What Is Citizen Science And Why Should Policymakers Care?
This blog explores why citizen science matters and how governments can support its growth through inclusive strategies, robust infrastructure, and international collaboration.
In praise of early independence
Many factors influence success in a science career. Hard work, ambition, flair, and luck played a role in the success of Tim Hunt, who won a share of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Hunt's career demonstrates the importance of two additional success factors: playfulness and early independence.
Are more retractions due to more scrutiny?
The question has actually been addressed in the scientific literature and the data don’t seem to support this assumption.
Science should save all, not just some
Discussions around global equity and justice in science typically emphasize the lack of diversity in the editorial boards of scientific journals, inequities in authorship, “parachute research,” dominance of the English language, or scientific awards garnered predominantly by Global North scientists. These inequities are pervasive and must be redressed. But there is a bigger problem. The legacy of colonialism in scientific research includes an intellectual property system that favors Global North countries and the big corporations they support. This unfairness shows up in who gets access to the fruits of science and raises the question of who science is designed to serve or save.
The Readability of Scientific Texts Is Decreasing Over Time
Scientific abstracts have become less readable over the past 130 years, in part because recent texts include more general scientific jargon than older texts.
EU Commission Announces Plan to Improve Working Conditions for Young Researchers
EU Commission Announces Plan to Improve Working Conditions for Young Researchers
The European Commission has announced three new measures aimed at improving career paths and working conditions for young researchers in the European Research Area (ERA). The proposal, put forward today by the Commission, includes a new European framework for research careers, a new charter for researchers and a new European competence framework for researchers.
The Scandal of Researchers Paid Less Than a Living Wage
The Scandal of Researchers Paid Less Than a Living Wage
The cost-of-living crisis is a fundamental threat for PhD scholars and early-career researchers. They need to be paid properly.
Engaging Researchers with Good Data Management: Perspectives from Engaged Individuals
Engaging Researchers with Good Data Management: Perspectives from Engaged Individuals
On the need to recognise good practice, engage researchers early in their career with research data management and use peers to talk to those who are not ‘onboard’.
EU Research and Innovation Policy Should Be More Geographically-minded
EU Research and Innovation Policy Should Be More Geographically-minded
EU funding for research and innovation should have a geographical dimension to help bridge innovation divides in the EU, Lina Gálvez Muñoz MEP tells Science|Business.
We need more scientific mavericks
We need more scientific mavericks
Scientific mavericks once played an essential role in research. We must relearn how to support them and provide new options for an unforeseeable future.
EU Research Funding Should Do More to Support Scholars at Risk, Advocates Say
EU Research Funding Should Do More to Support Scholars at Risk, Advocates Say
Afghanistan is the latest test case for how Europe helps researchers threatened at home or fleeing abroad.
Why Brexit Runs Completely Counter to Modern Science
Whilst Brexit looms more ominously in the background, the next generation of data publishing is moving towards an ever-more collaborative and open place in which researchers can easily choose to make discoveries and data sets available across borders and cultures.
Why It's Crucial to Get More Women Into Science
The number of women in scientific research continues to lag behind the number of men, even though women make up half the nation's workforce. The question is, What difference does it make?
17 Researchers Resign in Protest from Editorial Board at Nature Journal
More than a dozen members of the editorial board at Scientific Reports have resigned after the journal decided not to retract a 2016 paper that a researcher claims plagiarized his work. As of this morning, 19 people — mostly researchers based at Johns Hopkins — had stepped down from the board.
Researchers’ Individual Publication Rate Has Not Increased in a Century
Researchers’ Individual Publication Rate Has Not Increased in a Century
The total number of papers published by researchers during their early career period (first fifteen years) has increased in recent decades, but so has their average number of co-authors.
How Can Postdoctoral Researchers Engage with Policy? - Networks of Evidence and Expertise for Public Policy
How Can Postdoctoral Researchers Engage with Policy? - Networks of Evidence and Expertise for Public Policy
Workshop concludes that early-career researchers can make important contributions to policy decisions and experimenting with various forms of communication (i.e. opinion pieces, youtube channels, and tweeting at MPs) had the potential to improve knowledge transfer.
Interactivity in Scientific Figures Is a Key Tool for Data Exploration and the Scientific Process
Interactivity in Scientific Figures Is a Key Tool for Data Exploration and the Scientific Process
Last summer we launched our interactive figures initiative with plotly. Since then, we have published 22 interactives figures in seven articles across two platforms. In this post authors describe their figures and share why they wanted to make them interactive.
Researchers Debate Whether Journals Should Publish Signed Peer Reviews
Signed reviews could encourage reviewers to produce more careful evaluations, and make fewer gratuitously negative comments. Publicly identifying and crediting reviewers for their work could help them win tenure and promotions.
New Report Calls for Action to Protect Integrity in Research
All stakeholders in the scientific research enterprise -- researchers, institutions, publishers, funders, scientific societies, and federal agencies – should improve their practices and policies to respond to threats to the integrity of research, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Stagnation and Scientific Incentives
This paper presents a simple model of the lifecycle of scientific ideas that points to changes in scientist incentives as the cause of scientific stagnation. It explores ways to broaden how scientific productivity is measured and rewarded, involving both academic search engines such as Google Scholar measuring which contributions explore newer ideas and university administrators and funding agencies utilizing these new metrics in research evaluation.
The Future of Scientific Publishing
Open access publishing is gaining more and more momentum, and post-publication peer review is becoming more common. Those developments have both upsides and downsides.
A Huge Database of Scientific Retractions is Live
The site shows more and more studies are being pulled from the scientific record.
A host of reasons why funders should be investing in ORCID
Why is the Wellcome Trust mandating the use of ORCID?
Self-censorship, More Stress, Tougher Recruiting - How the Trump Administration's Science Policies Have Affected US Researchers
Self-censorship, More Stress, Tougher Recruiting - How the Trump Administration's Science Policies Have Affected US Researchers
What do US researchers make of all the Trump administration science-related policy changes? A survey of 280 academic scientists asked them.
Should I become a professor? Success rate 3 %
10% of all postdocs stay in academia but nearly 80% hope to pursue an academic career
Lack of Improvement in Scientific Integrity: An Analysis of WoS Retractions by Chinese Researchers (1997–2016)
The Quest for More Value - Challenges of the Scientific Ecosystem in the Absence of Coordination: A Long Read
The Quest for More Value - Challenges of the Scientific Ecosystem in the Absence of Coordination: A Long Read
How can research produce more value in the absence of coordination? An opinion piece by Daniel Ropers, Chief Executive Officer of Springer Nature.
Researchers Who 'pivot' into New Fields Should Not Be Given a Citation Penalty
Researchers Who 'pivot' into New Fields Should Not Be Given a Citation Penalty
The COVID-19 pandemic showed the value of changing direction in research. It should be incentivized, encouraged and celebrated.
Open Science Beyond Open Access: For and with Communities, A Step Towards the Decolonization of Knowledge
Open Science Beyond Open Access: For and with Communities, A Step Towards the Decolonization of Knowledge
UNESCO is launching international consultations aimed at developing a Recommendation on Open Science for adoption by member states in 2021. Its Recommendation will include a common definition, a shared set of values, and proposals for action. At the invitation of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, this paper aims to contribute to the consultation process by answering questions such as: • Why and how should science be "open"? For and with whom? • Is it simply a matter of making scientific articles and data fully available to researchers around the world at the time of publication, so they do not miss important results that could contribute to or accelerate their work? • Could this openness also enable citizens around the world to contribute to science with their capacities and expertise, such as through citizen science or participatory action research projects? • Does science that is truly open include a plurality of ways of knowing, including those of Indigenous cultures, Global South cultures, and other excluded, marginalized groups in the Global North? The paper has four sections: "Open Science and the pandemic" introduces and explores different forms of openness during a crisis where science suddenly seems essential to the well-being of all. The next three sections explain the main dimensions of three forms of scientific openness: openness to publications and data, openness to society, and openness to excluded knowledges2 and epistemologies3. We conclude with policy considerations. A French version of this paper is available here: https://zenodo.org/record/3947013#.Xw-Ksx17nOQ
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