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YouTube Your Science

YouTube Your Science

By making science readily available to any viewer, researchers can reach people who are interested in science but can’t read original manuscripts in a journal for whatever reason. If you don’t believe me, just ask my mum.

Peer Review Processes Risk Stifling Creativity and Limiting Opportunities for Game-Changing Scientific Discoveries

Peer Review Processes Risk Stifling Creativity and Limiting Opportunities for Game-Changing Scientific Discoveries

Obviously peer review should not be abandoned entirely, but it is time to recognise the need for a separate category of highly innovative research with appropriate funding.

PhD Students Supervised Collectively Rather Than Individually Are Quicker to Complete Their Theses

PhD Students Supervised Collectively Rather Than Individually Are Quicker to Complete Their Theses

Comparing the experiences of individually and collectively supervised students on the same doctoral programme, it was found that collective supervision, during the first year at least, is correlated with significantly shorter times to thesis completion compared to individual supervision.

Open Peer Review: Bringing Transparency, Accountability, and Inclusivity to the Peer Review Process

Open Peer Review: Bringing Transparency, Accountability, and Inclusivity to the Peer Review Process

Open peer review is moving into the mainstream, but it is often poorly understood and surveys of researcher attitudes show important barriers to implementation. Tony Ross-Hellauer provides an overv…

How Libraries Secure Trust in the Research Process of the 21st Century

How Libraries Secure Trust in the Research Process of the 21st Century

Three examples for library engagement in trust: scholarly communication literacy, information quality and legal certainty.

Panel Calls for a Postdoc Tax and Other Measures to Help Biomedical Scientists Find Jobs

Panel Calls for a Postdoc Tax and Other Measures to Help Biomedical Scientists Find Jobs

By limiting how long postdocs can be federally funded and by making it more expensive to keep them designated as trainees, research institutions will have an incentive to employ more permanent staff scientists, providing a much-needed additional career option for young scientist.

Using Preprints for Journal Clubs

Using Preprints for Journal Clubs

Including preprints rather than focusing completely on published papers in journal clubs might benefit the scientific enterprise in numerous ways, including by providing direct criticisms to preprint authors before publication, deemphasizing publishing venue, teaching students the art of reviewing papers, and making journal clubs more current by discussing unpublished data.

Our Survey Found 'Questionable Research Practices' by Ecologists and Biologists – Here's What That Means

Our Survey Found 'Questionable Research Practices' by Ecologists and Biologists – Here's What That Means

Questionable research practices are not fraud, and they're not cause for panic. But they do give us some hints about how we can make science more robust.

Science Publisher Springer Nature Anoounces €1.2 Billion IPO

Science Publisher Springer Nature Anoounces €1.2 Billion IPO

Despite a mixed record for German stock market flotations in 2018, Springer Nature, the world's largest publisher of English-language research journals, has announced it is taking the plunge.

Contest Models Highlight Inefficiencies of Scientific Funding

Contest Models Highlight Inefficiencies of Scientific Funding

The effort researchers waste in writing proposals may be comparable to the total scientific value of the additional funding, especially when only a small percentage of proposals are funded.

The Citation Graph Is One of Humankind's Most Important Intellectual Achievements

The Citation Graph Is One of Humankind's Most Important Intellectual Achievements

When researchers write, we don't just describe new findings - we place them in context by citing the work of others. Citations trace the lineage of ideas, connecting disparate lines of scholarship into a cohesive body of knowledge, and forming the basis of how we know what we know.

With the Herman Project, Home Bakers Become Citizen Scientists

With the Herman Project, Home Bakers Become Citizen Scientists

Network tracks the evolution of microbial communities in sourdough starter mixtures shared around the world.

New Awards Aim to Celebrate Women in Science

New Awards Aim to Celebrate Women in Science

Prizes will reward outstanding scientific discovery and exceptional efforts to engage girls and young women in science.

Study Explores Challenges to Black Graduate Engineering Students

Study Explores Challenges to Black Graduate Engineering Students

A new study that follows 21 Black men pursuing graduate degrees in engineering explores themes of structural racism, unfair treatment, unwelcoming environments and feelings of isolation.

Is Science Hitting a Wall?

Economists show increased research efforts are yielding decreasing returns. Too much innovation veneration! One driver of the replication crisis is our culture’s growing obsession with “innovation.” As technology historians Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell state in their influential Aeon essay Hail the Maintainers: “Entire societies have come to talk about innovation as if it were an inherently desirable value."

Knowledge Sharing in Global Health Research - the Impact, Uptake and Cost of Open Access to Scholarly Literature

Knowledge Sharing in Global Health Research - the Impact, Uptake and Cost of Open Access to Scholarly Literature

This study aims to assess the use, cost and impact of open access diffusion in the context of global health research.  Although OA does not ensure full knowledge transfer from research to practice, limiting public access can negatively impact implementation and outcomes of health policy and reduce public understanding of health issues.

Jupyter, Mathematica, and the Future of the Research Paper

Jupyter, Mathematica, and the Future of the Research Paper

Why Jupyter succeed where Mathematica failed? The obvious contrast is between the proprietary world of Wolfram and the open-source model of the software ecosystem that Jupyter mobilizes.

Battle over College Course Material Is a Textbook Example of Technological Change

Battle over College Course Material Is a Textbook Example of Technological Change

A revolution in college course materials is raising questions about cost, access, and fairness. Publishers say their high-tech courseware - electronic books glowing with videos and interactive study guides - can improve the quality of learning at a small fraction of the cost of traditional textbooks. But student advocates call for adoption of open-source textbooks that can be downloaded for free and worry that the same companies that drove up the price of print textbooks are dominating the digital space and will ultimately introduce higher costs there.

5 Strategies for Closing the STEM Gender Gap

5 Strategies for Closing the STEM Gender Gap

With our society becoming increasingly dependent on technology and STEM literacy, it’s becoming even more imperative to close the drastic gender gap that exists within STEM fields.

The Mark of a Woman’s Record: Gender and Academic Performance in Hiring

The Mark of a Woman’s Record: Gender and Academic Performance in Hiring

A survey suggests that achievement invokes gendered stereotypes that penalize women for having good grades, creating unequal returns to academic performance at labor market entry.

The More Revisions a Paper Undergoes, the Greater Its Subsequent Recognition in Terms of Citations

The More Revisions a Paper Undergoes, the Greater Its Subsequent Recognition in Terms of Citations

Some evidence showing that the more revisions a paper undergoes, the greater its subsequent recognition in terms of citation impact.

The Pay Gap, Visualized and Analyzed

The Pay Gap, Visualized and Analyzed

Even when the field of academic study is removed from the equation, women’s earnings still trail those of men by 11 percent. The reason? Family. Married women with children are paid less than those who don’t have similarly structured families. Meanwhile, men earn the same amount, regardless of their marital or parental status.