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Swiss Researchers Struggle to Get Animal Experiments Approved
Scientists say that increasingly rigorous licensing procedures have complicated research efforts - and in some cases, stopped experiments completely.
How to Shine in Indonesian Science? Game the System
Indonesia researchers have inflated their Indonesia’s Science and Technology Index (SINTA) score by publishing large numbers of papers in low-quality journals, citing their own work excessively, or forming networks of scientists who cited each other.
Surely You're a Creep, Mr. Feynman
#MeToo has not much altered the science professions, and it likely won't until the culture of science is dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
Bold Plan to Take European Open Access Initiative Global in 2019
Robert-Jan Smits is pitching the Plan S vision to transform academic publishing to the world’s big science funding bodies.
Life in the Lab
So, there I was, pipette in hand, doing actual labwork for the first time in a year. How had it come to this? When I started out, I was convinced I was not going to be one of those PIs who is never in the lab.
Large Scale Publisher Survey Reveals Global Trends in Open Access Publishing
A survey of publishers with journals indexed in Directory of Open Access Journals has revealed surprising trends in the way that content is published.
DARPA Wants to Build an AI to Find the Patterns Hidden in Global Chaos
The process of buying something and therefore recognizing it is comparatively simple, but how do you create a schema for recognizing a cold war, or a bear market? That’s what DARPA wants to look into.
What It's Like to Be a Woman in the Academy
We asked dozens of women about gender and power on campus. Here’s what they told us.
Four Lessons About Transitioning from Academia to the 'Real World'
The move from Academia to the 'real world' requires a few crucial mindset shifts.
As PNAS Calls Time on Print, Will More Journals Follow Suit?
End of prestigious print publication after 103 years stirs debate over future of journal publishing in the digital age.
What Scientists Searched for in 2018
The most-searched keywords in the Scopus database and on Google, revealed.
How Can Postdoctoral Researchers Engage with Policy? - Networks of Evidence and Expertise for Public Policy
How Can Postdoctoral Researchers Engage with Policy? - Networks of Evidence and Expertise for Public Policy
Workshop concludes that early-career researchers can make important contributions to policy decisions and experimenting with various forms of communication (i.e. opinion pieces, youtube channels, and tweeting at MPs) had the potential to improve knowledge transfer.
Welcome to The Great Acceleration
The author argues that the two biggest forces driving change in the scholarly communication landscape are consolidation and regulation. By consolidation, he means that there’s a now constant cycle of mergers and acquisitions, reducing the number of independent players in the market. By regulation, we’re talking about the increasing number of rules and the compliance burden being put on researchers.
Top Retractions of 2018
From a self-sampling scientist to the downfall of a leading stem cell scientist, here's our naughty list.
Plan S: The Ambitious Initiative to End the Reign of Paywalls
The funder-driven push for freely accessible scholarly literature has divided the scientific community.
Nature's 10
Ten people who mattered in science in 2018. Picks include a rogue gene-editor, a wunderkind physicist and a DNA detective who helped catch a serial killer.
Seven Steps to Boost Your Research Career in 2019
If you're looking to move labs, countries or sectors this year, or seeking general career inspiration, here's some advice from five researchers who featured in Nature Careers in 2018.
New ERC Vice Presidents and Scientific Council Members Appointed
Three new members of the European Research Council (ERC)'s governing body, the Scientific Council, have been appointed by the European Commission. The Scientific Council annonced two new ERC Vice Presidents.
A Lexicon for Gender Bias in Academia and Medicine
Mansplaining is the tip of the iceberg Many of the experiences of women in the workforce are so patterned and commonplace they have spawned an emerging vocabulary, which includes terms like mansplaining (explaining something in a condescending or patronising way, typically to a woman), bropropriation (when a man takes credit for a woman's idea), manel (a panel of speakers populated entirely by men), and himpathy (the "inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide, and other misogynistic behavior"). Here, we propose a number of additions to the vernacular, which are likely to remain relevant for the foreseeable future.
It's Not a Replication Crisis. It's an Innovation Opportunity
Australian cancer researcher Glenn Begley who raised attention to the fact that many published scientific findings cannot be reproduced ,says that he never described it as a replication crisis, beacuse if one takes the funding from the lazy scientists and give it to really good scientists, it is an innovation opportunity.
Making Magic Happen: Implementing and Contributing Data Citations in Support of Today's Scholarship
Making Magic Happen: Implementing and Contributing Data Citations in Support of Today's Scholarship
If we believe data should be valued like other research outputs, we must take action to achieve this. Supporting the open data movement means providing proper support for data citations.
Are the Nobel Prizes Good for Science?
Philip Ball looks at whether prizes and awards help or hinder scientific progress.
Closed Loop Peer Review
Funders and publishers have a lot to gain from sharing and aligning peer reviews.
Changing Demographics of Scientific Careers: The Rise of the Temporary Workforce
Contemporary science has been characterized by an exponential growth in publications and a rise of team science. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of awarded PhD degrees, which has not been accompanied by a similar expansion in the number of academic positions.
Discipline-specific Open Access Publishing Practices and Barriers to Change
What are the underlying mechanisms that cause disciplines to vary in their OA publishing practices.
Undergraduate Students Can Be a Boon to Your Lab
Many undergraduates in the natural sciences will never take part in research, despite a willingness to learn. But their presence can teach others how to lead.
Baby Gene Edits Could Affect a Range of Traits
Gene targeted for its role in HIV is linked to increased severity of other infectious diseases - and could affect learning in mice.