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With Generous Funding and Top-Tier Jobs, China Seeks to Lure Science Talent from Abroad

With Generous Funding and Top-Tier Jobs, China Seeks to Lure Science Talent from Abroad

Newly released guidelines open the door wider for foreign researchers, allowing them to lead public research projects.

Signing My Peer Review - Unintended Consequences and Gender

Signing My Peer Review - Unintended Consequences and Gender

Roughly two years ago, I began to sign every peer review I did for journals. It resulted directly from a review on an article that I received that had glaring issues and made me wonder "Would they have been this sloppy if they had to attribute their name to this work?"

Biohackers Are About Open-Access to Science, Not DIY Pandemics

Biohackers Are About Open-Access to Science, Not DIY Pandemics

Scare stories in the media warn that biohackers in community labs are working underground to create the next global apocalypse. In truth, these labs are all about science outreach and education.

I Struggle to Hire Academics, Because Candidates Are Too Good

I Struggle to Hire Academics, Because Candidates Are Too Good

I’m deluged with outstanding applications for academic posts. So should I recruit the people who need the job most?

Want to Earn $10k per Month? Join the "Journals Mafia"

Want to Earn $10k per Month? Join the "Journals Mafia"

A new service called "Journals Mafia" appears to act as an intermediary between authors and journals - accepting articles, formatting and fixing the language, and submitting it to the journal. Since the authors pay to publish the articles, the company shares the profits with journals that publish the paper.

A New, Data-Based Checklist to Help Boost Women in Science Leadership

A New, Data-Based Checklist to Help Boost Women in Science Leadership

The young membership, frequency of elections and relaxed networks in science societies may provide vital positive influence for female promotion in STEM.

No Race or Gender Bias in a Randomized Experiment of NIH R01 Grant Reviews

No Race or Gender Bias in a Randomized Experiment of NIH R01 Grant Reviews

A randomized experiment of NIH R01 grant reviews finds no evidence that White male PIs receive evaluations that are any better than those of PIs from the other social categories.

Europe’s Science Spending Set for Another Big Boost

Europe’s Science Spending Set for Another Big Boost

On 7 June, the European Commission will lay out detailed plans for one of the biggest single research programs on the planet. Called Horizon Europe, the program could be worth EUR97.6 billion between 2021 and 2027, up from about EUR77 billion for the current 7-year program, Horizon 2020. 

Sweden Commits to Open Science with New Open Access Publishing Deal

Sweden Commits to Open Science with New Open Access Publishing Deal

Swedish researchers can now publish their articles in Frontiers’ Open Access journals through a simplified process that covers publishing fees, thanks to a national agreement announced today between Frontiers and the National Library of Sweden.

Preliminary Findings from the Review, Promotion, and Tenure Study

Preliminary Findings from the Review, Promotion, and Tenure Study

Only about 5% of the institutions made explicit mention of open access in their guidelines, and, in several of those few cases, the mention was done to call attention to the potentially problematic nature of these journals.

Effects of Copyrights on Science

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.

Germany's Scientific Texts Were Made Free During and After WWII; Analyzing Them Today Shows the Negative Effect of Paywalls on Science

Germany's Scientific Texts Were Made Free During and After WWII; Analyzing Them Today Shows the Negative Effect of Paywalls on Science

In 1942, the US Book Republication Program permitted American publishers to reprint "exact reproductions" of Germany's scientific texts without payment; seventy-five years later, the fate of this scientific knowledge forms the basis of a "natural experiment" analysed by Barbara Biasi and Petra Moser.

Licence Restrictions: A Fool's Errand

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.

All Publishers Are Predatory - Some Are Bigger Than Others

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

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

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.

Tweet About Academic Equality Goes Viral

Tweet About Academic Equality Goes Viral

What can men do to become better allies for women and other minorities in science? This is the question cognitive scientist Iris van Rooij asked on Twitter. To her own surprise, the tweet went viral.

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.

Prestige Drives Epistemic Inequality in the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas

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.