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From Margaret Thatcher to Generation Snowflake, Keith Joseph to Sam Gyimah, why and how have universities and students found themselves so firmly on the wrong side of public opinion? And what are we going to do about it?
Around half of researchers already publish their work with open access, according to a comprehensive survey carried out by the Main Library of the University of Zurich. Besides a number of positive results, the survey also revealed a need for more information.
The United States and South Korea have the highest tendencies for novel science. China has become a leader in favoring newer ideas when working with basic science ideas and research tools, but is still slow to adopt new clinical ideas. Many locations remain far behind the leaders in terms of their tendency to work with novel ideas.
Widespread adoption of preregistration will increase distinctiveness between hypothesis generation and hypothesis testing and will improve the credibility of research findings.
On the inadequacy and lack of transparency of most research institutions’ responses to allegations of research misconduct.
Editors and peer reviewers impose tougher standards on women. This is evident from the fact that female-authored economics papers take around six months more to go through the review process than male-authored papers. As a result, female academics come to experience peer review as a much tougher process and those who progress on the career ladder adjust their expectations about what is required. Female researchers publish less than their male peers do but what they publish is much more readable and better written.
An interview with Kai Chan and his strategies to seek the combination of both kinds of impacts.
Some thoughts on how to approach writing manuscripts based on original biomedical research.
A major new study published in the journal Science finds that false rumors on Twitter spread much more rapidly, on average, than those that turn out to be true. Interestingly, the study also finds that bots aren’t to blame for that discrepancy. People are.
The MIT will work with a private firm to develop technology for producing energy from nuclear fusion within the next 15 years.
Fake news has a long history, but there are new unanswered scientific questions raised by the proliferation of its most recent, politically oriented incarnation.
Nature journals encourage researchers who submit papers that rely on custom software to provide the programs for peer review.
To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by ∼3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth.
Reflections upon the problems encountered when writing women in mathematics into Wikipedia.
A new algorithm is trying to automate the process of identifying gang crimes. But some scientists warn that far from reducing gang violence, the program could do the opposite by eroding trust in communities, or it could brand innocent people as gang members.
27 Twitter accounts bringing out the silly, quirky, and fun side of academia, introducing you to a space on Twitter where academics can be casual, friendly, and humorous.
Four concrete suggestions - for Childcare, Accommodate families, Resources, Establish social networks - are directed toward research societies and conference organizers who are willing to take a leadership role in creating solutions, either incrementally or on a large scale.
Overlooking the need for paid Editorial Office staff hobbles many attempts to reform peer review.
