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 […]
Washington and Social Science: Positive Research Funding Plans Still on Track
Both houses of the United States Congress have appropriations bills that increase funding for the National Science Foundation and the 2020 Census in the works, and ‘regular order’ is still the rule for seeing them advance to passage. But how long will regular order be regular?
Evidence-Based Policy: Do Knowledge Brokers Help?
We need to bridge the gap between academic research and public policy. Sarah Quarmby takes a look inside a knowledge brokering organization, the Wales Centre for Public Policy, to see how its day-to-day workings tally with the body of knowledge about evidence use in policymaking.
More Than A March: Evidence Supporters Gather in Chicago
March for Science wants to continue the momentum from their global marches with the first ever March for Science three-day summit aimed at teaching community organizing and communication skills, and advocacy. The event, called the S|IGNS SUMMIT, will be held starting on July 6 in Chicago.
SSRC Adds Richeson, Nobles to Board
The Social Science Research Council has added Melissa Nobles and Jennifer Richeson to its board of directors. Nobles is the Kenan Sahin Dean […]
Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad
In this Social Science Bites podcast, social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson lays out the case that inequality should be fought specifically because it fosters a litany of ill effects.
The Promises and Limitations of Measuring Research Impact
How can the impact of an academic article be measured? It seems that everyone wants to find an answer to this question – from the researcher and author teams that create research articles, to the editors and peer reviewers who curate them, to the societies and publishers who ensure that the articles are released to the world.
Arbitrary Choices and the Politics of Sociological Enquiry
Arbitrary choices –all those political considerations that twist and constrain scholarship without adding to it in intellectually meaningful ways — are rife in contemporary academic sociology, says our Daniel Nehring. Tired of trying to pointlessly argue against them in hopes they disappear, he asks that we make these choices explicit and visible.
SciFoo18: The Joys of the Unstructured
SAGE’s Ziyad Marar describes his recent time at the 2018 SciFoo and some of his impressions mingling with its 330 assembled scientists, technologists, writers and more (the largest ever SciFoo) and compares it to the first SciFoo he attended five years ago.
