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A newsletter and curated collection of 14985 articles on science policy
Supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation
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Publications
Interdisciplinarity
Research Data
Early Career Researchers

Fostering Interdisciplinary Data Cultures through Early Career Development: The RDA/US Data Share Fellowship

Data Science Journal
Interdisciplinarity
Research Data
Early Career Researchers

Fostering Interdisciplinary Data Cultures through Early Career Development: The RDA/US Data Share Fellowship

In this paper we discuss interdisciplinarity through data as a way to create research environments that are more flexible and, as a result, more amenable to change. We report our findings from facilitating and evaluating a data-oriented early-career fellowship program that was administered as part of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), a global organization that aims to enable open sharing and re-use of data. 

Data Science Journal
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News
Preprints

Preprints Are Now in Scopus! | Elsevier Scopus Blog

scopus
Preprints

Preprints Are Now in Scopus! | Elsevier Scopus Blog

scopus
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Opinion
Open Access

Publishing Philosophy Open Access Without a Particle Collider

lse
Open Access

Publishing Philosophy Open Access Without a Particle Collider

Open Access often appears to be a monolithic concept, covering all fields of research and publication. However, in practice its application is to a large extent determined by the needs and resource…

lse
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Web
Mentoring

A Nobel Laureate Shares 10 Rules for Being an Effective Mentor of Young Research Scholars

insidehighered
Mentoring

A Nobel Laureate Shares 10 Rules for Being an Effective Mentor of Young Research Scholars

Nobel Laureate Robert Lefkowitz shares 10 golden rules gleaned from a half century of mentoring hundreds of research trainees.

insidehighered
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Web
Open Science

How Open Access Can Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) " Library Policy and Advocacy Blog

Open Science

How Open Access Can Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) " Library Policy and Advocacy Blog

Access to information, and libraries as institutions that deliver it, are key to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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Web
Publishing

Risk of Being Scooped Drives Scientists to Shoddy Methods

sciencemag
Publishing

Risk of Being Scooped Drives Scientists to Shoddy Methods

Models suggest that the race for quick results and the importance of being the first to publish is leading to lower scientific standards.

sciencemag
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Publications
Social Media

How Is Science Clicked on Twitter? Click Metrics for Bitly Short Links to Scientific Publications

web
Social Media

How Is Science Clicked on Twitter? Click Metrics for Bitly Short Links to Scientific Publications

Study analyses the click metrics of over 1.1 million links referring to Web of Science publications.

web
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News
Open Science

Open Science Podcasts: 7 +3 Tips for Your Ears

web
Open Science

Open Science Podcasts: 7 +3 Tips for Your Ears

Podcasts were among the media winners of last year. Scientific podcasts in particular enjoyed great popularity. In fact, there are also some that deal specifically with Open Science. This article has 7 + 3 tips.

web
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News
Climate

The Energy 202: Biden Creates New Climate Adviser Role at NASA

washingtonpost
Climate

The Energy 202: Biden Creates New Climate Adviser Role at NASA

NASA is elevating one of its top climate scientists to a new role, a move meant to put greater focus at the space agency on studying the causes and consequences of global warming under President Biden.

washingtonpost
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News
Open Science
COVID-19

Scientists Urge Open Sharing of Coronavirus Genome Data

nature
Open Science
COVID-19

Scientists Urge Open Sharing of Coronavirus Genome Data

Other researchers say that restrictions at the largest SARS-CoV-2 genome platform encourage fast sharing while protecting data providers' rights.

nature
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News
Retractions
Publishing

New Bot Flags Scientific Studies That Cite Retracted Papers

web
Retractions
Publishing

New Bot Flags Scientific Studies That Cite Retracted Papers

Most researchers don't intend to cite retracted papers, but it can have serious consequences for science.

web
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Publications
Citizen Science
Collaboration

Analysis of the Evolution and Collaboration Networks of Citizen Science Scientific Publications

springer
Citizen Science
Collaboration

Analysis of the Evolution and Collaboration Networks of Citizen Science Scientific Publications

The term citizen science refers to a broad set of practices developed in a growing number of areas of knowledge and characterized by the active citizen participation in some or several stages of the research process. Definitions, classifications and terminology remain open, reflecting that citizen science is an evolving phenomenon, a spectrum of practices whose classification may be useful but never unique or definitive. The aim of this article is to study citizen science publications in journals indexed by WoS, in particular how they have evolved in the last 20 years and the collaboration networks which have been created among the researchers in that time. In principle, the evolution can be analyzed, in a quantitative way, by the usual tools, such as the number of publications, authors, and impact factor of the papers, as well as the set of different research areas including citizen science as an object of study. But as citizen science is a transversal concept which appears in almost all scientific disciplines, this study becomes a multifaceted problem which is only partially modelled with the usual bibliometric magnitudes. It is necessary to consider new tools to parametrize a set of complementary properties. Thus, we address the study of the citizen science expansion and evolution in terms of the properties of the graphs which encode relations between scientists by studying co-authorship and the consequent networks of collaboration. This approach - not used until now in research on citizen science, as far as we know- allows us to analyze the properties of these networks through graph theory, and complement the existing quantitative research. The results obtained lead mainly to: (a) a better understanding of the current state of citizen science in the international academic system-by countries, by areas of knowledge, by interdisciplinary communities-as an increasingly legitimate expanding methodology, and (b) a greater knowledge of collaborative networks and their evolution, within and between research communities, which allows a certain margin of predictability as well as the definition of better cooperation strategies.

springer
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Publications
Open Access

Do Open Access Journal Articles Experience a Citation Advantage? Results and Methodological Reflections of an Application of Multiple Measures to an Analysis by WoS Subject Areas

springer
Open Access

Do Open Access Journal Articles Experience a Citation Advantage? Results and Methodological Reflections of an Application of Multiple Measures to an Analysis by WoS Subject Areas

Study finds that OA journal articles experience a citation advantage in very few subject areas and, in most of these subject areas, the citation advantage was found on only a single measure of citation advantage, namely whether the article was cited at all.

springer
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News
US
Open Data
Science Politics

Death of EPA's Controversial 'censored Science' Rule Delights Researchers

sciencemag
US
Open Data
Science Politics

Death of EPA's Controversial 'censored Science' Rule Delights Researchers

Lengthy battle over regulators' use of confidential data ends in Montana courtroom.

sciencemag
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Opinion
Peer Review

Peer Reviewers - Time for Mass Rebellion?

bmj
Peer Review

Peer Reviewers - Time for Mass Rebellion?

Richard Smith spent some time reviewing two scientific papers, and the experience has made him wonder if it is time for peer reviewers to rise up in rebellion.

bmj
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Publications
Universities
Europe

Universities without walls – A vision for 2030

eua
Universities
Europe

Universities without walls – A vision for 2030

This seminal document is the result of extensive consultations and deliberations with EUA members and partners over a six-month period in 2020. It sets out a vision of resilient and effective universities, serving Europe's societies towards a better future.

eua
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News
Open Access
Plan S

Publishers Claim Plan S' Repository Rules Will Bankrupt Journals

timeshighereducation
Open Access
Plan S

Publishers Claim Plan S' Repository Rules Will Bankrupt Journals

Major scholarly publishers warn that some titles will become unviable unless open access scheme changes tack on compliance.

timeshighereducation
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Opinion
UKRI
Innovation
Collaboration

Viewpoint: Research's 'lone Genius' Image is Unhelpful

UKRI
UKRI
Innovation
Collaboration

Viewpoint: Research's 'lone Genius' Image is Unhelpful

UKRI chief executive Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser on why we must recognise the vital contribution of everyone in research and innovation and debunk the Einstein myth.

UKRI
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News
COVID-19
Open Data

COVID-19 Data Portal - Accelerating Scientific Research Through Data

COVID-19
Open Data

COVID-19 Data Portal - Accelerating Scientific Research Through Data

We need open data, especially open SARS-CoV-2 sequence data, and open science to beat COVID-19 and to prepare for future outbreaks.

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News
Crowd Science

End of the Maher Era at Wikipedia

axios
Crowd Science

End of the Maher Era at Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation CEO Katherine Maher will step down.

axios
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Publications
Peer Review

AI-Assisted Peer Review

nature
Peer Review

AI-Assisted Peer Review

Many platforms have already started to use automated screening tools, to prevent plagiarism and failure to respect format requirements. Some tools even attempt to flag the quality of a study or summarise its content, to reduce reviewers' load.

nature
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Opinion
COVID-19
Politics

Social Murder, They Wrote-Elected, Unaccountable, and Unrepentant

bmj
COVID-19
Politics

Social Murder, They Wrote-Elected, Unaccountable, and Unrepentant

After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic.

bmj
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News
Switzerland
Gender

Quotas to Promote Gender Equality in Research

web
Switzerland
Gender

Quotas to Promote Gender Equality in Research

Gender equality is a prime concern of the Swiss National Science Foundation. To offer additional visibilty to women in academia, it is introducing gender quotas in its evaluation bodies with immediate effect.

web
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News
COVID-19

South Africa Halts AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Rollout As Shot Falters in Study

statnews
COVID-19

South Africa Halts AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Rollout As Shot Falters in Study

A new analysis that suggests the shot "provides minimal protection" against mild disease caused by a new variant circulating in South Africa.

statnews
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Publications
Publishing
Misconduct

'Nepotistic Journals': a Survey of Biomedical Journals

biorxiv
Publishing
Misconduct

'Nepotistic Journals': a Survey of Biomedical Journals

Context Convergent analyses in different disciplines support the use of the Percentage of Papers by the Most Prolific author (PPMP) as a red flag to identify journals that can be suspected of questionable editorial practices. We examined whether this index, complemented by the Gini index, could be useful for identifying cases of potential editorial bias, using a large sample of biomedical journals. Methods We extracted metadata for all biomedical journals referenced in the National Library of Medicine, with any attributed Broad Subject Terms, and at least 50 authored (i.e. by at least one author) articles between 2015 and 2019, identifying the most prolific author (i.e. the person who signed the most papers in each particular journal). We calculated the PPMP and the 2015-2019 Gini index for the distribution of articles across authors. When the relevant information was reported, we also computed the median publication lag (time between submission and acceptance) for articles authored by any of the most prolific authors and that for articles not authored by prolific authors. For outlier journals, defined as a PPMP or Gini index above the 95th percentile of their respective distributions, a random sample of 100 journals was selected and described in relation to status on the editorial board for the most prolific author. Results 5 468 journals that published 4 986 335 papers between 2015 and 2019 were analysed. The PPMP 95th percentile was 10.6% (median 2.9%). The Gini index 95th percentile was 0.355 (median 0.183). Correlation between the two indices was 0.35 (95CI 0.33 to 0.37). Information on publication lag was available for 2 743 journals. We found that 277 journals (10.2%) had a median time lag to publication for articles by the most prolific author(s) that was shorter than 3 weeks, versus 51 (1.9%) journals with articles not authored by prolific author(s). Among the random sample of outlier journals, 98 provided information about their editorial board. Among these 98, the most prolific author was part of the editorial board in 60 cases (61%), among whom 25 (26% of the 98) were editors-in-chief. Discussion In most journals publications are distributed across a large number of authors. Our results reveal a subset of journals where a few authors, often members of the editorial board, were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications. The papers by these authors were more likely to be accepted for publication within 3 weeks of their submission. To enhance trust in their practices, journals need to be transparent about their editorial and peer review practices.

biorxiv
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News
Europe
Universities

What Does the Future Hold for Europe's Universities?

universityworldnews
Europe
Universities

What Does the Future Hold for Europe's Universities?

We are at a tipping point, a time of transformation for society and universities. A new report highlights some of the issues facing European universities.

Related articles
Universities without walls – A vision for 2030
universityworldnews
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Web
COVID-19
Gender

Unequal Burden: How the COVID-19 Pandemic is Adding to Women's Workloads

weforum
COVID-19
Gender

Unequal Burden: How the COVID-19 Pandemic is Adding to Women's Workloads

A new report for UN Women shows that women have seen a larger increase in unpaid work than men due to COVID-19.

weforum
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Web
Predatory Publishing

Hundreds of 'predatory' Journals Indexed on Leading Scholarly Database

nature
Predatory Publishing

Hundreds of 'predatory' Journals Indexed on Leading Scholarly Database

Scopus has stopped adding content from most of the flagged titles, but the analysis highlights how poor-quality science is infiltrating literature.

nature
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Web
Fake News
Social Media
COVID-19

Facebook is Finally Banning Vaccine Misinformation

vox
Fake News
Social Media
COVID-19

Facebook is Finally Banning Vaccine Misinformation

Nearly a year into the pandemic, Facebook now aims to take down misinformation on vaccines overall - not just COVID-19 vaccines.

vox
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Web
Climate
Economics

Scientists Warn over Misuse of Climate Models in Financial Markets

reuters
Climate
Economics

Scientists Warn over Misuse of Climate Models in Financial Markets

Misuse of climate models could pose a growing risk to financial markets by giving investors a false sense of certainty over how the physical impacts of climate change will play out.

reuters
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