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 […]
Minerva Initiative Seems Likely to Avoid Untimely Death
In early February, the proposed U.S. government budget for the 2021 fiscal year featured sizable funding cuts to many federally funded social […]
Might Commercializing Social Science Be a Road to Impact?
As the world emerges from the COVID-19 lockdown many opportunities have arisen to rethink how and for whom our societies operate. In this post, Julia Black argues that social sciences can play a unique role in the post-COVID-19 recovery by forging new relationships with business and commerce and outlines how initiatives, such as the Aspect network, are seeking to bridge the divide between the social sciences and business.
Academic Freedom Includes the Responsibility to Act Ethically
Academic freedom is only one wing by which the academy flies, says Jimi Adesina. The other is the duty of scholars to act ethically and responsibly.
In Defense of the Edited Collection
Edited collections, are one of the most disparaged forms of academic writing, often written off as low quality, or a poor career choice. In contrast, Peter Webster argues for the unique benefit of edited collections, as a creative form of collective academic endeavor that does not sit easily within an academy that is averse to creative risk.
COVID Can Change How We See and Use Research
In the wake of COVID-19, researchers can become trusted figures of authority who can purposely use their institutional privilege and re-appropriate their research networks, skills and knowledge to better the lives of vulnerable populations during a pandemic.
Yale’s James Scott to Receive SSRC’s Hirschman Prize
Political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott, co-director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University and a self-described “mediocre farmer,” has received the 2020 Albert O. Hirschman Prize from the Social Science Research Council.
Size Still Matters: Discoverability, Impact and ‘Big’ Journals
One of the proposed advantages of open access publication is that it increases the impact of academic research by making it more broadly and easily accessible. Reporting on a natural experiment on the citation impact of health research that is published in both open access and subscription journals, Chris Carroll and Andy Tattersall, suggests that subscription journals still play an important role in making research discoverable and useful and thus still have a role to play even in open publication strategies.
Can Social Science Save Lives in a Pandemic?
David Canter considers the emerging social science perspectives for controlling COVID-19
