Controversial model points to benefits of more opinionated reviews.

Peer review, many boffins argue, channelling Churchill, is the worst way to ensure quality of research, except all the others. The system, which relies on papers being vetted by anonymous experts prior to publication, has underpinned scientific literature for decades.

In the global marketplace of higher education, the humanities are increasingly threatened by decreased funding and political attacks.

Wie sich die UBS mit ihrer Spende von 100 Millionen Franken die Universität Zürich hörig machte.

Scientists desperate to have an "impact" in their field are cherry-picking and misrepresenting their results. It's the natural result of a desperate scramble to publish. Science, according to a recent Nature article, is like Battleship. You fire shots into the dark and mostly miss your target.

When scientists moan about how little politicians know about science, I usually get annoyed. Such grouching is almost always counterproductive and more often than not betrays how little scientists know about the UK's governance structures, processes, culture and history.

Researchers can still operate by the rules and norms of science, but under Horizon 2020 they have - with the exception of the ERC - no autonomy to decide what science they do.

Research from the University of Copenhagen, which has just been published in the journal Philosophy and Technology, shows how the mechanisms that set off the financial crisis might be replicating in the field of science.

Academics concerned universities are excluding interdisciplinary research from the Research Excellence Framework exercise.

Reporting suspicions of scientific fraud is rarely easy, but some paths are more effective than others.

Who are the outstanding mentors of young researchers? Since 2005, Nature has awarded an annual prize for scientific mentoring, rotating through a variety of countries.

The do-it-yourself-biology movement has an image problem. More commonly called DIYbio, it tends to conjure up pictures of T-shirt-clad misfits marshalling limited scientific skill in their basements as they try to make cool-but-fringe things such as glow-in-the-dark plants.