Debates on contested emerging technologies illustrate how publics make sense of science and technology by making unexpected connections between scientific insights, values, hopes and fears.
A good book evokes a variety of emotions as you read. Turns out, though, that almost all novels and plays provide one of only six “emotional experiences” from beginning to end—a rags-to-riches exuberance, say, or a rise and fall of hope.
This Perspective article argues that universities should take action to support open scholarship that benefits society and to return to their core missions of knowledge dissemination, community engagement, and public good.
Despite the growing interdisciplinarity of research, the Nobel prize consolidates the traditional disciplinary categorization of science. There is, in fact, an opportunity for the most revered scientific reward to mirror the current research landscape.
All modern scientists should share ownership of their knowledge and research.
What the Manhattan Project's scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer and his physicist-colleagues went through after the war holds lessons for us today, hoping for the end of our own generation's global crisis.
The push for STEM should not drown out the importance of humanities research.
Over the last 2 years more than 150 German libraries, universities, and research institutes have formed a united front trying to force academic publishers into a new way of doing business.
New rules requiring a female presence on doctoral defence panels at the University of Glasgow will push more ‘unrewarded’ academic tasks on to women, critics claim.
A major push by science funding agencies in Europe to make the research they back freely available at the point of publication is the world's best chance of fundamentally altering scientific publishing, says the new coordinator of Plan S, Johan Rooryck.
A mid-20th-century computer experiment created a new field of science—and programmer Mary Tsingou Menzel is finally being given credit for her role in making it happen
John Wiley & Sons Inc. announced today plans to require ORCID iDs as part of the manuscript submission process for a large number of journals. Beginning in winter 2016, more than 500 Wiley journals using ScholarOne Manuscripts will require the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID identifier (iD) when submitting a manuscript. Wiley is proud to be the first major publisher to join other stakeholders that have signed ORCID’s open letter.
As neural nets push into science, researchers probe back
The potential of preprints to drive scientific understanding and innovation, and even support good journalism.
Science journalist attends a predatory conference and interviews scientists involved.
Rather than arguing about the suitability of natural experimental methods to inform decisions we need to focus on refining their scope and design, say Peter Craig and colleagues Natural experiments have long been used as opportunities to evaluate the health impacts of policies, programmes, and other interventions. Defined in the UK Medical Research Council's guidance as events outside the control of researchers that divide populations into exposed and unexposed groups, natural experiments have greatly contributed to the evidence base for tobacco and air pollution control, suicide prevention, and other important areas of public health policy.1 Although randomised controlled trials are often viewed as the best source of evidence because they have less risk of bias, reliance on them as the only source of credible evidence has begun to shift for several reasons. Firstly, policy makers are increasingly looking for evidence about "what works" to tackle pervasive and complex problems, including the social determinants of health,23 and these are hard to examine in randomised trials. In Scotland, for example, legislation to introduce a minimum retail price per unit of alcohol included a sunset clause, which means that the measure will lapse after six years unless evidence is produced that it works. This has resulted in multiple evaluations, including natural experimental studies using geographical or historical comparator groups.4 Similarly, the US National Institutes of Health has called for greater use of natural experimental methods to understand how to prevent obesity,5 and a consortium of European academies for their greater use to understand policies and interventions to reduce health inequalities.3 Secondly, a wider range of analytical methods developed within other disciplines, mostly by economists or other social or political scientists, are being increasingly applied to good effect. A good example is the use of synthetic control methods …
More than 150 scientists have been nominated as prospective members of the European Commission's Science Advice Mechanism.
Nature’s new kid on the block Scientific Reports is now the biggest journal in the world. But while such giants are currently overturning the world of scholarly publishing, their long-term future is unclear.
Researchers and manufacturers face possible jail time — or execution — for fraudulent submissions to nation's drug agency.
Scientific research can be a cutthroat business, with undue pressure to publish quickly, first, and frequently. PLOS Biology is now formalizing a policy whereby manuscripts that confirm or extend a recently published study are eligible for consideration.
Agreement with Norwegian consortium allows researchers to make the vast majority of their work free to read on publication in Elsevier journals.
Never before, scientists say, have so many of the world's researchers focused so urgently on a single topic. Nearly all other research has ground to a halt.
At ScienceOpen, we have over 28 million article records all available for public, post-publication peer review (PPPR), 3 million of which are full-text Open Access. But is there anything we can do to increase its usage and adoption as part of a more open research culture?
