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South Africa Halts AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Rollout As Shot Falters in Study

South Africa Halts AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Rollout As Shot Falters in Study

A new analysis that suggests the shot "provides minimal protection" against mild disease caused by a new variant circulating in South Africa.

Analysis of the Evolution and Collaboration Networks of Citizen Science Scientific Publications

Analysis of the Evolution and Collaboration Networks of Citizen Science Scientific Publications

The term citizen science refers to a broad set of practices developed in a growing number of areas of knowledge and characterized by the active citizen participation in some or several stages of the research process. Definitions, classifications and terminology remain open, reflecting that citizen science is an evolving phenomenon, a spectrum of practices whose classification may be useful but never unique or definitive. The aim of this article is to study citizen science publications in journals indexed by WoS, in particular how they have evolved in the last 20 years and the collaboration networks which have been created among the researchers in that time. In principle, the evolution can be analyzed, in a quantitative way, by the usual tools, such as the number of publications, authors, and impact factor of the papers, as well as the set of different research areas including citizen science as an object of study. But as citizen science is a transversal concept which appears in almost all scientific disciplines, this study becomes a multifaceted problem which is only partially modelled with the usual bibliometric magnitudes. It is necessary to consider new tools to parametrize a set of complementary properties. Thus, we address the study of the citizen science expansion and evolution in terms of the properties of the graphs which encode relations between scientists by studying co-authorship and the consequent networks of collaboration. This approach - not used until now in research on citizen science, as far as we know- allows us to analyze the properties of these networks through graph theory, and complement the existing quantitative research. The results obtained lead mainly to: (a) a better understanding of the current state of citizen science in the international academic system-by countries, by areas of knowledge, by interdisciplinary communities-as an increasingly legitimate expanding methodology, and (b) a greater knowledge of collaborative networks and their evolution, within and between research communities, which allows a certain margin of predictability as well as the definition of better cooperation strategies.

Do Open Access Journal Articles Experience a Citation Advantage? Results and Methodological Reflections of an Application of Multiple Measures to an Analysis by WoS Subject Areas

Do Open Access Journal Articles Experience a Citation Advantage? Results and Methodological Reflections of an Application of Multiple Measures to an Analysis by WoS Subject Areas

Study finds that OA journal articles experience a citation advantage in very few subject areas and, in most of these subject areas, the citation advantage was found on only a single measure of citation advantage, namely whether the article was cited at all.

Quotas to Promote Gender Equality in Research

Quotas to Promote Gender Equality in Research

Gender equality is a prime concern of the Swiss National Science Foundation. To offer additional visibilty to women in academia, it is introducing gender quotas in its evaluation bodies with immediate effect.

AI-Assisted Peer Review

AI-Assisted Peer Review

Many platforms have already started to use automated screening tools, to prevent plagiarism and failure to respect format requirements. Some tools even attempt to flag the quality of a study or summarise its content, to reduce reviewers' load.

COVID-19 Data Portal - Accelerating Scientific Research Through Data

COVID-19 Data Portal - Accelerating Scientific Research Through Data

We need open data, especially open SARS-CoV-2 sequence data, and open science to beat COVID-19 and to prepare for future outbreaks.

Universities without walls – A vision for 2030

Universities without walls – A vision for 2030

This seminal document is the result of extensive consultations and deliberations with EUA members and partners over a six-month period in 2020. It sets out a vision of resilient and effective universities, serving Europe's societies towards a better future.

Peer Reviewers - Time for Mass Rebellion?

Peer Reviewers - Time for Mass Rebellion?

Richard Smith spent some time reviewing two scientific papers, and the experience has made him wonder if it is time for peer reviewers to rise up in rebellion.

Open Science Podcasts: 7 +3 Tips for Your Ears

Open Science Podcasts: 7 +3 Tips for Your Ears

Podcasts were among the media winners of last year. Scientific podcasts in particular enjoyed great popularity. In fact, there are also some that deal specifically with Open Science. This article has 7 + 3 tips.

The Energy 202: Biden Creates New Climate Adviser Role at NASA

The Energy 202: Biden Creates New Climate Adviser Role at NASA

NASA is elevating one of its top climate scientists to a new role, a move meant to put greater focus at the space agency on studying the causes and consequences of global warming under President Biden.

How Is Science Clicked on Twitter? Click Metrics for Bitly Short Links to Scientific Publications

How Is Science Clicked on Twitter? Click Metrics for Bitly Short Links to Scientific Publications

Study analyses the click metrics of over 1.1 million links referring to Web of Science publications.

How Open Access Can Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) " Library Policy and Advocacy Blog

How Open Access Can Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) " Library Policy and Advocacy Blog

Access to information, and libraries as institutions that deliver it, are key to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Risk of Being Scooped Drives Scientists to Shoddy Methods

Risk of Being Scooped Drives Scientists to Shoddy Methods

Models suggest that the race for quick results and the importance of being the first to publish is leading to lower scientific standards.

Publishing Philosophy Open Access Without a Particle Collider

Publishing Philosophy Open Access Without a Particle Collider

Open Access often appears to be a monolithic concept, covering all fields of research and publication. However, in practice its application is to a large extent determined by the needs and resource…

A Nobel Laureate Shares 10 Rules for Being an Effective Mentor of Young Research Scholars

A Nobel Laureate Shares 10 Rules for Being an Effective Mentor of Young Research Scholars

Nobel Laureate Robert Lefkowitz shares 10 golden rules gleaned from a half century of mentoring hundreds of research trainees.

Fostering Interdisciplinary Data Cultures through Early Career Development: The RDA/US Data Share Fellowship

Fostering Interdisciplinary Data Cultures through Early Career Development: The RDA/US Data Share Fellowship

In this paper we discuss interdisciplinarity through data as a way to create research environments that are more flexible and, as a result, more amenable to change. We report our findings from facilitating and evaluating a data-oriented early-career fellowship program that was administered as part of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), a global organization that aims to enable open sharing and re-use of data. 

Support for Self-Isolation is Critical in Covid-19 Response

Support for Self-Isolation is Critical in Covid-19 Response

Government action needed now to reduce infections and deaths The resurgence of covid-19 in the autumn of 2020 in many northern countries, including the UK, has been associated with tremendous morbidity and mortality. Before vaccination, the public health response focused on testing and population-wide restrictions, with the goal of decreasing contact between susceptible and contagious individuals. Striking and widening disparities in covid-19 related outcomes have highlighted the intersection of socioeconomic disadvantage and health inequalities, enhanced by structural racism.1234 Socioeconomically disadvantaged and many ethnic minority groups have been disproportionately affected, with increased risk of infection, hospital admission, and death.5678 Despite the vaccine rollout, many younger people, particularly those working in high exposure occupations, living in overcrowded housing, or without a home will remain subject to an ongoing burden of quarantine orders, along with a disproportionate risk of infection and onward transmission for the foreseeable future.159 An equitable and effective public health response requires the integration of supportive services to effectively decrease their contact rates and subsequently risk of infection.9 Most countries have used testing as a tool to interrupt transmission chains by encouraging isolation of contacts. However, the ability to quarantine until test results are available, and to …

How the Search for Covid-19 Treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead

How the Search for Covid-19 Treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead

Significantly less government funding was put towards researching treatments than vaccines. And national efforts to coordinate and recruit sick patients into trials were insufficient. The next few months will still bring many sick people - and doctors have woefully few drugs with which to treat them.

Science Barometer 2020: Starting Points for Open Science?

Science Barometer 2020: Starting Points for Open Science?

What image does the public in Germany have of science and research? The Science Barometer is dedicated to answering this question. We have taken a look at the results of the most recent survey from an Open Science perspective.