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.

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.

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.

A personal account of a fellow financed by the SNSF.

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.

A large fraction of academic scientists are obsessed with the issue of 'when will I have done enough to complete my PhD?'

Eight commandments on how to build a bad research center.

Many scientists in the UK could soon find themselves isolated from their colleagues in Europe and Scotland. That must not happen.

New NSF director jumps into the frying pan served up by Congress as it reviews agency programs.

Participants discuss the importance of finding a viable Open Access model for books, and of the funding that would be lost, particularly in the humanities and social sciences.

Ben McNeil, founder of thinkable.org, thinks our science funding mechanism is fundamentally broken. Here's why, and what he thinks we should do about it.

Little attention has been paid to the large, changing inequalities in the world of scientific research.

Don't evaluate scholarly research on public impact alone.

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.