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Wellcome Trust launches mosaicscience.com, a longform science magazine under a Creative Commons license
Wellcome Trust launches mosaicscience.com, a longform science magazine under a Creative Commons license
The UK-based Wellcome Trust, the world's second-largest funder of medical research behind the Gates Foundation, has launched a free online magazine called Mosaic that is dedicated to longform science writing. The site will be run by former Times science editor Mark Henderson - who was involved with a monthly science magazine published by the Times...
How to level the playing field for women in science
The good news: Many more women than ever before are completing Ph.D.'s in the sciences. Back in 2000, when I was appointed the first female dean of the graduate division at the University of California at Berkeley, I was delighted to learn that about half of the incoming doctoral students in the biological sciences-and more than 30 percent in heavily male fields like chemistry and engineering-were women.
The death of American universities
As universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is being imposed by force. The following is an edited transcript (prepared by Robin J. Sowards) of remarks given by Noam Chomsky last month to a gathering of members and allies of the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, Penn.
In Academia, Women Collaborate Less With Their Same-Sex Juniors
Study of psychology departments finds that female full professors are less likely to co-author papers with lower ranking women
Our PhD employment problem, part I
Our PhD employment problem is very simply described: there's a mismatch between the number of graduate students earning doctorates each year and the number of tenure-track faculty positions available to them. There are too few tenure-track jobs for the PhD recipients who are qualified to compete for them.
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Twitter Offers Entire Data Pool, but Some Wary of Diving In
With the announcement of its new Data Grants program, Twitter is inviting academic researchers to propose experiments that take advantage of the full "firehose" of its 500 million daily tweets. But some researchers worry that the terms of the deal give Twitter ownership of their ideas.
Track and trace
Track and trace
More than half a million researchers have now signed up for an online science passport: a unique 16-digit identity number, with an accompanying online profile, from the Open Researcher and Contributor ID ( ORCID) project. There, researchers can maintain an up-to-date record of their professional pursuits.
Room for increased ambitions? Governing ‘breakthrough research’ in Norway 1990-2013
A newly released report recommends a simplified set of funding instruments at the Research Council of Norway, better strategic planning at the universities, and less detailed guiding principles from the ministries.
Glaxo says it will stop paying doctors to promote drugs
The British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay doctors to promote its products and will stop tying compensation of sales representatives to the number of prescriptions doctors write.
Argentina makes publicly funded research available
The Congress of Argentina recently passed a landmark law making publicly funded science and technology research publications free and open access.
Forscher, Bibliotheken und Verleger einigen sich auf Open-Access-Initiative
Schulterschluss in der Teilchenphysik
Japan adopts state secrets law
Academics fear secrecy will hinder research into the science behind policy decisions.
Are research sandpits a good way to allocate public funding to research?
The EPSRC allocates millions to fund research at residential workshops.
Pondering science publishing
Panelists and attendees at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting considered the future of peer review and journal impact factors.
Geoghegan-Quinn surveys Europe's science horizon
On the eve of a new funding era, the European Union's research chief tells scientists what to expect
Global R&D funding 2014 forecast
Battelle and R&D Magazine jointly released the 2014 Global R&D Funding Forecast indicating that the combination of private and public global R&D spending was flat for 2013.
Tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
Typically papers appearing in journals with large values of the IF receive a high weight in such evaluations. However, at the end of the day one is interested in assessing the impact of individuals, rather than papers. Here we introduce Author Impact Factor (AIF), which is the extension of the IF to authors.
How academia resembles a drug gang
The academic job market is structured in many respects like a drug gang, with an expanding mass of outsiders and a shrinking core of insiders.
Shigeaki Kato notches five more retractions, including one in Nature
An endocrinologist who resigned from the University of Tokyo in March 2012 amid an investigation that concluded 43 of his papers should be retracted, has retracted five more papers. The newest is in this week's Nature.
New President looks abroad
The new ERC President turns his eyes towards cooperation with China, Japan and South-Korea. Jean-Pierre Bourguignon: “The key is to show eagerness to attract scientists from outside Europe.”
US$21 million awarded to delighted scientists in glitzy ceremony
Founders of Google and Facebook award ‘Breakthrough prize’ of $3 million to Michael Hall of the University of Basel in a ceremony hosted by actor Kevin Spacey and featuring a live performance from singer Lana Del Ray.
How to Write an Anonymous Peer Review
How to Write an Anonymous Peer Review
Civility is important in evaluating a manuscript for publication, but so is telling the truth when the paper falls short.
A tale of two 'opens': intersections between Free and Open Source Software and Open Scholarship
A tale of two 'opens': intersections between Free and Open Source Software and Open Scholarship
There is no clear-cut boundary between Free and Open Source Software and Open Scholarship, and the histories, practices, and fundamental principles between the two remain complex. In this study, we critically appraise the intersections and differences between the two movements.
Science's 'Irreproducibility Crisis' Is a Public Policy Crisis Too
Congress will have to pay for some steps to ensure greater reproducibility in the sciences. In the end, those steps will save enormous amounts now spent building blind allies and mirages. What’s needed are standardized descriptions of scientific materials and procedures, standardized statistics programs, and standardized archival formats.
Representing A "Revolution": How the Popular Press Has Portrayed Personalized Medicine
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