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What Is the Problem for Which Interdisciplinarity Is the Solution?

What Is the Problem for Which Interdisciplinarity Is the Solution?

The answer is what I call “epistemic rent-seeking,” namely, the tendency for disciplines to become increasingly proprietary in their relationship to organized inquiry.

Paul Nurse: 'Research needs free movement to thrive'

Paul Nurse: 'Research needs free movement to thrive'

Sir Paul Nurse says UK science will suffer unless any post-Brexit agreement allows the free movement of people.

Don’t change your family-friendly tenure extension policy just yet

Don’t change your family-friendly tenure extension policy just yet

An analysis to the NYT article entitled "A Family-Friendly Policy That’s Friendliest to Male Professors"

Publishing needs more science, fewer stories: Q&A with founders of ScienceMatters

Publishing needs more science, fewer stories: Q&A with founders of ScienceMatters

Ever wish you could just publish an exciting result, without having to wait for the entire string of data that follows in order to tell an entire story, which then gets held up for months by peer review at traditional journals?

A winding path to satisfaction

A winding path to satisfaction

Many feel there is only one path to success and that any deviations will be catastrophic. My own academic path might seem to support this belief. On the surface, it appears quite linear: undergrad, grad student, postdoc, faculty member. But if you look deeper, you will see the series of roadblocks and revised plans that led me to where I am today.

Where are the female science professors?

Where are the female science professors?

Almost 300 years after Laura Maria Caterina Bassi became the first woman to earn a professorship at a university in Europe, women still comprise less than one fifth of professors across the continent.

Research into the sex life of the screwworm turned out to be very, very important

Research into the sex life of the screwworm turned out to be very, very important

A scientific study into the “sex life of the screwworm” – once ridiculed as a waste of money – is to be given a US award designed to recognise research that might sound silly or odd but is actually important. Its findings led to the development of “the only truly original innovation in insect control” of the 20th century, credited with the eradication of the screwworm fly from North and Central America.

100 Examples of President Obama’s Leadership in Science, Technology, and Innovation

100 Examples of President Obama’s Leadership in Science, Technology, and Innovation

“We’ll restore science to its rightful place." President Obama’s Inaugural Address, 2009

Sci-Hub: access or convenience? A Utrecht case study (part 1)

Sci-Hub: access or convenience? A Utrecht case study (part 1)

Sci-Hub has gained fame and notoriety for enabling free access to over 45 million paywalled articles and book chapters, purportedly collected through use of institutional log-in credentials.

If science is going to save the world, we need to make it open

If science is going to save the world, we need to make it open

The last few weeks have been a momentum time in the sciences: not because of a breakthrough in gene therapy or quantum computing, but because world leaders have twice called for scientific papers to be made freely available to all.

Reproducibility: Archive computer code with raw data

Reproducibility: Archive computer code with raw data

Software tools such as knitr and R Markdown allow the description and code of a statistical analysis to be combined into a single document, providing a pipeline from the raw data to the final results and figures. Outputs are updated by re-running the scripts using version-control tools such as Git and GitHub.

UK national negotiations with Elsevier: it seems we’re not messing around.

UK national negotiations with Elsevier: it seems we’re not messing around.

A confidential internal email has come into my hands, from Bristol University, regarding the UK’s national negotiations with Elsevier. I think it’s of general interest.

Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2016

Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2016

Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2016 by Jeffrey Beall, January 5, 2016. Each year at this time I formally release my updated list of predatory publishers. Because the list is now very la…

Most scientists believe there is a crisis in reproducibility

Most scientists believe there is a crisis in reproducibility

Placing trust in science can be easier when findings are confirmed, but a new survey finds that most scientists believe there is a reproducibility "crisis."

Sci-Hub: What It Is and Why It Matters

Sci-Hub: What It Is and Why It Matters

The controversies surrounding Sci-Hub touch on many hot-button topics in librarianship. This primer lays out multiple perspectives on the issues.

The NASW and the Looming Rift in Science Journalism

The NASW and the Looming Rift in Science Journalism

A report suggests that internal discord may tear apart the National Association of Science Writers, a near century-old professional journalism organization.

Why ‘context’ is important for research

Why ‘context’ is important for research

Discovery is the pathway to context. Context of an article is all about how research fits into increasingly complex domains, and using structured networks to decipher its value. With the power of the internet at our disposal, putting research in context should be of key importance in a world where there is ever more research being published that is impossible to manually filter.

The Economics of Academic Self-promotion

The Economics of Academic Self-promotion

Marketing is you telling others about yourself. Public relations is having someone else tell others about you.

Austrian Science Fund Publication Cost Data 2015

Austrian Science Fund Publication Cost Data 2015

Following the approach for the datasets in 2013 and 2014, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is making the publication costs spent in 2015 (esp. for Open Access) publically available.

Student evaluations of teaching are not only unreliable, they are significantly biased against female instructors.

Student evaluations of teaching are not only unreliable, they are significantly biased against female instructors.

A series of studies across countries and disciplines in higher education confirm that student evaluations of teaching (SET) are significantly correlated with instructor gender, with students regularly rating female instructors lower than male peers.