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 […]
Why Social Science? Because It’s Proliferating
The president of the Social Science Research Council argues that that proliferation of data, data sharing and collaboration across private, government, and academic sectors requires a stewardship that social science can, at least in part, provide.
Citizen Social Scientists Edit Day’s News with New Tool
Sociologist Nick Adams’ TagWorks methodology is being used to rate — and in turn improve — the most shared news stories of the day via a new tool called PublicEditor.
Economics Nobel Recognizes Nature and Knowledge
Two academics who have integrated what might have once seemed like non-economic externalities into economic models have been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in economics. The winners are William D. Nordhaus of Yale University, cited for integrating climate change into macroeconomic analysis, and Paul M. Romer of New York University’s Stern School of Business, cited doing the same with technological innovations.
Five with Social Science Credentials Win MacArthur Grants
Five people with backgrounds in social, behavioral or data science were among 25 named in the 2018 class of MacArthur Foundation fellows. The fellowship and grant program, sometimes referred to as the “genius grant,” awards exceptionally creative people with $625,000 – no strings attached — in expectation that based on their track record they will achieve something important in the future.
The Dean of ‘Ism’ Studies: Walter Laqueur, 1921-2018
Walter Laquer, who fled the Holocaust, experienced the birth of Israel, founded the ‘Journal of Contemporary History,’ and was an unflinching sentinel against terrorism and an authoritarian Russia, died on September 30. He was 97.
Geographer Gardner to Head Academy of Social Sciences
The longtime director of the Royal Geographical Society, Rita Gardner CBE, will be the new chief executive of the United Kingdom’s Academy of Social Sciences. She fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Stephen Anderson after more than 10 years.
Collaboration Imbues SSRC’s ‘To Secure Knowledge’ Report
In launching its first-ever task force report on Monday, the 95-year-old Social Science Research Council made clear it gets by with a little help from its friends. Collaboration, said sociologist Alondra Nelson Nelson, the president of the SSRC, is the byword of the report, To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good.
APS Panel: Connecting Behavioral Scientists and Tech
What exactly does the tech industry want from social and behavioral scientists? That was the focus of a SAGE Publishing-sponsored panel at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science In San Francisco this summer. Panelists were four representatives from tech, ranging from big players like Google to startups like Jaunt.
