Paying conference expenses up front from personal accounts is a significant burden, this grad student writes

Göttingen infection researchers identify a potential drug.

Graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shut down campus Thursday as part of their ongoing strike for a cost of living adjustment, and all other system campuses saw their own one-day protests. Santa Cruz graduate assistants went on a grade strike in December, then a full labor strike this month. Tensions mounted last week when the university fired or disqualified 80-some grads from spring assistantships for continuing to withhold undergraduate grades. Graduate assistants blocked all entrances to the Santa Cruz campus before dawn, forcing the university to cancel classes, except those offered online. Many faculty and undergraduate supporters joined the picket lines on that campus and across the UC system starting midmorning. As of last week, graduate assistants at the Santa Barbara campus are also on a labor strike for a COLA, and assistants at the Davis campus are on a grade strike. Systemwide, graduate instructors make about $2,400 pre-tax, per month, for nine months out of the year. Strikers say that they need between $1,400 and $1,800 extra per month to be able to secure housing in California's expensive rental markets and have anything left over for utilities and food. The United Auto Workers, with which UC's graduate workers are affiliated, has urged the university to reopen their contract to bargain for a COLA. This week it authorized a systemwide strike vote for April on the grounds that the university has committed unfair labor practices. The university has filed a similar claim against graduate workers. The system said in a statement that it "values all our graduate students, including academic student employees (ASEs) who are essential to UC's teaching mission, supporting the university as teaching assistants, readers and tutors. However, that mission is in jeopardy when ASEs refuse to fulfill their teaching obligations." The system noted that these assistants are striking in violation of their union contract, negotiated in 2018, and said it's "unfortunate that the UAW has resorted to announcing a strike authorization vote as the university continues pursuing opportunities to engage productively with graduate students on housing affordability and other issues."

Airlines are running empty "ghost" flights because of European rules forcing operators to run their allocated flights or risk losing their slots.

Die Arbeitsgruppe Open-Science-Strategie des Open Science Network Austria (OANA) hat Empfehlungen für eine nationale Open Science Strategie in Österreich erarbeitet und lädt ein, das Dokument bis zum 05.04.2020 online zu annotieren bzw. zu kommentieren.

Ruthless labor exploitation? Generational betrayal? Understanding the job crisis in academia requires a look at recent history.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, of the W.H.O., got a rare glimpse into Beijing's campaign to stop the epidemic. Here's what he saw.

Europe PMC has made changes to make sense of preprint versions. 

COAR and SPARC have published a joint response to the OSTP Request for Public Comment on Draft Desirable Characteristics of Repositories for Managing and Sharing Data Resulting From Federally Funded Research. Good data management is critical for ensuring validation, transparency of research findings, as well as to maximize impact and value of publicly-funded research through data reuse.

The public call for rapid sharing of research data relevant to the COVID-19 outbreak is driving an unprecedented surge in (unrefereed) preprints. To help pinpoint the most important research, Nature launched Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview, an open-source platform for rapid review of preprints related to emerging outbreaks.

Analysis of 75 countries reveals 'shocking' scale of global women's rights backlash.

The initiative to ensure that qualified women have a place at the Academy.

After the success of the first two rounds, Women in Technology is organising the third year of WIT Mentoring.

Swiss scientists fear a number of political obstacles could block their path into the EU's next big research programme.

The university analysts at QS have published their 2020 rankings by subject.

Adult learning is at a 20-year low because mature students can't study flexibly. This must change

WHO calls on industry and governments to increase manufacturing by 40 per cent to meet rising global demand.

Some students do feel political pressure from their professors, but few change their views.

Coronavirus concerns have some businesses urging employees to work from home. If you're telecommuting, for public health reasons or otherwise, remember: Boundaries are your friend.

An example of finding the balance between personal and professional lives during moves overseas and in and out of academia.

A researcher from the Wuhan University of China offers a view of how Chinese researchers are reacting and are likely to alter their behavior in response to new policies governing research evaluation.

This new meeting at the Wellcome Genome Campus will bring together an international audience of researchers motivated to improve the robustness of scientific research.

New OA payment models are needed make open access implementation practical, journal editor says.

For a variety of reasons, researchers want to figure out who's most at risk of being infected and who's most at risk of developing severe illness.

The coronavirus crisis shows how the free sharing of data is crucial in science.

The Swiss National Science Foundation is testing a new CV format for researchers applying for project funding in biology and medicine (submission deadline 01 April 2020).

The 2020 election is off to a complicated start. Maybe we can draw some comparative political lessons from the animal kingdom.

The National Association of Science Writers calls on the Trump Administration to allow government experts to speak freely about the outbreak of the coronavirus disease COVID-19.

New policy tackles perverse incentives that drive 'publish or perish' culture and might be encouraging questionable research practices.

Last-minute move causes chaos for thousands of researchers