Politics has thoroughly contaminated the scientific process in 2020. The result has been an epidemic of distrust, which further undermines the nation’s already chaotic and ineffective response to the coronavirus.
Researchers are racing to determine whether a fast-spreading variant in South Africa poses a threat to COVID vaccines' effectiveness.
The Parliament voted in favor of almost all provisions that extend more rights to the establishment copyright industries while failing to protect users and new creators online.
Researchers have tried for at least 200 years to change academia and they have all failed, claims opinion piece.
Why is it that while the most vital, and most rigorously tested, information is often locked up behind a paywall, yet falsehoods are readily available?
The European People's Party (EPP) is calling on the Commission and member states to fund emergency placements for Afghan researchers and academics at European higher education and research institutions. One of the EPP's lead MEPs, Christian Ehler, said scientists in Afghanistan risk being persecuted by the Taliban, after the islamist group took over the country when the US military and its allies pulled out.
A group of European funders, including the European Commission, will soon require researchers to publish only in open-access outlets that the funders consider high quality, the Commission’s open-access envoy has said.
Researchers can see at a glance the rules they’ll need to follow if they submit to a particular journal.
EU efforts to reduce the east-west gap in research and innovation should be backed by investment and reforms in member states, the EU auditor says in a report reviewing funding schemes set up by the European Commission to help bridge the divide.
New research is out that could help explain why African Americans are often undertreated for pain, as various studies have shown.
Citation metrics have value because they aim to make scientific assessment a level playing field, but urgent transparency-based changes are necessary to ensure that the data yields an accurate picture. One problematic area is the handling of self-citations.
Models suggest that the race for quick results and the importance of being the first to publish is leading to lower scientific standards.
In October 2018, former Catalyst Grant winner 'Ada Lovelace Day' (ALD) celebrated its tenth year of showcasing the achievements of overlooked women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Championing for greater diversity in STEM, and changing the culture and demographics of research, is a year-round effort, and one that ALD supports. We wanted to help extend the celebration of women in science throughout the year, but also use the tools we have available to us to scientifically analyse the state of gender imbalance in research, and evaluate whether these are changing over time.
This article discusses how data citation has evolved over the last couple of decades and highlights issues that need more research and attention.
Sarvenaz Sarabipour is tired of academics understanding mentorship through anecdotes. The scientific community “needs a minimum set of standards for good mentorship,” says the Johns Hopkins University systems biologist, which can only be achieved by studying it systematically.
In this essay, we describe why article-level metrics are an important extension of traditional citation-based journal metrics and provide a number of example from Article-level metrics data collected for PLOS Biology.
Academic publishers have some of the highest profit margins in the world. In the digital age, researchers are starting to wonder whether publishers actually deserve this much money.
European research leaders have reacted with disappointment to Switzerland's expulsion from the body that coordinates scientific infrastructure across the continent.
Liz Bal from Jisc discusses the scholarly publishing lessons learned from COVID-19, and how they can be applied to make research communication more efficient and effective.
Societal issues such as poverty, water scarcity, and food insecurity make it more important than ever for science to produce knowledge that is relevant to address serious challenges on the ground.
This evaluation of Finnish research organisations, research-funding organisations, academic and cultural institutes abroad and learned societies and academies examines the key indicators chosen to assess the performance on openness. Key indicators are used to provide some insights on the competences and capacity of the research system in supporting progress towards openness. Barriers and development needs are discussed, with suggestions for improvement.
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.
Professor Eveline Crone has been elected as the new Vice President of the European Research Council (ERC). She will take up duties on 1 January 2020, alongside two current Vice Presidents. Elected by the ERC Scientific Council, she will be in charge of ERC activities in the domain of Social Sciences and Humanities.
