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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.

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.

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.

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.

Questioning Truth, Reality and the Role of Science

Questioning Truth, Reality and the Role of Science

In an era when untestable ideas such as the multiverse hold sway, Michela Massimi defends science from those who think it hopelessly unmoored from physical reality.

Who Gets Credit? Survey Digs Into the Thorny Question of Authorship

Who Gets Credit? Survey Digs Into the Thorny Question of Authorship

Most researchers agree that drafting papers and interpreting results deserve recognition — but opinions don’t always match authorship guidelines.

Fifty Years Since DNA Repair was Linked to Cancer

Fifty Years Since DNA Repair was Linked to Cancer

In 1968, a defect in DNA repair was found to underlie a disorder that makes people extremely sensitive to sunlight. This finding continues to influence research into the origins, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Scientists Get More Bang for Their Buck If Given More Freedom

Scientists Get More Bang for Their Buck If Given More Freedom

Scientists are more efficient at producing high-quality research when they have more academic freedom, according to a recent study of 18 economically advanced countries. Researchers in the Netherlands are the most efficient of all.  The existence of a national evaluation system that is not tied to funding was also associated with efficiency.

Getting Scientists Ready for Open Access: The Approaches of Forschungszentrum Jülich

Getting Scientists Ready for Open Access: The Approaches of Forschungszentrum Jülich

Case report looking at two approaches taken by the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich in 2017.

Effectiveness of Anonymization in Double-Blind Review

Effectiveness of Anonymization in Double-Blind Review

In a controlled experiment with two disjoint program committees, the ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM'17) found that reviewers with author information were 1.76x more likely to recommend acceptance of papers from famous authors, and 1.67x more likely to recommend acceptance of papers from top institutions.

There's Nothing Noble about Science’s Nobel Prize Gender Gap

There's Nothing Noble about Science’s Nobel Prize Gender Gap

Given the dearth of women receiving the top science prizes, it's time for the Nobel Committee to revamp how it awards great work.

Peer Review and Citation Data in Predicting University Rankings, a Large-Scale Analysis

Peer Review and Citation Data in Predicting University Rankings, a Large-Scale Analysis

When citation-based indicators are applied at the institutional or departmental level, rather than at the level of individual papers, surprisingly large correlations with peer review judgments can be observed.

Boycotting All-Male Panel Discussions

Boycotting All-Male Panel Discussions

A group of renowned economists and academics from Spain have signed a document promising not to appear as a speaker at any academic event or round-table discussion if there are no women experts present as well.