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 […]
A Personal History of ‘Human Relations,’ With Chocolate
‘Henry Riley: A Personal History of Human Relations’ frames the seven decades of The Tavistock Institute’s journal ‘Human Relations’ against key moments in one man’s ordinary life and how those moments are reflected through seminal articles published in the journal.
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith Will Not Seek Re-election
Republican Congressman Lamar Smith, chairman of the House of Representatives science committee since 2013 and a burr in the side of countless social and climate scientists, will not seek re-election in 2018.
Do Universities Emphasize STEM Too Much?
STEM programs are critical components of universities’ curricular and research missions, but so, too, notes Paul Axelrod, are the liberal arts. And these programs should not be marginalized in market-driven, academic prioritization schemes.
Horowitz Foundation Marks 20th Year of Social Science Grants
This marks the 20th year that the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy has been passing out grants to social scientists, and the deadline to apply for this year’s round of $7,500 grants is December 1.
Sabina Alkire on Measuring Poverty
Economist Sabina Alkire has spent her career looking at all the things beyond just a lack of money that make us poor. In this Social Science Bites podcast, the director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative explains the need for a consistent and reputable means of measuring poverty over time.
Do Journal Rankings Give Short Shrift to the South?
Many research evaluation systems continue to take a narrow view of excellence, judging the value of work based on the journal in which it is published. Recent research by Diego Chavarro, Ismael Ràfols and colleagues shows how such systems underestimate and prove detrimental to the production of research relevant to important social, economic, and environmental issues and reflect the biases of journal citation databases which focus heavily on English-language research from the US and Western Europe.
Trick or Treat: It’s a Behavioral Scientist at the Door!
While Halloween is always an exciting time for candy manufacturers, costume sellers and youngsters who are often allowed a small binge in candy consumption, a different group of people also lick their lips in anticipation — behavioral scientists.
Open Access and Learned Societies: An Update
Publishing remains a key part of the mission of many British learned societies, as does disseminating scholarship and staying afloat. A new report appearing in December, and previewed at a September meeting, will offer some direction for organizations trying to reduce the tension that open access may create among those goals.
