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 […]
Publication Ethics and Biomedical Imperialism
Applying ethics to social science research can raise as many issues as it answers. A new set of guidelines on which Robert DIngwall consulted gives clarity in some cases like manipulation of images and duplicate publication but leaves some other controversies unsettled.
What Does the Future Hold for Academic Associations?
Competing associations. A funding drought. Smaller travel budgets. Royalty streams drying up. Surely the future for academic associations is grim. Steven Rathgreb Smith, the executive director of the American Political Science Association, certainly sees challenges all around. But the former president of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action and one-time editor of the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly also knows a thing or two about how to snatch opportunity from adversity.
State of the Stacks: Academic Libraries in a Digital Age
The latest iteration of a report on college and university libraries finds an institution with a clear sense that change is afoot but a slightly cloudier feel for how to address it.
How Much NSF Funding Goes to Social Science?
The social and behavioral component of the National Science Foundation’s budget is a small part of the total but of paramount importance to the discipline’s researchers, a relationship brought home as Congress gets ready to discuss funding.
In Our Age of Social Protests, What Promotes Protest?
With one eye on Ukraine, David Canter comments on the social psychology of protest in an Age of Social Protest.
Universities Behaving Badly
Derek Bok has called on universities to be ‘ethical beacons’ shining out in their communities, but that shine is tarnished in oh-so-many ways in institutions of higher education around the world, notes Professor Sir David Watson.
Amicus Curiae: Friend of the Court, Friend of the Academy
A friend of the court brief just filed by the American Sociological Association in defense of legalizing gay marriage offers a perch for observing how scholarly organizations sometimes weigh in when matters of public policy reach the courtroom.
Fake Papers are Not the Real Problem in Science
Hoax papers, whether meant as a corrective demonstration or for more malign purposes, are a high-profile issue in academic publishing. But Achilleas Kostoulas argues that something more pernicious derived from a ‘culture of accountability’ is dogging the industry.
