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

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.

Analysis of over 16,000 preprints released within 4 months of the first confirmed case found that COVID-19 preprints are shorter, with fewer panels and tables, and reviewed faster.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, science is crucial to inform public policy. At the same time, mistrust of scientists and misinformation about scientific facts are rampant. Six scientists, actively involved in outreach, reflect on how to build a better understanding and trust of science.

France has been heavily affected by the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and went into lockdown on the 17 March 2020. Using models applied to hospital and death data, we estimate the impact of the lockdown and current population immunity. 

Predatory publishing has emerged as a professional problem for academics and their institutions, as well as a broader societal concern, bringing to the fore a debate over what constitutes legitimate science.

A public-private partnership and platform for harmonized clinical trials aims to accelerate licensure and distribution.

Authors, editors and publishers differ in their understanding of and the value they attach to the purposes of peer review. 

Explanation of the differences between confirmatory and exploratory research and the dangers of confusing the two concepts. 

In this COVID-19 pandemic, emerging popular refrains like ‘we’re all in this together’ and ‘we will come through this together’
echo across media. But who is this ‘we’?

We have developed an analysis pipeline to facilitate real-time mutation tracking in SARS-CoV-2, focusing initially on the Spike (S) protein because it mediates infection of human cells and is the target of most vaccine strategies and antibody-based therapeutics.

New sources of citation data have recently become available. Although these have been compared to the Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, or Google Scholar, there is no systematic evidence of their differences across subject categories. In response, this paper investigates citations found by these data sources to English-language highly-cited documents published in 2006 from 252 subject categories, expanding and updating the largest previous study.

Peer review is embedded in the core of our knowledge generation systems. Despite its critical importance, it curiously remains poorly understood in a number of dimensions. In order to address this, this paper assesses where the major gaps in the theoretical and empirical understanding of peer review lie. 

The objective of this review is to identify all preprint platforms with biomedical and medical scope and to compare and contrast the key characteristics and policies of these platforms.

The study replicates the NIPS experiment of 2014, showing that the ratings of peer review are not robust, and that altering reviewers leads to a dramatic impact on the ranking of the papers. This paper also shows that innovative works are not highly ranked in the existing peer review process, and in consequence are often rejected.

The world is experiencing a major pandemic with a high mor-tality. One can hope that the outbreak will end spontaneously aftermost people are infected, but the SARS-2 coronavirus may becomeendemic and continue to cause cycles of respiratory disease andfatal pneumonias.

It is urgent to understand the future of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission. This research group used estimates of seasonality, immunity, and cross-immunity for betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1 from time series data from the USA to inform a model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

The postdoctoral experience is in need of reform. Here the authors outline concrete steps that institutions, postdocs and mentors can take to improve the landscape.

Confused about mask wearing? Sure, it’s complicated. But not as complicated as some people imply. 

Data makes science possible. Sharing data improves visibility, and makes the research process transparent. This increases trust in the work, and allows for independent reproduction of results. However, a large proportion of data from published research is often only available to the original authors. Despite the obvious benefits of sharing data, and scientists' advocating for the importance of sharing data, most advice on sharing data discusses its broader benefits, rather than the practical considerations of sharing. This paper provides practical, actionable advice on how to actually share data alongside research. The key message is sharing data falls on a continuum, and entering it should come with minimal barriers.

Read the original article in full on F1000Research: Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: an evidence-based review

Policies and public health efforts have not addressed the gendered impacts of disease outbreaks. The response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) appears no different.

Unlike the financial crash of 2008, this downturn will likely lead to more job losses for women, according to new research.

This perspective article proposes that the answer shifts the conception of replication from a boring, uncreative, housekeeping activity to an exciting, generative, vital contributor to research progress.

The December, 2019 coronavirus disease outbreak has seen many countries ask people who have potentially come into contact with the infection to isolate themselves at home or in a dedicated quarantine facility. Decisions on how to apply quarantine should be based on the best available evidence. We did a Review of the psychological impact of quarantine using three electronic database

Despite the limitations of funding acknowledgment (FA) data in Web of Science (WoS), studies using FA information have increased rapidly over the last several years. Considering this WoS' recent practice of updating funding data, this paper further investigates the characteristics and distribution of FA data in four WoS journal citation indexes.

Here are a few of the papers our scientists are reading that you might want to check out, too.