Senate confirms meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Grant checks from NSF and other funders won't go out. Meetings on grant applications won't take place. Impact will grow with length of standoff. Trump threat on border with Mexico alarms some Texas campuses.

But it will likely lack the broad powers favored by supporters of a Green New Deal.

The University of California is re-negotiating its systemwide licenses with some of the world's largest scholarly journal publishers, including Elsevier, to provide additional open access options for UC authors. In these negotiations, the UC is seeking a single, integrated contract with each publisher that covers both the university's subscriptions and open access publishing of UC research in their journals - what are often known as "publish and read" agreements.

The Max Planck Society is going to discontinue their Elsevier subscription. By doing so the Society joins nearly 200 universities and research institutions in Germany who have already cancelled their agreements with Elsevier.

As some editors are moving to 'flip' their journal the publishing giant offers considerable compensations to change their minds.

CWTS announces the launch of the new course called "Responsible Metrics for Research Evaluation".

Elsevier,  the information analytics business specializing in science and health, has acquired Science-Metrix Inc., a research evaluation firm that provides science research evaluation and analytics to assess science and technology activities

A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System. It is the first known Solar System object that has been detected at a distance that is more than 100 times farther than Earth is from the Sun. It was announced Monday by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center. Carnegie's Scott S. Sheppard, the University of Hawaii's David Tholen, and Northern Arizona University's Chad Trujillo made the discovery.

Particles associated with a blazar kick-start the field of neutrino astronomy.

Many land-grant schools have submitted bids despite objections by researchers

Offending researchers could face restrictions on jobs, loans and business opportunities under a system tied to the controversial social credit policy.

M4K Pharma was incorporated to launch an open science drug discovery program that relies on regulatory exclusivity as its primary intellectual property and commercial asset, in lieu of patents. In many cases and in key markets, using regulatory exclusivity can provide equivalent commercial protection to patents, while also being compatible with open science. The model is proving attractive to government, foundation and individual funders, who collectively have different expectations for returns on investment compared with biotech, pharmaceutical companies, or venture capital investors.In the absence of these investor-driven requirements for returns, it should be possible to commercialize therapeutics at affordable prices. M4K is piloting this open science business model in a rare paediatric brain tumour, but there is no reason it should not be more widely applicable.

In 2018, there has been a drop in the number of fully OA journals published by Elsevier, from 416 to 328 journals. The majority of Elsevier’s fully OA journals are still non-charging.

DNA tests can have a placebo effect.

Preservation is an imperative for our community, yet the Digital Preservation Network is disbanding. What lessons can we learn from its struggle?

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) reiterates its support for the goal of Plan S to achieve “immediate Open Access to all scholarly publications from research”.

The "commons of the mind" must be preserved, says James Boyle, a founding board director of Creative Commons, on the 50th anniversary of "The tragedy of the commons"

ALLEA welcomes the ambition of the coalition of European research funders to move the scientific publishing system towards open access; however, broader consultation with all parties is required during the implementation phase.

University of California System is playing hardball with Elsevier in negotiations that could transform the way it pays to read and publish research. But does the UC system have the clout to pull it off?

The burden on the peer review community is increasing as the volume of published research articles grows. Research output is rising exponentially and this is putting pressure on the system, with many academics inundated with requests to peer review. The recent Global State of Peer Review report highlights a growing “reviewer fatigue”.To help address this, Springer Nature and Publons, part of Clarivate Analytics, have announced a partnership to improve the peer review process and enable peer reviewers to receive recognition for their contribution.

Run by queer and transgender scientists, a new program aims to help high school students of similar identities see a future for themselves in science.

Global team of scientists find ecosystem below earth that is twice the size of world's oceans

The Netherlands plan a shift away from evaluating faculty members only on research metrics. This move would also make it possible to be hired on the basis of teaching.

The University of California faces a Dec. 31 deadline to reach a renewal deal on subscriptions to 1,500 scientific journals. Here's why it might not regret letting its subscriptions lapse.

The International Panel on Artificial Intelligence will be modeled on a group formed to study climate change and recommend government policies.

Academic research publications rely on doctors to voluntarily disclose their payments from drug and health companies in a lax reporting system some say is broken.

Launch of the ORCID funder open letter: Nine funding bodies are committed to expanding the use of ORCID in their grant applications.

Press release for launch of ORCID funders open letter. ORCID is pleased to announce the launch of an open letter in support of the use of ORCID identifiers (iDs) in the grant application and reporting process. Nine funding bodies around the world have signed the letter and invite others to join them.