The Italian government’s decision to expand its lockdown from two small areas of the north to encompass the entire country is a sign of its increasing desperation to control the spread of novel coronavirus. The number of positive cases by the evening of March 9 stood at at least 7,000 with more than 400 people having lost their lives. This has even been described as Italy’s “darkest hour” by Giuseppe Conte, the country’s prime minister.

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. Observed since 1911, the annual event “celebrat[es] the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality.” This year IWD is themed “Each for Equal,” and seeks both to raise awareness about and then against bias, and foster action to ensure equality.

Each year, NYU researchers analyze New York State Medicaid, New York City Department of Education, and New York City subsidized housing data to discover new patterns of family experiences and outcomes and inform new approaches to fighting poverty, reducing inequality, and expanding opportunity in our communities.

Stoyan V. Sgourev, possibly the only management professor teaching (and indulging in) art history, argues that many of the key principles that guided the evolution of painting during the Italian Renaissance can be usefully applied to the domain of academic writing. Leonardo quite likely never intended to articulate advice on writing as an intellectual activity, but Stoyan borrows generously from his style and writings in formulating a number of basic principles that can help connect with the reader in a similar way to his paintings.

The conference organizers are happy to welcome anyone interested in Information-Communication Technologies (ICT) and Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH) to the conference! The conference will bring together SSH researchers, computer scientists, informaticians, publishers, librarians, vendors of research ICT tools, SSH decision makers and others. There are many reasons why you should consider participating…

To end his trilogy of articles on the research metric system (and Google Scholar in particular), Louis Coiffait explores what improvements could be made.

Louis Coiffait’s third article in his series on impact looks at the system of citation metrics, in particular Google Scholar.

In his second article in a series on impact, Louis Coiffait looks at how REF and KEF treat impact in the UK.

Brazilian elite have an enduring resistance to acknowledging the existence and the pernicious effects of racism in shaping the country’s contemporary social relations. These effects will have major implications on the way Brazil will continue to react toward prejudices and color-blind racism. Something that Brazilian author Luiz Trindade says is “problematic for Brazil and all Brazilians.”

‘It’s not what you know but who you know’ is a trope that’s common in many careers but which the academy often claims to avoid. Except that in many cases it doesn’t.

No one expected Tamiflu to be a wonder drug, but indications are that it’s moderately useful in fighting a serious public health threat. But that message was lost last week in an ill-starred rush to beat up on ‘wicked’ Big Pharma, argues Robert Dingwall.

How does the experience of impermanent, precarious employment on the margins of academia affect young scholars’ ability to engage in creative labor? Is such creative labor still possible?