Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
MOOCs + Meetups = Better Learning
The man behind the ‘Beyond Silicon Valley’ MOOC is very enthusiastic about these massive online courses, but he sees adding a dash of the human touch as making the resulting learning experience even better.
Make a Charitable Donation of Your Personal Data
You donate your money to charity, your blood to other and your time to special causes. So why not give of your data for science research?
When Chasing Prestige Becomes the Prize
A survey by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics suggests that researchers appreciate the benefits of competition but also fear how it can emphasize prestige over quality
Colin Firth: Author, Actually
Authorship of an article seems like it ought to be straightforward, but of course it’s not. Even with greater scrutiny, abuse of the process — both adding the wrong people and subtracting the right ones — continues.
Playing the Game of REF
A very strong overall REF performance signifies a large concentration of outstanding work. It is an unambiguous plus. All the same, precise league table positions in the REF, indicator by indicator, should be taken with a grain of salt.
With the REF, We Can Evaluate the Impact of Impact
Measuring impact was a key feature of the just-released Research Education Framework in the UK. But ‘impact’ isn’t as fair a measurement as we could hope.
The Social Science of Climate Change Believers’ Denial
Consciously we might be talking about the impending sustainability crisis, but unconsciously we find ways to actually maintain the status quo.
Peer Review Has Problems. Let’s Fix Them
In a conclusion to his two earlier articles on post-publication peer review, Andy Tattersall argues that while new ways to measure scholarly value may not be perfect yet, it’s still high time to start introducing them more widely.
