ScienceGeist

The initiative, "Project Nightingale," gives the tech giant the ability to analyze personal health information from Ascension, a Catholic hospital system.

Two courageous scientists, forest fire expert Bambang Hero Saharjo and pharmacist Olivier Bernard, awarded the 2019 John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science.

Crossref strives for balance. Different people have always wanted different things from us and, since our founding, we have brought together diverse organizations to have discussions-sometimes contentious-to agree on how to help make scholarly communications better. Being inclusive can mean slow progress, but we've been able to advance by being flexible, fair, and forward-thinking. We have been helped by the fact that Crossref's founding organizations defined a clear purpose in our original certificate of incorporation, which reads:

Industries that rely on physics expertise contribute more to the EU economy than financial services or retail, according to a new study.

In this article, potentially high-impact policy changesare outlined that build upon existing mechanisms for research funding and governance and that can be rapidly implemented to counteract barriers facing women in science. These approaches must be coupled to vigorous and continuous outcomes-based monitoring, so that the most successful strategies can be disseminated and widely implemented.

The Beijing Declaration is intended as a timely statement of core principles to encourage global cooperation, especially for public research data.

In exchange for full open access Elsevier requests full cooperation in a number of (meta)data projects. Initial responses to the proposed deal show a fear of 'vendor lock-in'.

Michael Eisen, eLife's Editor-in-Chief, reflects on lessons learned from a recent peer-review trial, and describes how eLife aims to make peer review more effective.

We're increasing peer review transparency by making it easier for public comments on preprints to be considered in the review process at PLOS journals.

Professor Eveline Crone has been elected as the new Vice President of the European Research Council (ERC). She will take up duties on 1 January 2020, alongside two current Vice Presidents. Elected by the ERC Scientific Council, she will be in charge of ERC activities in the domain of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Unpaywall Journals needed data on whether a given journal is associated with an academic society, to help inform librarians in their subscription decisions. Alas there was no open source of this information. There is now! 

Inspired by the University of Cambridge Data Champion programme, we have built a community of Data Champions to advocate for good research data management (RDM) practice within all university faculties at TU Delft. Currently, we have 47 active members and the number is increasing.

In the context of a growing international focus on open access publishing options and mandates, this paper explores the extent to which the ideals of ‘openness’ are also being applied to physical knowledge resources and research spaces.

Everything we have gained by opening content and data will be under threat if we allow the enclosure of scholarly infrastructures. We propose a set of principles by which Open Infrastructures to support the research community could be run and sustained.

Climanosco believes that changing the language can make the debate around climate science can become more inclusive. The organisation publishes papers that have been reviewed by teams of both scientists and laypeople.

One of the major causes of the gender pay gap, according to experts, is the "motherhood penalty," where women are penalized in various ways in the job market after having children. One solution to the gap is emerging among researchers: non-transferable paternity leave for men.

Is there a diversity issue in international science prizes? We explore this issue and ask our members and the scientific community to share their ideas by taking our online survey.

Imperial's new conference policy puts guidance on promoting equality, diversity and inclusion at the forefront.

Established indicators for research and innovation processes do not sufficiently capture the nuances of open science and open innovation. As a result, their opportunities and risks often remain obscure. A new discussion paper therefore makes proposals for the expansion of existing indicators and the development of new ones.

Over the last few years, I have spent a lot of time thinking, speaking, and discussing about the reproducibility crisis in scientific research. An obvious but hard to answer question is: Why has reproducibility become such a major problem, in so many disciplines? And why now? 

Security services in Brussels say Song Xinning, former head of Confucius Institute at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, worked as a recruiter for Chinese intelligence services.

The government's "directions will be entirely determined by the interests of Indian academia and of India", according to K. VijayRaghavan, the principal scientific adviser to the Government of India.

As this year's Open Access Week kicks off, we at SPARC continue to grapple with the question: "Open for Whom?" The questions of who is included and whose interests are prioritized are central to the process of how to reach a fully open access system of sharing knowledge.

by Birgit Fingerle The study "Blockchain in Higher Education - Fundamentals - Potentials - Boundaries" (Study in German language "Blockchain in der Hochschulbildung - Grundlagen - Poten

Effective Research Data Management (RDM) is a key component of research integrity and reproducible research, and its importance is increasingly emphasised by funding bodies, governments, and research institutions around the world. However, many researchers are unfamiliar with RDM best practices, and research support staff are faced with the difficult task of delivering support to researchers across different disciplines and career stages. What strategies can institutions use to solve these problems? Engaging Researchers with Data Management is an invaluable collection of 24 case studies, drawn from institutions across the globe, that demonstrate clearly and practically how to engage the research community with RDM.

Predictions a few years ago that AI would soon replace radiologists haven't come to pass. AI has a long way to go before it can become autonomous.

Highwire's Byron Russell reports on this year's OASPA Conference, and future paths to sustainable open access business models.

Image manipulation is nothing new, but its application for scientific and medical fraud is leaving lives and livelihoods at stake.

Pharmaceutical companies, which fund approximately half of all biomedical research, are now leaders in the publication and disclosure of research. However, access to much company-funded research is restricted by journal paywalls.