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Maximising the Benefits of Early Sharing
Having early and rapid access to research findings accelerates the pace of science and is paramount for advancing discovery. Springer Nature considers itself ideally placed to help facilitate this and making great research available as quickly as possible to the research community.
Gene Therapy May Have Its First Blockbuster
Gene therapy achieves a milestone. Novartis will sell the world’s most expensive drug, a treatment called Zolgensma to treat spinal muscular atrophy.
How to Reverse the Assault on Science
We need to let non-scientists know that science isn't based on "proof," but rather on the practice of testing and checking one another's work.
Brexit and UK Science
The Royal Society is working to achieve the best outcome for research and innovation through the Brexit negotiations and support continuing relationships and build new ones across Europe and beyond.
75% of Researchers Make Their Data Accessible
Do Swiss researchers share their data with other researchers and with the public? And if not, why? Which data repositories and other channels do they use for data sharing? A large-scale survey by the SNSF and swissuniversities offers some answers.
The University Has Become an Anxiety Machine
There has recently been a significant amount of media concern surrounding the poor mental health of academics. This extended paper sets out the scale of the problem and examines the factors which academics have identified as key causes of stress.
Can Twitter, Facebook, and Other Social Media Drive Downloads, Citations?
Can Twitter, Facebook, and Other Social Media Drive Downloads, Citations?
A brief review of studies linking social media and article-level performance.
Are We Being Wilfully Blind About the Transformation That's Needed in Scholarly Publishing?
Are We Being Wilfully Blind About the Transformation That's Needed in Scholarly Publishing?
The recent fashion for “transformative” Read-and-Publish agreements - are they really what’s needed to deliver affordable open access? An opinion piece.
Being a PhD Student Shouldn't Be Bad for Your Health
The first international meeting on postgraduate mental health was an important step, but much more is needed to solve academia's crisis.
Are Preprints Paving the Way to Science in Real Time?
It is undeniable that preprints are a growing force in the scholarly communication landscape - but what does their future look like?
A Conference for Open Data Leaders
I attended csv,conf,v4 in Portland, Oregon in May 2019. Here are a few reflections about the conference and a bit about my talk where I shared progress from the Openscapes Champions.
'It's Cut-throat': Half of UK Academics Stressed and 40% Thinking of Leaving
Frequent rejection and a loss of control are making university staff isolated and ill, new research shows
EPA Plan to End Funding for Children's Health Research Leaves Scientists Scrambling
EPA Plan to End Funding for Children's Health Research Leaves Scientists Scrambling
Despite repeatedly expressing public support for children’s health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ending funding for a network of research centers focused on environmental threats to kids, imperiling several long-running studies of pollutants’ effects on child development.
Agreement on Horizon Europe Creates a Chance to Ask What EU Research Policy is for - EuroScientist
Agreement on Horizon Europe Creates a Chance to Ask What EU Research Policy is for - EuroScientist
Former EuroScience Secretary General Peter Tindemans, argues that it is good news that the European Parliament and European Council have reached a partial agreement on the contours of Horizon Europe, the next EU R&D programme.
The Future of Science in Europe
On the eve of the European Union's parliamentary elections, a special issue examines the prospects for science across the region.
Reorganisiert und plötzlich doppelt so teuer
Wie die Innovationsförderung des Bundes in ein bürokratisches Ungetüm verwandelt wurde.
An (Even More) Inconvenient Truth: Why Carbon Credits For Forest Preservation May Be Worse Than Nothing
An (Even More) Inconvenient Truth: Why Carbon Credits For Forest Preservation May Be Worse Than Nothing
The hunger for these offsets is blinding us to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven't - and won't - deliver the climate benefit they promise.
Reproducible Document Stack: Towards a Scalable Solution for Reproducible Articles
Reproducible Document Stack: Towards a Scalable Solution for Reproducible Articles
ELife announces their roadmap towards an open, scalable infrastructure for the publication of computationally reproducible articles.
PLOS Journals Now OPEN for Published Peer Review
Published peer review is now an available option for all PLOS journal submissions.
Asking the Right Question: Implementation Research to Accelerate National Non-communicable Disease Responses
Asking the Right Question: Implementation Research to Accelerate National Non-communicable Disease Responses
Broken Scientific Publishing Models and Fee Structures
The world's first and longest-running scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society began publishing in 1665, and it…
Trial Set for Italian Underground Lab Chiefs Accused of Endangering Water Supplies
Gran Sasso lab plans to shut down two of its large experiments in 2020.
Colleges Are Getting Smarter About Student Evaluations. Here's How.
The surveys are rife with bias, and educational and legal considerations are upping the pressure to change them and maybe even eliminate them.
A Waste of 1,000 Research Papers
Decades of early research on the genetics of depression were built on nonexistent foundations. How did that happen?
Claims of Causality in Health News: a Randomised Trial
Misleading news claims can be detrimental to public health. We aimed to improve the alignment between causal claims and evidence, without losing news interest (counter to assumptions that news is not interested in communicating caution). We tested two interventions in press releases, which are the main sources for science and health news: (a) aligning the headlines and main causal claims with the underlying evidence (strong for experimental, cautious for correlational) and (b) inserting explicit statements/caveats about inferring causality. The 'participants' were press releases on health-related topics (N = 312; control = 89, claim alignment = 64, causality statement = 79, both = 80) from nine press offices (journals, universities, funders). Outcomes were news content (headlines, causal claims, caveats) in English-language international and national media (newspapers, websites, broadcast; N = 2257), news uptake (% press releases gaining news coverage) and feasibility (% press releases implementing cautious statements). News headlines showed better alignment to evidence when press releases were aligned (intention-to-treat analysis (ITT) 56% vs 52%, OR = 1.2 to 1.9; as-treated analysis (AT) 60% vs 32%, OR = 1.3 to 4.4). News claims also followed press releases, significant only for AT (ITT 62% vs 60%, OR = 0.7 to 1.6; AT, 67% vs 39%, OR = 1.4 to 5.7). The same was true for causality statements/caveats (ITT 15% vs 10%, OR = 0.9 to 2.6; AT 20% vs 0%, OR 16 to 156). There was no evidence of lost news uptake for press releases with aligned headlines and claims (ITT 55% vs 55%, OR = 0.7 to 1.3, AT 58% vs 60%, OR = 0.7 to 1.7), or causality statements/caveats (ITT 53% vs 56%, OR = 0.8 to 1.0, AT 66% vs 52%, OR = 1.3 to 2.7). Feasibility was demonstrated by a spontaneous increase in cautious headlines, claims and caveats in press releases compared to the pre-trial period (OR = 1.01 to 2.6, 1.3 to 3.4, 1.1 to 26, respectively). News claims-even headlines-can become better aligned with evidence. Cautious claims and explicit caveats about correlational findings may penetrate into news without harming news interest. Findings from AT analysis are correlational and may not imply cause, although here the linking mechanism between press releases and news is known. ITT analysis was insensitive due to spontaneous adoption of interventions across conditions. ISRCTN10492618 (20 August 2015)
Standardisation and Difference: the Challenges of Infrastructures for Open Access
Standardisation and Difference: the Challenges of Infrastructures for Open Access
In the last few years, there has been a marked shift in the debate on open access publishing from a focus on (mere) outputs to one on infrastructures. With terms such as 'community-led', 'the commons' and 'governance' regularly bandied about, advocates for OA are increasingly looking away from commercial publishers and towards infrastructures designed by …