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 […]
Shine a Light on Academic Journals’ Dark Arts
When McDonald’s came under sustained criticism from campaigners in the 1980s, the company responded by constructing a carefully crafted image of corporate […]
Fixing the ‘Leaky Pipeline’ of Women in Science and Math
There are ways to patch the pipeline that sees women drain out of STEM fields in university and on the job, but it will take some effort to dismantle structural barriers first.
Ebola – WHO (Still) Don’t Get It: Social Science Saves Lives
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa reminds us of a key lesson in public health, notes Robert Dingwall: Biomedical solutions will always come late, while social science-based interventions can break the cycle much sooner.
The Tyranny of Excellence is Hurting Research
Nick Butler and Sverre Spoelstra argue that the game-playing that accompanies Britain’s Research Excellence Framework to achieve better appearances is harming the intent of the exercise.
The Digital Scholar: Reference Rot and Link Decorations
You have written a paper and linked to your literature and resources. All is good, except that many of those links that are tied to permanent identifiers may fade away over time — a significant problem for scholarly purposes. Martin Klein and Herbert Van de Sompel explore ways to mitigate this problem through more systematic web archiving practices and link decoration techniques.
A Primer on Plagiarism and Other Publishing Sins
High-quality scientific literature is the cornerstone of scientific progress and is highly regarded by academia. However, Ritesh G. Menezes and his colleagues write in the Medico-Legal Journal, scientific literature is often marred by plagiarism, data fabrication and falsification, redundant publication and illegitimate authorship.
U.S. Presidents Have Long Touted the Joys of Junior Colleges
While critics of President Obama’s call for universal community college for Americans imply federal intrusion into the local institutions was unprecedented, there’s actually a long line of feds who have seen the benefits of the two-year schools.
This Study Finds Citation Rate Boost for Self-Archived Articles
New research indicates that self-archived, or ‘green’ open-access articles, regardless of format, receive significantly higher citation counts than do non-OA articles from the same editions of the same major political science journals.
