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A document that sets out the proposals of the four UK higher education funding bodies for the second Research Excellence Framework (REF) for the assessment of research in UK higher education institutions. The proposals seek to build on the first REF conducted in 2014, and to incorporate the principles identified in Lord Stern’s Independent Review of the REF.
Part one of a longitudinal study over three years about the behaviour of researchers under 35 who have yet to achieve established or tenured positions.
A few slides comparing ResearchGate, Academia, Mendeley and others.
Choice of data, methodology and indicators can produce seriously inconsistent results despite a common set of disciplines and countries.
Community driven paid reviews could work in conjunction with a feed-back loop to young scientists. This promote the integration of reviews into an academic career.
If you are considering developing a new database, please, for the love of science, follow these 10 simple rules for creating and maintaining (biological) databases.
A tool was produced that identifies all completed trials from clinicaltrials.gov, searches for results in the clinicaltrials.gov registry and on PubMed, and presents summary statistics for each sponsor online. Since Jan 2006, trial sponsors included in our dataset have completed 25,927 eligible trials, of which 11,714 (45.2%) have failed to make results available.
The relatively low success rates for applicants in most parts of Horizon 2020 have been heavily and unanimously criticized by the stakeholders. In response, the European Commission introduced more generally a proposal evaluation in two stages, in order to ease the burden of unsuccessful applicants during the first stage. This approach received a very positive feedback from the scientific communities.
Evaluation of academic research plays a significant role in government efforts to steer public universities. The scope of such evaluation is now being extended to include the ‘relevance’ or ‘impact’ of academic research outside the academy. We address how evaluation of non-academic research impact can promote more such impact without undermining academic freedom and research excellence.
20% of the scientists undertook between 69% and 94% of reviews last year.
This study investigates whether bias with single-blind review is greatest in a setting of author or institutional prestige.
While the total output of the eleven open-access mega-journals grew by 14.9% between 2014 and 2015, this growth is largely attributable to the increased output of Scientific Reports and Medicine.
Twitter activity is a more important predictor of citation rates than 5-year journal impact factor. Moreover, Twitter activity is not driven by journal impact factor; the ‘highest-impact’ journals were not necessarily the most discussed online.
Mathematical model estimating the overall quantitative annual demand for peer review and the supply in biomedical research.
While deceptive publishing remains an ongoing issue, particularly in the developing world, increasing public engagement, development of OA policies, and discussion of sustainable and ethical publishing practices can remove this potential threat.
Researchers acting to maximise their fitness should spend most of their effort seeking novel results and conduct small studies that have only 10%–40% statistical power. As a result, half of the studies they publish will report erroneous conclusions. Current incentive structures are in conflict with maximising the scientific value of research; we suggest ways that the scientific ecosystem could be improved.
In an era where research bureaucracy is the biggest burden bestowed upon scientists, some are seeking practical solutions.
Exploring the research output on specific natural disasters.
An empirical analysis of researchers’ publications reveals that females have fewer distinct coauthors yet have a lower chance of repeating previous coauthors than their male counterparts.
A new book provides new insights into the nature of political bias with regards to evidence and critically considers what an ‘improved’ use of evidence would look like from a policymaking perspective.
Results of a survey of Wellcome researchers to find out what they think about open research, how they practice it, and some of the barriers they face.
The increase of the fraction of papers authored by women is slowest in the most prestigious journals.
Mike Schaefer, from the University of Zurich, investigates what factors make for a successful crowdfunding project.
Federally funded research and development (R&D) is a hallmark of the U.S. economy but, it's under siege. To maximize and make apparent the economic returns from R&D, the next administration should seek to improve the local economic impact of federal R&D.
COPE has produced some guidelines which set out the basic principles and standards to which all peer reviewers should adhere during the peer-review process in research publication. The aim has been to make them generic so that they can be applied across disciplines.
Significant differences between genders which may put women at a disadvantage when pursuing an academic career in mathematics.
