Deal Impasse Severs Elsevier Access for Some German Universities
As talks with the publisher stall, researchers in the country weigh whether they can cope without a deal
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Why STEM Majors Need the Humanities
It’s often argued that studying the liberal arts will enrich the life of the mind. For STEM majors, it can also give them a practical advantage in their careers.
ScienceDisrupt Picks From 2016
We wanted to share with you some of the awesome science innovations and disruptors from the last year. This is our list.
German Researchers Start 2017 Without Elsevier Journals
In Germany, negotiations between scientific publishing company Elsevier and a consortium of hundreds of universities, technical schools, research institutes, and public libraries stalled in December 2016. As a result, more than 60 institutions have lost their online access to Elsevier's journals effective 1 January, although some can still access archived articles published before that date. The price of the journals is only part of the problem.
How to Quickly Spot Dodgy Science
There are a few red flags to look out for when reading about new scientific discoveries that can help you spot dodgy or unreliable work.
Why Scientists Must Learn to Communicate With the Public
Evading science communication simply because it is difficult, time-consuming or not important enough reflects more on how much scientists value their own work and its place in posterity.
Brand New Year, Same Old Problems
Dame Athene Donald laments the lack of progress on gender issues
BioRxiv: A Pre-print Repository for Life Sciences
BioRxiv is a pre-print repository for life science researchers who can now easily share their unpublished work with the research community.
Limiting PhDs Creates the Wrong Kind of Elite
Fixing problems in the academic job market by reducing the number of PhDs would homogenise the sector, argues Tom Cutterham.
Quantity and/or Quality? The Importance of Publishing Many Papers
Highly productive researchers have significantly higher probability to produce top cited papers.
Mega-Journal PLOS ONE Continues to Shrink
The world's largest scholarly journal, PLOS ONE, is seeing fewer and fewer researchers publish their work in it as the open-access publishing market evolves.
Top Ten Medical Research Issues and Trends to Watch in 2017
2016 will go down as a year that taught us to question our assumptions. The election of Donald Trump, an outcome
Why Having a (Nonfinancial) Interest Is Not a Conflict of Interest
A current debate about conflicts of interest related to biomedical research is to question whether the focus on financial conflicts of interest overshadows “nonfinancial” interests that could put scientific judgment at equal or greater risk of bias.
Don't Be A Zero-Sum Reviewer
Don't Be A Zero-Sum Reviewer
Time devoted to research is increasingly precious to us in academia. We chastise ourselves for not being able to keep up with the huge volumes of current literature. If only there was some way that all the latest literature on a particular topic could be packaged together for us, and delivered right to our inbox without us even having to lift a finger! Now, what would we call such an improbable utopia – ah yes, peer review.
Languages Are Still a Major Barrier to Global Science
Searching Google Scholar in 16 languages revealed that 35.6% of 75,513 scientific documents on biodiversity conservation published in 2014 were not in English.
Mapped Out: Negative Perceptions of Science
This map shows that across Africa, India, Central America and parts of the Middle East, people are more likely to believe that one of the “bad effects” of science is that it “breaks down ideas of right and wrong”.
Why Researchers Should Resolve to Engage in 2017
Debates over climate change and genome editing present the need for researchers to venture beyond their comfort zones to engage with citizens — and they should receive credit for doing so.
Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2017
232 new predatory open-access publishers over 2016.
Publication Bias and the Canonization of False Facts
Publication bias, in which positive results are preferentially reported by authors and published by journals, can restrict the visibility of evidence against false claims and allow such claims to be canonized inappropriately as facts.
Narrative Style Influences Citation Frequency in Climate Change Science
Articles with more narrative abstracts are cited more often.
Argentina's Researchers Occupy Science Ministry
Young scientists angry at budget cuts say they have been denied permanent jobs.
Citations Cartels An Emerging Problem in Scientific Publishing
Groups of authors citing each other is becoming an issue in scientific publishing. With a new approach, researchers discuss how to identify the problem.
The New Face of US Science
Gary McDowell, Misty Heggeness and colleagues present census data showing how the biomedical workforce is fundamentally different to those of past generations – academia should study the trends, and adapt.
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