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Star Wars: Who Should Get Credit for Solving the Mystery of Gravitational Waves ?

Star Wars: Who Should Get Credit for Solving the Mystery of Gravitational Waves ?

When scientists in California and around the world finally solved the mystery of gravitational waves last year, only one question remained: Who should get credit for the discovery?

Beneficiaries of Organisation IDs Must Be Willing to Invest in Them

Beneficiaries of Organisation IDs Must Be Willing to Invest in Them

Collecting, annotating and curating data of universities, funding organizations and publishers manually is both wasteful and impossible to do comprehensively. If these data were available in a globally standardized, digital, open format, this effort could be redirected towards analysis and improving research information and administration.

Science in North Korea: How Easing the Nuclear Stand-Off Might Bolster Research

Science in North Korea: How Easing the Nuclear Stand-Off Might Bolster Research

The isolated nation publishes fewer than 100 scholarly articles a year - but as political tensions thaw, researchers hope for greater collaboration.

Opium in Science and Society: Numbers

Opium in Science and Society: Numbers

We call for bringing sanity back into scientific judgment exercises. Despite all number crunching, many judgments - be it about scientific output, scientists, or research institutions - will neither be unambiguous, uncontroversial, or testable by external standards nor can they be otherwise validated or objectified.

Thousands of Academics Spurn Nature’s New Paid-Access Machine Learning Journal

Thousands of Academics Spurn Nature’s New Paid-Access Machine Learning Journal

Nature has just announce plans to create a Machine Intelligence imprint, and researchers in this normally open access field are not happy. Over two thousand have signed a statement saying they won’t publish in it.

Why Media Should Rethink the Way It Covers Science

Why Media Should Rethink the Way It Covers Science

Across time, public understanding about how science works is affected by journalism. A journalist, with very little extra effort, can increase the accuracy of public understanding and minimize public vulnerability to distortions of science.

Federal Partners Release Interagency Strategic Plan for Microbiome Research

Federal Partners Release Interagency Strategic Plan for Microbiome Research

A group of 23 U.S. government agencies, including the NSF, have joined to produce the Interagency Strategic Plan for Microbiome Research, which outlines the objectives, structure and principles for coordinated research in this important field of study.

Random Audits Could Shift the Incentive for Researchers From Quantity to Quality

Random Audits Could Shift the Incentive for Researchers From Quantity to Quality

One way to push back against the pressure to “publish or perish” is to randomly audit a small proportion of researchers and take time to assess their research in detail. Auditors could examine complex measures of quality which no metric could ever capture such as originality, reproducibility, and research translation.

Towards Open Access by default in Spain

Towards Open Access by default in Spain

In January 2018, Spanish Government published the State Plan for Research, Development and Innovation 2017-2020 that includes important news on open access to scientific publications and research data. 

Funder Perspectives on Open Infrastructure

Funder Perspectives on Open Infrastructure

A survey to better understand funder perspectives with respect to supporting open infrastructure shows that beyond open access, however, there is very little consensus on other open activities.

Understanding the Implications of Open Citations — How Far Along Are We?

Understanding the Implications of Open Citations — How Far Along Are We?

The academic discovery space seems to be buzzing again. This space has become relatively stable after the introduction and maturity of Web Scale Discovery between 2009-2013, but things seem to be hotting up once again

Feeling Overwhelmed by Academia? You Are Not Alone

Feeling Overwhelmed by Academia? You Are Not Alone

Five researchers share their stories and advice on how to maintain good mental health in the hyper-competitive environment of science.

In Tackling Gender Inequality in STEM, Considerations of Culture

In Tackling Gender Inequality in STEM, Considerations of Culture

Study finds that countries ranking higher on measures of gender equality tend to have fewer women pursuing a STEM education than those further down the gender equality ranks.  The analysis suggests that there are girls with the grades, confidence, and the enjoyment of science to go into STEM, who still end up pursuing other careers.  For the numerous organizations dedicated to addressing the problem of women’s underrepresentation in science, solutions are far from clear.

Inexpensive Research in the Golden Open-Access Era

Inexpensive Research in the Golden Open-Access Era

The financial pressure that publishers impose on libraries is a worldwide concern. Gold open-access publishing with an expensive article-processing charge paid by the authors is often presented as an ideal solution to this problem. However, such a system threatens less-funded departments and even article quality.

Practicing What You Preach: Evaluating Access of Open Access Research

Practicing What You Preach: Evaluating Access of Open Access Research

This study finds that 73.7 percent of articles about OA are openly available.