Europe is already a world leader in areas from car and aerospace manufacturing to chemicals, and its focus on high-tech niches – which are less subject to low-cost competition – remains a source of strength.

In the scramble to gain market share in cyberspace, something is getting lost: the public interest. Libraries and laboratories-crucial nodes of the World Wide Web-are buckling under economic pressure, and the information they diffuse is being diverted away from the public sphere, where it can do most good.

The UK Government’s new prize for substantial innovation to address pressing societal problems should be welcomed, says Martin Rees.

Peer-review of projects dominates when it comes to decision on how to allocate funding for science. But is it really the best way?

Racist government policies hurt the higher education sector, says Kevin Fong, but the harm doesn't stop there I seem to recall that "education, education, education" was Tony Blair's battle cry in the run-up to the 1996 general election. (With hindsight, the title of the Kaiser Chiefs' latest album, Education, Education, Education and War, might have been closer to the mark.)

Auf Google hoch platzierte Publikationen hinterfragt kaum jemand, beklagt US-Soziologe James Evans. Gleichzeitig rät er Forschern, mehr Denkarbeit an Computer abzugeben.

The Web has greatly reduced the barriers to entry for new journals and other platforms for communicating scientific output, and the number of journals continues to multiply. This leaves readers and authors with the daunting cognitive challenge of navigating the literature and discerning contributions that are both relevant and significant.

Getting a job at a top university will not make you a better researcher

Discoveries by laypeople are rare but free access to research results would increase the likelihood

How this money is invested could make a huge difference to our future, in the UK and to some extent beyond

Launch of METRICS, the Meta-Research Innovation Centre at Stanford, by John Ioannidis.

At some point we must decide whether we want excellent science or nationally representative science.

An article on what is needed for personalized medicine to be reality. "Research into how genetic variants can guide successful treatments must become part of routine medical practice and records", says Geoffrey Ginsburg.

Comment on the paper Predicting publication success for biologists.

Chief Executive of the ESPRC, has no regrets over the introduction of the council's exercise which prioritises funding according to UK strength and national importance.

"Today people look at these extraordinary labs and forget that in the 1800s they could still do the exact same science." -- Manu Prakash

Report points to 'serious dangers for the international standing of UK research' in humanities and social sciences.

What could the UK academic community do with £14.5 million? That is what just 19 Universities in the UK are spending in total during a single year on journal subscriptions to a single publisher.

Aside from the occasional cigar (once every five years or so), I'm one of those smug "never smoked" gits. You then might think that I'm all for plain packaging, not publishing tobacco industry-funded research, and completely against the " normalization" of smoking via the evidently evil medium of e-cigarettes.

Academic-industry research collaborations have long been a source of controversy in medicine.

Wirtschaftsforscher warnen vor Unterfinanzierung der Grundlagenforschung

"Die Schweizer Forschung wird künftig international sein oder gar nicht mehr sein."

The age at which Nobel prize winners receive their prizes has increased dramatically, especially in physics.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto bristles at the stifling effect of peer review.

The sudden appearance of data scientists on the business scene reflects the fact that companies are now wrestling with information that comes in varieties and volumes never encountered before.

There is no doubt that big data is a valuable tool that has already had a critical impact in certain areas. But because of its popularity, we need to be levelheaded about what big data can and can’t do.

Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser to the European Commission, discusses evidence-based policy and nurturing and supporting a European scientific culture.

Open Access, Open Science, Science 2.0 - die Titel, unter denen vom Internet eine Beschleunigung des Erkenntnisgewinns erwartet wird, sind vielfältig. Doch wem nützen die entsprechenden Techniken?

Scientists go to great lengths to ensure that data are collected and analysed properly, so why do they apply different standards to data about the number of times research papers have been cited and viewed?

There has been an upsurge in philanthropy for scientific research by America's billionaires. Still, in size and scope, philanthropy pales in comparison to public financing for science.