ScienceGeist

The world's third largest producer of scientific research, Germany, is the origin of the research university and the independent, extra-university research institute. Its dual-pillar research policy differentiates these organizational forms functionally: universities specialize in advanced research-based teaching; institutes specialize intensely on research. This article discusses the future utility of the dual-pillar policy.

In his new book, psychologist Stuart Ritchie paints a portrait of the modern system of research, and all the ways it gets undermined.

Biennials, regional hubs and virtual attendance can slash emissions, new calculations show.

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

Lockdowns in the United States caused by the COVID-19 pandemic appear related to a decrease in the number of women publishing research papers, especially as first authors.

This study presents indicators of open access at the institutional level for universities worldwide. By combining data from Web of Science, Unpaywall and the Leiden Ranking disambiguation of institutions, it tracks OA coverage of universities' output for 963 institutions.

Scientific authorship comes with benefits, but also responsibilities. If authors are unwilling to explain their work, editors must step up to defend their journal.

Novelty indicators are increasingly important for science policy. This paper challenges the indicators of novelty as an atypical combination of knowle…

Research organisations need to be able to identify which proposals are the best for funding, and which researchers should be appointed or promoted. Science Europe has collated a set of policy recommendations to ensure that assessments of research quality are effective, efficient, and fair.

The Lancet Digital Health has published a paper from BKC Executive Director Urs Gasser and colleagues from ETH Zurich's Health Ethics & Policy Lab. Combining health policy, ethics, & tech governance knowledge with practical experience, the paper contributes to best-practice building during the global pandemic. 

The current pandemic has exposed a host of issues with the current scholarly communication system, also with regard to the discoverability of scientific knowledge. Many research groups have pivoted to Covid-19 research without prior experience or adequate preparation. They were immediately confronted with two discovery challenges: (1) having to identify relevant knowledge from unfamiliar (sub-)disciplines with their own terminology and publication culture, and (2) having to keep up with the rapid growth of data and publications and being able to filter out the relevant findings. 

Open Access in Theory and Practice investigates the theory-practice relationship in the domain of open access publication and dissemination of research outputs. 

Publication questions the reliability of Impact Factor (IF) rankings given the high IF sensitivity to a few papers that affects thousands of journals.

Our aim is to highlight the benefits and limitations of open and non-anonymized peer review. Our argument is based on the literature and on responses to a survey on the reviewing process of alt.chi, a more or less open review track within the so-called Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference, the predominant conference in the field of human-computer interaction. This track currently is the only implementation of an open peer review process in the field of human-computer interaction while, with the recent increase in interest in open scientific practices, open review is now being considered and used in other fields. We ran an online survey with 30 responses from alt.chi authors and reviewers, collecting quantitative data using multiple-choice questions and Likert scales. Qualitative data were collected using open questions. Our main quantitative result is that respondents are more positive to open and non-anonymous reviewing for alt.chi than for other parts of the CHI conference. The qualitative data specifically highlight the benefits of open and transparent academic discussions. The data and scripts are available on https://osf.io/vuw7h/ , and the figures and follow-up work on http://tiny.cc/OpenReviews . While the benefits are quite clear and the system is generally well-liked by alt.chi participants, they remain reluctant to see it used in other venues. This concurs with a number of recent studies that suggest a divergence between support for a more open review process and its practical implementation.

The citation count of journals discontinued for publication concerns increases despite discontinuation and predatory behaviors seemed common. This paradoxical trend can inflate scholars’ metrics prompting artificial career advancements, bonus systems and promotion. Countermeasures should be taken urgently to ensure the reliability of Scopus metrics both at the journal- and author-level for the purpose of scientific assessment of scholarly publishing.

This article examines how the number of downloads from Sci-hub as well as various characteristics of publications and their authors predicts future citations.

In the current system of pre-publication peer review, which papers are scrutinized most thoroughly?

The faculty job market plays a fundamental role in shaping research priorities, educational outcomes, and career trajectories among scientists and institutions. However, a quantitative understanding of faculty hiring as a system is lacking. Using a simple technique to extract the institutional prestige ranking that best explains an observed faculty hiring network-who hires whose graduates as faculty-we present and analyze comprehensive placement data on nearly 19,000 regular faculty in three disparate disciplines. Across disciplines, we find that faculty hiring follows a common and steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequality. Furthermore, doctoral prestige alone better predicts ultimate placement than a U.S. News & World Report rank, women generally place worse than men, and increased institutional prestige leads to increased faculty production, better faculty placement, and a more influential position within the discipline. These results advance our ability to quantify the influence of prestige in academia and shed new light on the academic system.

Achieving the global benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) will require international cooperation on many areas of governance and ethical standards, while allowing for diverse cultural perspectives and priorities.

Three studies showing large DNA deletions and reshuffling heighten safety concerns about heritable genome editing.

The prestige ranking of scholarly journals is costly to science and to society.

This publication shows how a single paper affects the impact factor (IF) of a journal by analyzing data from 3,088,511 papers published in 11639 journals in the 2017 Journal Citation Reports of Clarivate Analytics.

This paper finds that demographically underrepresented students innovate at higher rates than majority students, but their novel contributions are discounted and less likely to earn them academic positions.

This study aims to evaluate the 1-year results of a prospective randomized social media trial to determine the effect of tweeting on subsequent citations and non-traditional bibliometrics.

Study found that preliminary criterion scores fully account for racial disparities - yet do not explain all of the variability - in preliminary overall impact scores.

COVID-19 is a major acute crisis with unpredictable consequences. Many scientists have struggled to make forecasts about its impact. However, despite involving many excellent modelers, best intentions, and highly sophisticated tools, forecasting efforts have largely failed.

Personal integrity and local culture are key to research integrity, and bullying and harassment is the single biggest negative influence, according to a new study by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The research world has moved faster than many would have suspected possible in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In five months, a volume of work has been generated that even the most intensive of emergent fields have taken years to create.In our new report, How COVID-19 is Changing Research Culture, we investigate the research landscape trends and cultural changes in response to COVID-19. The report includes analysis of publication trends, geographic focal points of research, and collaboration patterns.

What was the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions at the outset of the pandemic?

England is abandoning lockdown and possibly hope of containing a second wave of covid-19.