US international student intake reaches record high
The number of international students in US higher education has reached an all-time high according to an authoritative report.
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Global innovation initiative launched
US and UK governments have launched the Global Innovation Initiative, a grant competition created to strengthen higher education research partnerships between the U.S., the UK and selected countries (Brazil, China, India and Indonesia).
Large NIH projects cut
Big science is under big pressure at the NIH. Gone are the glory days of the early 2000s, when a doubling of the agency's budget over five years allowed it to establish dozens of programmes with their own large, dedicated budgets.
SpotOn London 2013
Join us at this year's SpotOn London conference on Friday 8th and Saturday 9th November. Now celebrating its sixth year, SpotOn London is an annual two-day conference hosted by Nature Publishing Group for anyone interested in how science is communicated and carried out online.
David Nutt wins the 2013 John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science
Professor David Nutt is the winner of the 2013 John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science. The international prize is awarded for courage in promoting science and evidence on a matter of public interest.
Critics urge caution as UK genome project hunts for volunteers
Personal Genome Project UK will make participants' medical information available for anyone to see online
Why research assessment is out of control
Universities and academics cannot live without the Research Excellence Framework, but we need to go back to a simpler form of measurement, argues Peter Scott
Ought to Worry Business
Ought to Worry Business
Business leaders have many reasons to complain about the budget high jinks consuming Washington, but here's one that gets too little attention: the damage automatic budget cuts are doing to basic research in America.
What is the scientist's role in society and how do we teach it?
What is the scientist's role in society and how do we teach it?
Early career researchers need to learn how policy is made and assessed to encourage more joined-up thinking in science.
A comparison of the quality of reviewer in journals operating on open or closed peer review models
A comparison of the quality of reviewer in journals operating on open or closed peer review models
Report quality is significantly higher on the open peer review model for questions relating to comments on the methods and study design, supplying evidence to substantiate comments and constructiveness.
Interdisciplinary penalty
Everyone, it seems, loves the idea of scholars interdisciplinary work. But does academe reward those -- particular young scholars -- who actually do it?
Research blogs and the discussion of scholarly information
The research blog has become a popular mechanism for the quick discussion of scholarly information. However, the characteristics of this form of scientific discourse are not well understood, for example in terms of the spread of blogger levels of education, gender and institutional affiliations.
What Happened to Science and Research Funding?
What Happened to Science and Research Funding?
A brief history of science funding.
Sex and gender analysis policies of major granting agencies
A variety of international, national, and private granting organizations require sex and gender analysis.
How an average scientist makes himself visible
How an average scientist makes himself visible
A presentation given at North Carolina State University regarding how scientists, early in their careers, can take advantage of the online tools available today.
Senator Warren Says Fighting for Science Is a Top Priority
The only U.S. senator to receive a research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) says one of her top priorities in her first term is to increase federal support for academic research and eliminate restrictions on NSF funding for political science research.
Reforming the Russian Academy of Sciences
The end of Russian science or the start of a new era? Either way, the government's reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences has fuelled a vicious debate. Fiona Clark reports from Moscow.
High maintenance
The next president of the European Research Council will face the dual challenge of preserving the agency’s reputation for excellence while trying to address funding inequalities.
Set research priorities in a time of recession
Rigorous analyses are needed to establish the benefits of the knowledge economy, says former Irish government science adviser Patrick Cunningham.
Six steps to fairer funding for female scientists
Although approximately 50% of PhD students and postdoctoral scientists are female, males run the majority of research laboratories. Despite some reform over the past three decades, there is still an exodus of female scientists from academic research at the transitional stage between a postdoctoral researcher and laboratory head.
How can non-scientists influence the course of scientific research?
Science communication should be more than the dissemination of results to the public; it should also flow in the other direction, with members of the public able to communicate their priorities to scientists and those who fund them. But how?
Points of view
Points of view
Relate your data to the world around them using the age-old custom of telling a story.
I Do Not Want an Initiative, I Want Open Access
I am interested in copyright law, and especially interested in the inefficiencies and loopholes that have developed in a majority of creative industries as they have undergone the shift from analog to digital formats.
Science has lost its way, at a big cost to humanity
Researchers are rewarded for splashy findings, not for double-checking accuracy. So many scientists looking for cures to diseases have been building on ideas that aren't even true.
Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact
How big a role do unconventional combinations of existing knowledge play in the impact of a scientific paper? A new study shows that the highest-impact papers were not the ones that had the greatest novelty, but had a combination of novelty and otherwise conventional combinations of prior work.
A lot can happen in a decade
This issue on Open Access marks the 10-year anniversary of PLOS Biology, and it's as good a time as any to pause and take stock of how the last decade.
Center for Open Science
Reproducibility Initiative Receives $1.3M Grant to Validate 50 Landmark Cancer
The open access movement grows up
It's been just over a decade since the concept of Open Access first captured the attention of the scientific and scholarly research community.
Psst! Want a tip on how to get EU funding? Google it!
Business Key documents for Horizon 2020 are circulating on the Internet. The Commission needs to put order into the timely and fair distribution of this information.
What can article-level metrics do for you?
In this essay, we describe why article-level metrics are an important extension of traditional citation-based journal metrics and provide a number of example from Article-level metrics data collected for PLOS Biology.
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