Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
Looking at Censuses Past and Future: A Talk With Andrew Whitby
In an age where issues of ethnicity and identity matter, as well, as in the United States, political representation, the import and impact of censuses, along with how they are structured, carried out and analyzed, matters greatly. And with the U.S. Census being conducted this year – today, April 1, is Census Day, although coronavirus-marred collection of data will continue until August 14 – this is an apt time to talk with author Andrew Whitby about censuses past, present and future.
Sizing Up a ‘One Size Does Not Fit All’ Mass Media
If you were going to create an encyclopedia about “mass media,” your first task likely would be to define both words in the term. Doing so was immeasurably easier in the 1920s, when the term “mass media” first started making the rounds, but it’s grown corresponding harder as both the popular conception of ‘mass’ has mutated and the very media itself has evolved from purely paper to heavily broadcast to OMG online.
Samantha Power on the Nexus Between Academe and Policy
Just after Samantha Power’s American Academy of Political and Social Science Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize lecture earlier this month, Social Science Space flagged her down to get some advice on navigating these abutting realms.
Anatomy of the New Big Deal in an Open Access Age
The academic publishing paradigm is changing, driven in large part by calls for open access to publicly funded research. In this first of two parts, SAGE Publishing’s vice president of open research explains the genesis of a pilot program his company has inked with a major U.S. research university.
Chronicler of a Generation’s Spirituality: Wade Clark Roof, 1949-2019
Wade Clark Roof, a sociologist of religion whose work examined the evolving spirituality of the Baby Boomer generation in such words as A Generation of Seekers, has died.
ESRC’s Effort to Develop Leadership in the Social Sciences: A Hunt for Unicorns?
Surely preparing Britain’s social science community to take the lead in a future of global and interdisciplinary team research isn’t a quest for a mythical beast? Matt Flinders, who heads an ESRC project trying to nurture that leadership, doesn’t think so – but he understands why someone might think it is.
NSF Latest U.S. Agency to Scrutinize Foreign Role in Research
The U.S. National Science Foundation has followed other research-based government agencies in trying to ring-fence American research from collaborative and acquisitive foreign actors. Could they mean China?
The Mental Health Care System Needs Urgent Care Itself
Whatever level of public awareness exists about mental health, it’s probably safe to say that awareness about the system of mental health care is considerably worse. And that’s a real issue, say the authors of a new book, ‘Mental Health in Crisis,’ whose title banishes any hope that the current system is acceptable. A Q&A with the lead author, Joel Vos.
