PhDs: the Tortuous Truth
Nature's survey of more than 6,000 graduate students reveals the turbulent nature of doctoral research. The mental health of PhD researchers demands urgent attention.
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The Mental Health of PhD Researchers Demands Urgent Attention
The Mental Health of PhD Researchers Demands Urgent Attention
Anxiety and depression among graduate students seems to be on the rise. Systemic change is needed to halt an ongoing crisis.
More South Korean Academics Caught Naming Kids As Co-Authors
The practice was probably used to improve the children's chances of securing a university place.
Huge Study Documents Gender Gap in Chemistry Publishing
Analysis finds female-led papers are more likely to be rejected, and less likely to be cited, than those with male corresponding authors.
New Funds Needed to Cover Open-access Costs
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Nature at 150: Evidence in Pursuit of Truth
A century and a half has seen momentous changes in science. But evidence and transparency are more important than ever before.
Better Methods Can't Make Up for Mediocre Theory
With better questions, many reproducibility problems will fall away, says Paul Smaldino.
Citizen Science and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Citizen Science and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Data from conventional sources cannot fully measure progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Here the authors present a roadmap describing how citizen-science data can integrate traditional data and make a significant contribution in support of the SDGs agenda.
Make Code Accessible with These Cloud Services
Container platforms let researchers run each other's software - and check the results.
Science Must Move with the Times
Can science continue to fulfil its social contract and to reach new horizons by advancing on the same footing into the future? Or does something need to shift?
Data - from Objects to Assets
How did data get so big? Through political, social and economic interests, shows Sabina Leonelli.
Supercharge Your Research: a Ten-week Plan for Open Data Science
Researchers share tips for transforming your group with open data science and teamwork.
Ethical Research - the Long and Bumpy Road from Shirked to Shared
From all too scarce, to professionalized, the ethics of research is now everybody's business, argues Sarah Franklin.
Failing is a Key Part of PhD Success
Students must learn that a doctoral degree isn't for everyone - and that not doing one might be a better option.
Funders and Journals, Not Students, Should Lead on Standards for Research Rigour
Funders and Journals, Not Students, Should Lead on Standards for Research Rigour
The efforts of young researchers to fight the perverse incentives that dominate science right now are all the more impressive because these scientists are at the most vulnerable point of their careers.
Thousands of Grant Peer Reviewers Share Concerns in Global Survey
Peer review process helps funders make decisions, but researchers say it is lacks transparency and takes up too much of their time.
How Science Has Shifted Our Sense of Identity
Biological advances have repeatedly changed who we think we are.
Highlight Negative Results to Improve Science
Publishers, reviewers and other members of the scientific community must fight science's preference for positive results - for the benefit of all.
A Kinder Research Culture is Possible
Wellcome is right to call out hyper-competitiveness in research and question the focus on excellence. But other funders must follow its move.
Two-thirds of Researchers Report 'pressure to Cite' in Nature Poll
Readers say they have been asked to reference seemingly superfluous studies after peer review.
India Pushes for Alternatives to Animals in Biomedical Research
Organs-on-a-chip and other technologies are becoming reliable models for testing drug efficacy and toxicity.
"Excellence R Us": University Research and the Fetishisation of Excellence
"Excellence R Us": University Research and the Fetishisation of Excellence
The rhetoric of "excellence" is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organizations, from art history to zoology. But does "excellence" actually mean anything?
Novelist Cormac McCarthy's Tips on How to Write a Great Science Paper
The Pulitzer prizewinner shares his advice for pleasing readers, editors and yourself.
Evaluating FAIR Maturity Through a Scalable, Automated, Community-governed Framework
Evaluating FAIR Maturity Through a Scalable, Automated, Community-governed Framework
Transparent evaluations of FAIRness are increasingly required by a wide range of stakeholders, from scientists to publishers, funding agencies and policy makers. We propose a scalable, automatable framework to evaluate digital resources that encompasses measurable indicators, open source tools, and participation guidelines, which come together to accommodate domain relevant community-defined FAIR assessments. The components of the framework are: (1) Maturity Indicators - community-authored specifications that delimit a specific automatically-measurable FAIR behavior; (2) Compliance Tests - small Web apps that test digital resources against individual Maturity Indicators; and (3) the Evaluator, a Web application that registers, assembles, and applies community-relevant sets of Compliance Tests against a digital resource, and provides a detailed report about what a machine "sees" when it visits that resource. We discuss the technical and social considerations of FAIR assessments, and how this translates to our community-driven infrastructure. We then illustrate how the output of the Evaluator tool can serve as a roadmap to assist data stewards to incrementally and realistically improve the FAIRness of their resources.
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