Efforts to hire diverse faculty are often hamstrung by a basic conservatism in academic departments, which often hides under the mask of quality control.

Obviously peer review should not be abandoned entirely, but it is time to recognise the need for a separate category of highly innovative research with appropriate funding.

Let’s not tell ourselves that "science is broken". Let’s agree that we all share in the responsibility to improve it, by keeping open the mental bandwidth to ask and explore hard questions.

Open peer review is moving into the mainstream, but it is often poorly understood and surveys of researcher attitudes show important barriers to implementation. Tony Ross-Hellauer provides an overv…

It’s no accident that the Chinese government is leading the world in medical advances - and in dangerous ethical lapses.

Wiley Editorial on the changing landscape of publishing suggests that OA and traditional outlets will continue to coexist successfully for some time to come.

When researchers write, we don't just describe new findings - we place them in context by citing the work of others. Citations trace the lineage of ideas, connecting disparate lines of scholarship into a cohesive body of knowledge, and forming the basis of how we know what we know.

Opinion pieces challenges the dichotomy that use of social media for public engagement with science and working to change policy and remove systemic barriers to inclusion are mutually exclusive.

Economists show increased research efforts are yielding decreasing returns. Too much innovation veneration! One driver of the replication crisis is our culture’s growing obsession with “innovation.” As technology historians Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell state in their influential Aeon essay Hail the Maintainers: “Entire societies have come to talk about innovation as if it were an inherently desirable value."

Race is still a disadvantage for black and minority ethnic students. We need radical change to level the playing field.

A short list of seven functionalities that academic publishers looking to modernize their operations might invest in; from unencumbered access and improved social components, to dynamic data visualisations and more precise hyperlinking.

To what extent should academic hiring and promotional bodies apply a discount for articles with many authors?

We are entering a new era - the Impact Era - where increasingly philanthropists are grounding their generosity in decisions focused on having a real social impact. And, in response, nonprofit organizations are learning to refocus their strategies to maximize that impact.

In an Essay, Michael Johansson and colleagues advocate the posting of research studies addressing infectious disease outbreaks as preprints.

In today’s knowledge economy, the practical value of a STEM degree is obvious. Yet our future depends on graduates who are steeped in the humanities and social sciences.

Spotlighting injustice while ignoring the solutions we put forward erases our agency.

Today's complex, dynamic scientific results are often found with the help of computers. And yet the most popular tool we have for communicating these results is the PDF - literally a simulation of a piece of paper. Maybe we can do better.

A long read on how science's dark imperial past still shapes research today - and what to do about it.

Amidst a controversy, it’s important to remember that implicit bias is real and it matters.  The same thought processes that make people smart can also make them biased.

Most lab mice are kept in pristine conditions, but a few immunologists think a dose of dirt could make them a better model of human disease.

Across the UK, universities are falling behind government targets to increase female representation on their boards by 2020. What steps can they take?

Stanford's Londa Schiebinger warns that failure to account for differing impact of interventions on men and women is costing lives.

University of California libraries tackle the transition from subscription-based publishing to sustainable open access.

John Ioannidis discusses the potential effects on clinical research of a 2017 proposal to lower the default P value threshold for statistical significance from .05 to .005 as a means to reduce false-positive findings.

The breadth of social and moral questions raised requires a new architecture for democratic debate, insists Simon Burall.

If scientists avoid discussing the topic candidly, racist theories will fill the vacuum.

How blockchain can be used to time-stamp data and authenticate research.

The privacy backlash over Cambridge Analytica and Facebook may lead to explosive consequences for academics.

The conflict for scientists and research evaluation between scientific impact and tackling societal challenges.

After years in a deadlock with publishers, researchers are keen to know whether we will now see for-profit companies and ‘astroturfers’ enter the open science landscape and undermine science in pursuit of their commercial interests, while claiming to support the struggle of researchers, who demand more say in the publishing of scholarly articles.