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 […]
Whither Small Data?
The rapid growth and impact of big data has led some to ponder whether big data might lead to the demise of small data, noted Rob Kitchin in an excerpt from his new book, The Data Revolution. But that ignores the benefits and beauties that small data deliver.
Can Greater Transparency Lead to Better Social Science?
The political science journal Comparative Political Studies is experimenting for one special issue in which articles will be judged based on reviewers’ evaluations of what authors intend to do rather than what they report as their findings.
Unknown Unknowns: The War on Null and Negative Results
The Wellcome Trust, a large funder of biomedical research, is keen to ensure that the findings of that research are widely and openly shared. Here, Jonathon Kram and Adam Dinsmore from the trust’s evaluation team discuss why any apparent bias against writing up and publishing certain types of results would impede scientific progress.
Maybe We Should Just Pay Peer Reviewers
An experiment on economists looked at offering small stipends for reviewers, as well as tighter deadlines and dollop of public shaming. Which worked, and could this have implications beyond this field and this journal? Max Nathan discusses.
Defining Policy: Climate Change Governmental Policy in Africa
in our debut cross-posting with Viva Voce Podcasts, Simon Chin-Yee describes his research studying how the political network in Kenya interacts with the changes wrought by climate change.
Putting Quality Into Qualitative Research
The authors of an award-winning textbook on qualitative research discuss their love of the method — and their respect for choosing the right method for the task at hand.
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.
Engaging With the Untidy World of Nonprofits
What’s the best for a professional association to build engagement from its members? For one thing, notes Mark Hager in an award-winning paper, you probably can put away the souvenir tote bags.
