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The assumption that the publication of an article in a high-impact factor, indexed journal somehow adds value to international science is a collective illusion - one that is unfortunately shared by funding agencies, institutions and researchers. This illusion - which serves as an excuse to delegate the evaluation of science to for-profit companies and anonymous reviewers for the sake of false objectivity - costs taxpayers dearly.
A study identifies papers that stand the test of time. Fewer than two out of every 10,000 scientific papers remain influential in their field decades after publication, finds an analysis of five million articles published between 1980 and 1990.
Academics share machine-learning research freely. Taxpayers should not have to pay twice to read our findings.
LERU's paper discussing the eight pillars of Open Science identified by the European Commission: the future of scholarly publishing, FAIR data, the European Open Science Cloud, education and skills, rewards and incentives, next-generation metrics, research integrity, and citizen science.
The role of faculty hiring networks in shaping the spread of ideas in computer science, and the importance of where in the network an idea originates: research from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions.
Wellcome new Open Research Fund supports innovative approaches that enable data, code or other research outputs to be discovered, accessed and reused.
In an era when untestable ideas such as the multiverse hold sway, Michela Massimi defends science from those who think it hopelessly unmoored from physical reality.
Most researchers agree that drafting papers and interpreting results deserve recognition — but opinions don’t always match authorship guidelines.
The League of European Research Universities has published a roadmap to help universities around the world implement open-science practices.
Preprint showing that ethnic diversity consistently leads to higher scientific impact.
Scientists are more efficient at producing high-quality research when they have more academic freedom, according to a recent study of 18 economically advanced countries. Researchers in the Netherlands are the most efficient of all. The existence of a national evaluation system that is not tied to funding was also associated with efficiency.
Case report looking at two approaches taken by the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich in 2017.
In a controlled experiment with two disjoint program committees, the ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM'17) found that reviewers with author information were 1.76x more likely to recommend acceptance of papers from famous authors, and 1.67x more likely to recommend acceptance of papers from top institutions.
When citation-based indicators are applied at the institutional or departmental level, rather than at the level of individual papers, surprisingly large correlations with peer review judgments can be observed.
A group of renowned economists and academics from Spain have signed a document promising not to appear as a speaker at any academic event or round-table discussion if there are no women experts present as well.
By tying rewards to metrics, organisations risk incentivising gaming and encouraging behaviours that may be at odds with their larger purpose. The culture of short-termism engendered by metrics also impedes innovation and stifles the entrepreneurial element of human nature.
The “Alexander Friedrich Schläfli Prize” of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) is one of the oldest prizes in Switzerland. Since the first awarding in 1866, 108 young talents in different natural science disciplines have been distinguished.
Most papers fail to report many aspects of the experiment and analysis that we may not with advantage omit - things that are crucial to understanding the result and its limitations and to repeating the work. Instead of arguing about whether results hold up, we should strive to provide enough information for others to repeat the experiments.
As a commendable European law on personal data comes into force, the research community must not let excessive caution about data sharing, however understandable, become the default position.
In June 2017, PSI was made aware of allegations that members of its staff had submitted an article containing aspects of scientific misconduct to a scientific journal. A preliminary review by experts showed that the allegations raised were solid.
The Amani Hill Research Station in Tanzania was once one of East Africa’s leading laboratories – now it is a shadow of its past glory.
If the publishers of scientific journals everywhere enforced a universal code of ethics - if you violate the code, you cannot publish your scientific work - systematic bullies and harassers would be eliminated from their fields.
Whatever we call it, investment in research will lead the way to important short- and long-term discoveries.
