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 […]
A Team Approach to Tackling the Psychology Replication Crisis
The Psychological Science Accelerator is a global network of more than 500 labs in more than 70 countries which aims to re-do older psychology experiments, but on a mass-scale in several different settings. The effort is one of many targeting a problem that has plagued the discipline for years: the inability of psychologists to get consistent results across similar experiments.
Do Academics Themselves Undermine Freedom of Expression?
Spats, fall-outs and intellectual and personal feuds have long been commonplace among scholars. And, because critiques of ideas and publications are also exercises in freedom of expression, they are integral to the rough and tumble of academic life. But British universities are now facing much more insidious challenges…
Junior Scientists are Often Underused as Peer Reviewers
Their paper about the evolution of malaria was in review for what seemed like an eternity. Every month, Susan Perkins and her then-graduate student Spencer Galen would check in with the editors. The problem seemed to be a lack of peer reviewers …
The Perils of Industry Funded Research
Funders from private industry — which represent two-thirds of funding in medical research, for example — can go great lengths to suppress the publication of findings which appear unfavorable. How can academic freedom be protected with this monumental funding shift?
More Must be Done to Preserve the Freedom to Research
I had no reservations about conducting research in the UAE. And I underwent a rigorous ethical and fieldwork assessment and was sure to follow established protocols before and during my trip. Yet I was imprisoned for nearly seven months …
Defending Increasingly Threatened Academic Freedoms Globally
Academic freedom is under threat everywhere. Not only do some countries perpetrate direct attacks on students and scholars. But the internationalization of higher education has also created new global threats for both scholars and students. Here is how to defend academic freedom.
If Academic Freedom is Suppressed There, How Do We Act Here?
New bans and restrictions of research and teaching on topics such as constitutionalism and civil society have impeded independent scholarship in China. How should universities and academics outside of China react?
Student Success from the Perspective of Students Themselves
The Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success project examines student success from the perspectives of the students themselves, the challenges they face in achieving it, and the services they think might effectively support them in their attainment of success. Given that three quarters of students surveyed also have jobs, when students’ needs aren’t met in their everyday lives, their academic performances suffer.
