Boon or burden: what has the EU ever done for science?
More than 500 million people and 28 nations make up the European Union. It will lose one of its richest, most populous members, if the United Kingdom votes to leave on 23 June. Ahead of a possible ‘Brexit’, Nature examines five core ways that the EU shapes the course of research.
Leveraging Doctoral Requirements to Promote Reproducibility
How can reproducibility be funded and enforced? One solution is to make it a part of the requirements to complete a PhD.
World’s Biggest Science Experiment Seeks More Time and Money
The world’s biggest science experiment may get more time and money for completion when nuclear officials convene on Wednesday in France.
Predatory journals: Ban predators from the scientific record
Universities and colleges should stop using the quantity of published articles as a measure of academic performance. Researchers and respectable journals should not cite articles from predatory journals, and academic library databases should exclude metadata for such publications.
Reproducibility: Archive computer code with raw data
Software tools such as knitr and R Markdown allow the description and code of a statistical analysis to be combined into a single document, providing a pipeline from the raw data to the final results and figures. Outputs are updated by re-running the scripts using version-control tools such as Git and GitHub.
A code of conduct for data on epidemics
A code of conduct for data on epidemics
As a long-term champion of open-access research data on pandemic viruses and a member of the Italian Parliament, I urge Brazil to hasten the reform of its current biosecurity legislation. This would enable sharing of vital Zika virus samples and information, as recently called for by the World Health Organization…
The Costs of Open and Closed Access
Using the Finnish Research Output as an Example
Graphic details
A scientific study of the importance of diagrams to science
A peek at peer review helps young scientists
Winning a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is hard, especially if it's your first one. New data from a pilot project called the Early Career Reviewer (ECR) Program suggest that sitting in judgment of other grant applicants can help young scientists improve their odds when they apply for their own grants.
The 100 most innovative universities in Europe 2016
Germany and the UK well represented on Reuters’ inaugural Europe innovation ranking
If science is going to save the world, we need to make it open
The last few weeks have been a momentum time in the sciences: not because of a breakthrough in gene therapy or quantum computing, but because world leaders have twice called for scientific papers to be made freely available to all.
Scientific publishers are killing research papers
Pressure to publish short articles removes details, leaves readers confused.
To Advance Science, It's Time to Tackle Unconscious Bias
Gender and race bias aren't the only ways humans subconsciously skew which science projects get funded and published. Various types of implicit bias can undermine important research.
Does a journal of homeopathy belong in science?
A homeopathy journal was recently booted from the list of respectable scientific titles — but why was it among the ranks in the first place?
National Guidelines for Open Access in Norway
The working group responsible for creating new guidelines for open access to research results has today delivered their report to the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.
'Ransomware' cyberattack highlights vulnerability of universities
Staff at Canadian university given little guidance on how to mitigate future problems.
Sci-Hub: access or convenience? A Utrecht case study (part 1)
Sci-Hub has gained fame and notoriety for enabling free access to over 45 million paywalled articles and book chapters, purportedly collected through use of institutional log-in credentials.
Microsoft Academic Search: a Phoenix arisen from the ashes?
Microsoft Academic Search: a Phoenix arisen from the ashes?
A first small-scale case study suggests that the new incarnation of Microsoft Academic presents us with an excellent alternative for citation analysis.
The role of the EU in international research collaboration and researcher mobility
Asia University Rankings 2016: results announced
Singapore leads the way in Times Higher Education's 2016 ranking of the premier universities in Asia.
Why Most Clinical Research Is Not Useful
John Ioannidis argues that problem base, context placement, information gain, pragmatism, patient centeredness, value for money, feasibility, and transparency define useful clinical research. He suggests most clinical research is not useful and reform is overdue.
First CRISPR clinical trial gets green light from US panel
The technique's first test in people could begin as early as the end of the year.