Nature’s recent efforts to redefine the ethical responsibilities of scientists leave a lot to be desired.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Scientific publishing
Displaying 1 - 20 of 46 articles
Lack of free access to research leads to discrimination, both in academia and for us all. The new guidance from the US is a huge step in the right direction.
Many scientists stuck at home during university closures dealt with increased domestic responsibilities. But some groups had it worse than others.
In many other countries, a majority of research publications are now open access, but the system of paying for access still dominates academic publishing in Australia.
Scientists and science publishers are sharing information as fast as they can during the COVID-19 pandemic. Speed and openness bring new challenges, but they are the way forward for research.
The h-index has become an indicator of quality for many researchers and may influence the allocation of research funds. But some question its value.
If expert advice on the pandemic turns out to be wrong, it will have dire consequences for how reliable scientific evidence is treated in other policy areas, such as climate change.
Creativity isn’t the only route to discovery – automated analysis of huge amounts of data works too.
The UC libraries let their Elsevier journal subscriptions lapse and now the publisher has cut their online access. It’s a painful milestone in the fight UC hopes may transform how journals get paid.
Digital publishing hasn’t resulted in the free and open access to information many envisioned. Universities are increasingly fed up with a system they see as charging them for their own scholars’ labor.
Breathless press releases, over-interpreted meta-analyses and other ‘crud factors’ mean that weak research results can get overhyped to the public. It’s time for a cultural change in the social sciences.
Women are underrepresented in academic science. New research finds the problem is even worse in terms of who authors high-profile journal articles – bad news for women’s career advancement.
Scientists are rewarded with funding and publications when they come up with innovative findings. But in the midst of a ‘reproducibility crisis,’ being new isn’t the only thing to value about research.
Universities in New Zealand spent close to US$15 million on subscriptions to just four publishers in 2016, data that was only released following a request to the Ombudsman.
In our institutions of higher education and our research labs, scholars first produce, then buy back, their own content. With the costs rising and access restricted, something’s got to give.
Partly in response to the so-called ‘reproducibility crisis’ in science, researchers are embracing a set of practices that aim to make the whole endeavor more transparent, more reliable – and better.
There are major systemic problems associated with peer review that are negatively affecting scientific credibility.
A leading website that monitored predatory open access journals has closed. This will make it harder to keep tabs on this corrosive force within science.
The traditional mode of publishing scientific research faces much criticism – primarily for being too slow and sometimes shoddily done. Maybe fewer publications of higher quality is the way forward.
Embracing more rigorous scientific methods would mean getting science right more often than we currently do. But the way we value and reward scientists makes this a challenge.
Top contributors
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Lecturer in Library Science, City, University of London
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Director, Open Access Australasia, Queensland University of Technology
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina
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University Librarian and Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship, University of California, Davis
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Associate Professor in Astronomy, Monash University
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Professor, School of Psychology, University of Sydney
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Senior lecturer in Marine Ecology & Head of Blue Carbon Lab, Deakin University
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Visiting Fellow, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University
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Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate, James Cook University
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Senior Research Fellow, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
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Distinguished Professor of Marine Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
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Research Fellow, Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, RMIT University
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Program Lead, Innovation in Knowledge Communication, Curtin University
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Honorary Fellow, Department of Pathology, The University of Melbourne
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Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University
