ScienceGeist

Peer review is embedded in the core of our scholarly knowledge generation systems, conferring legitimacy on research while distributing academic capital and prestige on individuals. Despite its critical importance, it curiously remains poorly understood in a number of dimensions.

Individual actions, such as ditching meat and not flying, won't make a substantial difference to our planet - and such demands divert attention away from the solutions that are needed.

Around the globe, there are initiatives and organizations devoted to bring "Open Access" to the world, i.e., the public availability of scholarly research works, free of charge. However, the current debate seems to largely miss the point.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) and Health Data Research UK have set up a £10m data science centre

Are fewer women named Nobel laureates just because there have been fewer women scientists?

Numerous recommendations and guidelines aim to improve the quality, timeliness and transparency of medical publications. However, these guidelines use ambiguous language that can be challenging to interpret, particularly for speakers of English as a second language. Cultural expectations within the Asia-Pacific region raise additional challenges and several studies have suggested that awareness and application of ethical publication practices in the Asia-Pacific region is relatively low compared with other regions. However, guidance on applying ethical publication practice guidelines in the Asia-Pacific region is lacking. This commentary aims to improve publication practices in the Asia-Pacific region by providing guidance on applying the 10 principles of the Good Publication Practice 3 (GPP3) guidelines and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship. Recommendations are provided for encore presentations, applying the ICMJE authorship criteria in the context of regional cultural expectations, and the role of study sponsors and professional medical writers. Ongoing barriers to compliance with guidelines are also highlighted, and additional guidance is provided to support authors submitting manuscripts for publication. The roles of regional journals, regulatory authorities and professional bodies in improving practices are also discussed.

This article reports on selected findings from the pilot African Open Science Platform landscape study, conducted by the Academy of Science of South Africa, on request of the SA Department of Science and Technology.

Establishing an internal working group or committee to consider how best to infuse the spirit of the DORA declaration within an institution can be a sensible move in most cases.

Created at the end of last year, CO-OPERAS IN aims to bring FAIR data principles into the SSH research area, support existing scholarly communication services and platforms to connect them as components of an emerging EOSC, and more broadly to the global SSH communities. 

BioRxiv, the server for life sciences preprints, has begun an experiment that allows select journals and independent peer-review services to publicly post evaluations of its papers should the authors make the request.

ALLEA submitted a statement to the European Commission calling for a strong and well-resourced framework programme guided by principles of excellence, fairness and openness, and making concrete suggestions on their implementation in the current draft of the Commission’s Strategic Plan on Horizon Europe.

"We are at a crisis point," according to a new report from the highly respected Brennan Center for Justice, "with almost weekly violations of previously respected safeguards."

Why, even if you don’t care about the values that are promoted by Open Science, Open Science can benefit your career and therefore why you should still abide by the practices.

Summary of recent activities around OA monographs.

In September, Ethiopia adopted a national open access policy for higher education institutions. EIFL guest blogger, Dr Solomon Mekonnen Tekle, librarian at Addis Ababa University Library, and EIFL Open Access Coordinator in Ethiopia, celebrates the adoption of the policy.

Robert Harington suggests that despite the critical role of scholarly societies in publishing and academia, the sad reality is it is the big corporate publishers who win.

A new report draws on contributions from more than 3,700 researchers to look at the current research landscape in the UK, including systems of research assessment, and to look ahead at how it may change over the next five to ten years.

Former members of an air quality scientific advisory committee that was disbanded by the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday they were forming an independent panel to continue their work.

In this interview, Aileen Fyfe, professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews, shares an abridged history of journal publishing at scholarly societies and her thoughts on how scholarly publishing's past can influence its present.

Opinion piece examining a study that found that the correlation between student evaluations and quality of learning is negative.

Nonpartisan taskforce of ex-government officials reports 'almost weekly violations' of norms meant to safeguard objective research.

U.K. efforts to leave the European Union have pushed out scientists and convinced some not to come.

Just how big a problem is predatory publishing? Simon Linacre reflects on the news this week that Cabells announced it has reached 12,000 journals on its Journal Blacklist and shares some insights into publishing’s dark side.

The World Science Day for Peace and Development 2019 will be devoted to the theme of "Open Science, leaving no one behind".

Academic libraries have an opportunity to engage in open access publishing to promote and protect the work being done by humanities scholars.

Das Wissenschaftsmagazin higgs setzt Forschung ab sofort in den Kontext.

Scientists who were booted from their advisory roles by the Trump administration plan to reconvene their air pollution panel without the backing of the government.

How do academics become professors? This paper considers the making of ‘professor’ as a subject position through which academics are acknowledged in both organizational contexts and disciplinary fields.

Fecher and Kobsda introduce the Research Impact Canvas - a structured guide to plan science communication activities.