his work.

The Latest in Search: Do New Discovery Solutions Improve Search as Well as Retrieval?

The Latest in Search: Do New Discovery Solutions Improve Search as Well as Retrieval?

A heuristic (exploratory) comparison of several new, free / mainstream academic search tools, concluding that their effectivness improves if an institution's library licenses them for off-campus authentication.

 

Psychiatrists Call for Rollback of Policy Banning Discussion of Public Figures’ Mental Health

Psychiatrists Call for Rollback of Policy Banning Discussion of Public Figures’ Mental Health

Some of the field’s most notable thinkers call on the American Psychiatric Association to permit discussion of public figures' mental health in some cases. 

Call for Action: Horizon Europe Needs a Specific Programme for Funding Science, Society and Citizens' Initiatives

Call for Action: Horizon Europe Needs a Specific Programme for Funding Science, Society and Citizens' Initiatives

There is an urgent need to strengthen funding for the interaction between science and society, but the EU's proposal for Horizon Europe does not foresee a programme dedicated to Science with and for Society. 

Will Europe Lead a Global Flip to Open Access?

Will Europe Lead a Global Flip to Open Access?

There appears to be no realistic path forward that achieves Europe's 2020 open access targets without resulting in substantial revenue reductions for existing publishers. Will Europe miss its OA target? Or will publishers miss their revenue targets?

African Scientists Launch their own Preprint

African Scientists Launch their own Preprint

A group of open science advocates have launched the first preprint aimed exclusively at African scientists. The free, online outlet is one of a growing number for academics on the continent to share their work.

Male Scientists Are Far More Likely to Be Referred to by Their Last Names, Impacting Status and Awards

Male Scientists Are Far More Likely to Be Referred to by Their Last Names, Impacting Status and Awards

The same gender disparity goes for politicians, athletes, and other high-profile figures

Peer Review: eLife Trials a New Approach

Peer Review: eLife Trials a New Approach

eLife authors are being invited to take part in a trial in which they decide how to respond to the issues raised during peer review.

Does Bibliometric Research Confer Legitimacy to Research Assessment Practice? a Sociological Study of Reputational Control, 1972-2016

Does Bibliometric Research Confer Legitimacy to Research Assessment Practice? a Sociological Study of Reputational Control, 1972-2016

A growing gap exists between an academic sector with little capacity for collective action and increasing demand for routine performance assessment by research organizations and funding agencies. This gap has been filled by database providers. By selecting and distributing research metrics, these commercial providers have gained a powerful role in defining de-facto standards of research excellence without being challenged by expert authority.

The Worst of Both Worlds: Hybrid Open Access

The Worst of Both Worlds: Hybrid Open Access

The Open Access movement was meant to provide universal access to knowledge, however the hybrid model seems to defeat this point by hindering the discoverability of hybrid Open Access articles, and creating more difficulties to disseminate knowledge.

A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions

A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions

Although the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is widely acknowledged to be a poor indicator of the quality of individual papers, it is used routinely to evaluate research and researchers. Here, we present a simple method for generating the citation distributions that underlie JIFs. Application of this straightforward protocol reveals the full extent of the skew of these distributions and the variation in citations received by published papers that is characteristic of all scientific journals. Although there are differences among journals across the spectrum of JIFs, the citation distributions overlap extensively, demonstrating that the citation performance of individual papers cannot be inferred from the JIF. We propose that this methodology be adopted by all journals as a move to greater transparency, one that should help to refocus attention on individual pieces of work and counter the inappropriate usage of JIFs during the process of research assessment.

Using Library Science to Map the Separation Crisis

Using Library Science to Map the Separation Crisis

A digital scholarship librarian and a historian assembled a team of professors, graduate students, researchers, and fellows to create "Torn Apart / Separados", an interactive web site that visualizes the vast apparatus of immigration enforcement in the US, and broadly maps the shelters where children can be housed.

Notes From an Academic Paper Mill

Notes From an Academic Paper Mill

As someone with a deep appreciation of education and expertise, it’s troubling to know that college is just one more locus of skulduggery, veiled and overt.

Opendata Conference Switzerland 2018

Opendata Conference Switzerland 2018

Opendata.ch/2018 ist die führende Konferenz der Schweiz rund um das Thema offene Daten. Jährlich prägen wir die nationale Open-Data-Diskussion, mit VertreterInnen aus Verwaltung, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft, Politik, Journalismus, IT und weiteren Interessengebieten.

Faculty Service Loads and Gender: Are Women Taking Care of the Academic Family?

Faculty Service Loads and Gender: Are Women Taking Care of the Academic Family?

This paper investigates the amount of academic service performed by female versus male faculty. We use 2014 data from a large national survey of faculty at more than 140 institutions as well as 2012...

How Universities Deal With Sexual Harassment Needs Sweeping Change, Panel Says

How Universities Deal With Sexual Harassment Needs Sweeping Change, Panel Says

Current policies and programs have failed overwhelmingly to address and prevent the problem, said a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead on Female vs. Male Creativity, Gender in Leadership, Equitable Parenting, and Why Women Make Better Scientists

Anthropologist Margaret Mead on Female vs. Male Creativity, Gender in Leadership, Equitable Parenting, and Why Women Make Better Scientists

“In the long run it is the complex interplay of different capacities, feminine and masculine, that protects the humanity of human beings.”

Hiring Policy at the LMU Psychology Department: Better Have some Open Science Track Record

Hiring Policy at the LMU Psychology Department: Better Have some Open Science Track Record

Candidates to the psychology department at LMU Munich are asked to describe in what way they already pursued and plan to pursue various Open Science goals.

A Leading Climate Agency May Lose Its Climate Focus

A Leading Climate Agency May Lose Its Climate Focus

The Trump Administration appears to be removing references to climate from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s mission statement.

To Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect

To Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect

Judea Pearl, a pioneering figure in artificial intelligence, argues that AI has been stuck in a decades-long rut. His prescription for progress? Teach machines.