Forcing research to fit the mould of high-impact journals weakens it. Hiring decisions should be based on merit, not impact factor.

For all but a small percentage of aspiring researchers, doing a postdoc at a university is a lousy idea because it will neither result in an academic job nor otherwise advance one’s career.

Researchers on social media discuss the potential impact of making peer review more transparent.

The British commentator George Monbiot once compared academic publishers to the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, concluding that the former were more predatory.

How a recent "bad luck" cancer study illustrates failure of science journalism.

A light-hearted opinion piece about the arbitrariness of academic success.

A large research university will pay between $3-3.5 million a year in academic subscription fees...

A patent system that is so broken that almost no patented discoveries ever get used.

The Horizon 2020 programme threatens to siphon away the best scientists from southern Europe.

Comment on Personalized Health

The top 100 list of Altmetrics is fascinating for what it tells us about communication between scientists, the attention paid to science by the general public, and also for what it tells us about altmetrics themselves.

The troubled present and promising future of scholarly communication.

Never thought of being gender biased when performing evaluations? Take the implicit association test.

Able women who set out to make academic careers in math-intensive fields of science have as good a chance of succeeding as men today, keeping in mind that the chances don’t appear great for anyone of either gender.

Opinion article by the founders of PubPeer.com on right to anonymity.

Recent moves by established journals to make research papers freely available signpost the direction of travel in academic publishing

Die EU will das Geld für ihr milliardenschweres Investitionsprogramm aus dem Forschungsbudget entnehmen. Besser als ein kreditfinanziertes Investitionsprogramm wäre es, eine EU-weite Steuererleichterung für Forschungs- und Innovationstätigkeiten der Privatwirtschaft einzuführen.

Research must be reliable and publication is part of our quality control system. Scientific articles get reviewed by peers and they get screened by editors. Reviewers ideally help improve the project and its presentation, and editors ideally select the best papers to publish.

Separating the true signal from the gigantic amount of noise is neither easy nor straightforward, but it is a challenge that must be tackled if information is ever to be translated into societal well-being.

In the effort to keep ourselves academically pure, we’ve also become largely irrelevant in molding the most important social enterprises of our era.

Science funding shouldn't serve political interests.

While The Conversation is built around a journalistic model, there is a big growth in online, open-access journals each with different approaches to peer review.

When a handful of authors were caught reviewing their own papers, it exposed weaknesses in modern publishing systems. Editors are trying to plug the holes.

Director Jeremy Farrar on new plans to support more young scientists and ambitious projects, large and small.

Technology has helped so many industries evolve over the past few decades, but scientific publishing, surprisingly, has hardly changed since the first journal article in 1665.

Problems and limitations of the traditional and alternative peer review methods.

One of Swartz' lawyers, writes about the spiteful and unreasonable charges that led to his suicide—and MIT's gutless support of his prosecutors.

Scholarly articles, filled with indubitable knowledge and analysis, only exist for the general public behind pricey paywalls. So one lecturer is advocating for them to be free of charge.

Ingredients to win a grant: start and finish early, seek feedback and file before deadline.

On the implications of academics being monitored in ever more and increasingly disparate aspects of work.