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 […]
The Risks–Both Serious and Subtle–of Fieldwork
Amiera Sawas writes here on her experiences with risks in the field and beyond, finding that institutional protocols are undoubtedly robust on a wide range of physical threats, but more subtle threats, like sexual harassment, which cross psychological and physical lines, are not always explicitly dealt with.
What Do Academia’s Ubiquitous Rankings Accomplish?
Why does it matter whether you study or work at the sociology department that comes first, 12th or 89th in a ranking? Why does it matter whether the journal you publish in is included and ranked in a certain index, or not? Let us know your thoughts.
An Open Invitation to OpenCon
Nick Shockey highlights OpenCon, a conference to take place in November aimed at mobilizing support around open access, open educational resources and open data among early career researchers. Funding has been made available to cover travel to attend the conference in Washington, D.C. but the deadline is Monday.
European Scientists Fear Data Protection Overreach
Raising the drumbeat of alarm before a final European Parliament ruling later this year, a coalition of the continent’s research organizations have made explicit their opposition to new rules that they say would impede social science and medical research.
Replication Is More Common, But Still Too Rare
A study of the 100 top journals in education research found that there’s still almost no effort made to replicate the findings they publish.
Publiscize: Instant Outreach in the First Person
Very, very little science makes its way to the public eye, and an even smaller amount of that makes an impact. Entrepreneurial scientist Robert Seigel is offering a way around the gatekeepers of knowledge.
Diets on the Internet: You Might as Well Make Them Up
Contradictory diet advice is everywhere – Katy Perry’s acupunctured fish, Matthew McConaughey and the caveman diet, Gwyneth Paltrow’s macrobiotic meals. It seems […]
A Social Science Audit for Facebook’s News Feed?
How can the public learn the role of algorithms in their daily lives, evaluating the law and ethicality of systems like the Facebook News Feed, search engines, or airline booking systems? Earlier this month Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society hosted a conversation about the idea of social science audits of algorithms, and J. Nathan Matias reports on the discourse.
