Asia university rankings update
Japan is still the number one nation but the balance of power is shifting as Beijing increases research funding
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Let the light shine in
Scientists make much of the fact that their work is scrutinised anonymously by some of their peers before it is published. This "peer review" is supposed to spot mistakes and thus keep the whole process honest.
Uprooting researchers can drive them out of science
Making early-career scientists change institutions frequently is disruptive and — with modern technology — unnecessary.
The morbid fascination with the death of the humanities
Why professors, librarians, and politicians are shunning liberal arts in the name of STEM.
'DIY labs offer an agile alternative to university-based research'
'DIY labs offer an agile alternative to university-based research'
Free from bureaucracy, independent science labs offer a flexibility that can't be matched by universities, writes a researcher.
Publisher, be damned! From price gouging to the open road
Why has academic knowledge become more expensive for consumers while music has become less expensive, and what can we do about it? Doing nothing to prevent the trading of electronic copies of our academic work could act to circumvent the perils of engagement with the academic publishing industry.
Factsheet from Horizon 2020
Open access to publications and data in Horizon 2020: Frequently Asked Questions.
College degrees awarded per capita in the U.S.
There is incredibly intense competition for an academic faculty job even with such a small set of qualified candidates. After 23 years, the U.S. is producing twice as many Master’s degrees per capita than they used to.
Why metrics cannot measure research quality
Whilst metrics may capture some partial dimensions of research ‘impact’, they cannot be used as any kind of proxy for measuring research ‘quality’.
South America by the numbers
The expanding economies of South America have led to a significant rise in scientific output over the past two decades, and research spending has increased in most countries. But given the region's share of the world's population and GDP, publication rates still fall short of what would be expected.
How to make government data sites better
Accessing government data from the source is frustrating. If you've done it, or at least tried to, you know the pain that is oddly formatted files, search that doesn't work, and annotation that tells you nothing about the data in front of you.
Elsevier, Springer und Thieme verklagen ETH-Bibliothek und bekommen Recht
Schon seit 2012 weiss man, dass von Elsevier, Springer und Thieme Klage gegen den Dokumentlieferdienst der ETH-Bibliothek eingereicht wurde. Wie es aber weiterging war aber weitgehend unklar. Am 7. April 2014 fand am Handelsgericht des Kanton Zürich die Gerichtsverhandlung statt.
EuroScientist webzine
Selection of a series of themes from the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) 2014.
The damaging bureaucracy of academic peer preview
Academic funding agencies should support research in unfashionable fields; a letter to David Cameron.
New efforts to maximize fairness in NIH peer-review
The NIH is working on multiple fronts to get to the bottom of unexplained racial disparities in R01 grant funding and to maximize fairness in NIH peer review.
NIH seeks $4.5 billion to try to crack the code of how brains function
A final version of NIH document presents an estimate of the money needed.
Reproducible research is still a challenge
rOpenSci was awarded $300k from the Sloan Foundation to develop tools that are at least as easy to use before we can expect project reproducibility to become mainstream.
Time to discard the metric that decides how science is rated
Scientists need ways to evaluate themselves and their colleagues. These evaluations are necessary for better everyday management: hiring, promotions, awarding grants and so on. One evaluation metric has dominated these decisions, and that is doing more harm than good.
Working across research silos is harder than it looks
One of the loudest buzzwords in current science politics is interdisciplinarity. Government extols its virtues. Research councils clamour about its value. Academics parade their credentials.
Science in the next 50 years: U.S. views of technology and the future
Report based on a U.S. survey conducted by Pew Research Center with Smithsonian magazine and featured in a special issue of the magazine on science and science fiction.
Re-Evaluating the College Rankings Game
Although the rating of colleges and universities around the world has been heavily criticized by educators and politicians alike, the academic rankings business is big, and booming.
Want to be a PI? What are the odds?
Algorithm based on publications finds that first-author articles in leading journals matter most.
Internationale Mobilität der WissenschaftlerInnen in Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich
Internationale Mobilität der WissenschaftlerInnen in Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich
Studie zur Mobilität der Wissenschafter.
The number of scholarly documents on the public web
The lower bound number of scholarly documents, published in English, available on the web is roughly 114 million.
Evaluation des Forschungskredits der Universität Zürich
Studie der Sozialforschungsstelle der Universtität Zürich.
When did it stop being worthy?
When did it stop being worthy?
Two themes sound repeatedly among those who would taper the flow of money: social science research isn't as economically valuable or as "high quality" as technological or medical research, and social science research can't be justified in austere times.
Hate the peer-review process? Einstein did too
Most academic papers today are published only after some academic peers have had a chance to review the merits and limitations of the work. This seems like a good idea, but there is a growing movement that wants to retort as Albert Einstein did to such a review process.
Biomedical institute opens its doors to physicists
Launch of the new interdisciplinary Francis Crick Institute in central London.
Studyforrest.org
An open invitation to anyone and everyone to participate in a decentralized effort to explore the opportunities of open science in neuroimaging.
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