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.

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

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

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.

Merciless competition for jobs and funds pushes some researchers to spin data in the eternal quest for success

Scientific mavericks once played an essential role in research. We must relearn how to support them and provide new options for an unforeseeable future.

Universities are drowning in digital information. It's time senior leaders made openness – and its consequences – their concern.

Scientists are not as secular as people think.

The number of female students considering university courses in STEM subjects has seen a bigger increase over the last seven years than for male students, according to new research.

The EU's academic output is 20% higher than the US. This shouldn't really be a surprise given the EU's combined population of over 500m versus America's 300m. In fact, Europe produces a third of the world's research outputs and, like China, investment is being ramped up while UK and US investments are treading water.

Research careers are built on publishing in high-profile journals, so can postdocs be expected to take a stand against them?

A bibliometric analysis in Nature purports to confirm that women scientists are discriminated against. But the full picture might be much more interesting.

There are indeed concerns about the current science publishing model, but until major changes in grant funding are incorporated, researchers will continue to lust after publications in high-tier journals.

The EPSRC allocates millions to fund research at residential workshops.

When Peter Higgs, of Higgs boson fame, was quoted in the Guardian on Friday as saying "Today I wouldn't get an academic job" because he would not "be regarded as productive enough", it prompted much nodding and retweeting from academics.

Scientists desperate to have an "impact" in their field are cherry-picking and misrepresenting their results. It's the natural result of a desperate scramble to publish. Science, according to a recent Nature article, is like Battleship. You fire shots into the dark and mostly miss your target.

Academics concerned universities are excluding interdisciplinary research from the Research Excellence Framework exercise.

Rather than simply demanding more open science, we should remember closure is a quite normal part of science, and instead look in detail at what's closing, when, why and to whom?

British and Australian scientists compile a list of tips to help policy makers better understand the 'imperfect nature of science'

Crowdfunding has energised public and private sectors, says Didier Schmitt – could it reconnect science and society too?

Early career researchers need to learn how policy is made and assessed to encourage more joined-up thinking in science.

Universities and academics cannot live without the Research Excellence Framework, but we need to go back to a simpler form of measurement, argues Peter Scott

Science communication should be more than the dissemination of results to the public; it should also flow in the other direction, with members of the public able to communicate their priorities to scientists and those who fund them. But how?

Peer review is one of the oldest and most respected instruments of quality control in science and research. Peer review means that a paper is evaluated by a number of experts on the topic of the article (the peers). The criteria may vary, but most of the time they include methodological and technical soundness, scientific relevance, and presentation.