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 […]
Reflections on the Death of Doris Day
Ruminating on the late Doris Day – and in particular her rendition of ‘Que sera sera’ – our Robert Dingwall draws a comparison with the Greek Stoics , Western educational trends and the restraint that was once a feature of sociological inquiry.
Meanwhile, Impact Down Under
Australia has been sampling a variety of tests for measuring research impact for more than a decade, but has yet to settle on whether the ‘impact agenda’ is here to stay.
Fellowship Seeks Researchers to Assist National Park Service
The National Park Foundation – the congressionally chartered nonprofit partner of the U.S. National Park Service – has announced a fellowship seeking “innovative scientific research that can inform park management.”
Try Out – and Build On – Our Social Science Terminology Service
At SAGE’s new online Social Science Thesaurus, click around to discover information on over 61,000 concepts in the social and behavioral sciences, such as definitions of key terms and how they relate to other concepts. You can search for a specific concept, or try clicking the ‘Hierarchy’ tab and browse through the social sciences from the top down.
Whats Next for National Impact and Knowledge Exchange Policies?
Showing impact is a question of timescales as well as metrics. If you invest in research you are likely to see success in high-quality research outputs such as publications, as the UK has demonstrated in the past couple of decades. But it’s harder to demonstrate innovation and it takes longer.
What Counts as “Real Sociology”?
In the course of a recent visit to Mainland Europe, I got talking to a young sociologist with a particular interest in […]
3 Possibilities for Combining Data & Social Science
Graham MacDonald, chief data scientist at Urban Institute gets to work on interesting issues that intersect data science and social science every day. Looking back on his work over the year he looks towards the future as he shares the three things he’s most excited about at the intersection of data science and social science
Better lives with better toilets: An ESRC Better Lives Essay
Ian Ross is a development economist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where his studies and work as a research degree student focuses on the financing of water, sanitation and hygiene, or WASH, services. His PhD topic, and doctoral studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council, looks at cost-effectiveness of sanitation in Maputo, Mozambique, and one aspect on this is also the subject of this co-winning essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition. The competition asked PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives.
