The conflict for scientists and research evaluation between scientific impact and tackling societal challenges.

After years in a deadlock with publishers, researchers are keen to know whether we will now see for-profit companies and ‘astroturfers’ enter the open science landscape and undermine science in pursuit of their commercial interests, while claiming to support the struggle of researchers, who demand more say in the publishing of scholarly articles.

Science is a human activity. When we fail to distill and explain research, we accumulate a kind of debt.

The sleeping bear of Russian science could finally wake - and China can show it how.

Should we treat preprints the same way that we treat reviewed and published material? If so, how can we make that clear to readers?

From Margaret Thatcher to Generation Snowflake, Keith Joseph to Sam Gyimah, why and how have universities and students found themselves so firmly on the wrong side of public opinion? And what are we going to do about it?

Less than 15% of researchers in Japan are female. Urgent culture change is needed, argues Noriko Osumi.

New evidence on why more women don’t choose STEM fields for careers points to their strengths on reading tests.

An interview with Kai Chan and his strategies to seek the combination of both kinds of impacts.

Fake news has a long history, but there are new unanswered scientific questions raised by the proliferation of its most recent, politically oriented incarnation.

Science thrives on curiosity, investigation, and flexibility of thought. The President thrives on the opposite.

The accomplishments, limitations, recent advances and directions for future developments in the field of research synthesis.

What if it is not the concepts described by science fiction that could have the most impact, but the act of storytelling - the creation of scientific narratives - itself?

Overlooking the need for paid Editorial Office staff hobbles many attempts to reform peer review.

Four concrete suggestions - for Childcare, Accommodate families, Resources, Establish social networks - are directed toward research societies and conference organizers who are willing to take a leadership role in creating solutions, either incrementally or on a large scale.

Rice was invited by the Nobel Foundation to give a presentation to all the Nobel committees on gender equality, why it is important and what can be done.

Anonymous applications free scientists to make bold proposals, and ‘golden tickets’ free reviewers to bet on them, says Thomas Sinkjaer.

Internal and external pressure drive a rush toward prestige.

A new algorithm is trying to automate the process of identifying gang crimes. But some scientists warn that far from reducing gang violence, the program could do the opposite by eroding trust in communities, or it could brand innocent people as gang members.

In 1940, the AAUP published a Statement on Academic Freedom. In 2018, it's time for it to be updated--and some items clarified.

Without the extension of the program - or a pathway to citizenship - those who know what it’s like to be undocumented say U.S. science could suffer.

From efforts to increase the transparency of the review process to initiatives offering training, there are many attempts underway to make better reviewers out of researchers.

When you criticize science in public, you are taking a complicated argument to people who don’t care very much about the work of someone who wishes you’d shut up. This can be difficult to navigate. Although it’s often ‘a complete pain in the taint’ more than just ‘difficult’.

With state intervention back in vogue, and publishers’ profit margins still sky-high, journals could be the next monopoly to come under scrutiny.

Requirements for citations to be treated as First-Class Data Entities In my introductory blog post, I listed five requirements for the treatment of citations as first-class data entities.  The thir…

Decolonising knowledge and democratising information is the great promise of our times. With universal access to knowledge, we can begin to achieve the potential of the Internet and provide a better world for future generations.

Some scientists say they should have the right to review stories in which their work or words are covered prior to publication. Journalists disagree.

Robert-Jan Smits, the European Union’s departing director-general of research, sets out his parting thoughts. After eight years, he hands over his role as director-general of the European Commission’s research directorate to Jean-Eric Paquet, currently a deputy-secretary-general at the commission.

What type of university system do we want? One with a casualised workforce and vice-chancellors who can claim they deserve exorbitant pay packages for running commercial organisations? Or one in wh…

There has been no precedent for this kind of access in the history of scientific enterprise.