Bold ideas and critical thoughts on science.

Kelsey Medeiros on sexual harassment, what role it plays in relation to power structures in academia, and possible ways to address it

Elias Koch

Today is the day Julia has been dreaming about since the first day of her PhD program – it’s interview day at the American Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Conference. As her phone plays her familiar morning alarm, Julia jumps out of bed, bright-eyed and hopeful for the 10 interviews she has scheduled for the day. She irons her power skirt and navy blouse carefully, ensuring she leaves no creases uncreased.

Sexual harassment in Academia

This short analysis focuses on female scientists as a subgroup of a large survey sample and how their assessment of public engagement differs from that of their male counterparts.

Sascha Schönig

Scientists are increasingly expected to engage with the public. At the same time, they face increasing hostility when they speak out. Female scientists, as a more frequent target of sexist hostility, fear being attacked and enjoy speaking out less than their male counterparts. The question arises: Is science communication really feasible for everyone in the current hostile environment?

Do you dare? What female scientists expect when communicating

Bao &amp; Huang on gender biases in Chinese scientific committees, calling for policy reforms in academia.

Nataliia sokolovska

Why are women underrepresented in China’s most distinguished academic committees? From the election data of these academic committees over a decade, Bao and Huang revealed that fewer women entered the recruitments of these committees, and social connections disproportionately influence male candidates’ success compared to their female counterparts. This revelation calls for an urgent reevaluation of recruitment practices.

Gender Disparity in Science

Jefferson Pooley on Surveillance Publishing, its history in modern societies during the last couple of decades, and the potential costs of these practices for both service providers and their users.

In April 1998, two Stanford graduate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, flew across the world to deliver a paper on their nascent search engine, Google. Speaking at the Seventh International World Wide Web conference (WWW 98) in Brisbane, Australia, Brin and Page described how their approach—taking the web’s existing link “graph” as a proxy for quality and relevance—improved on the classified-by-hand indexes of Yahoo!, Lycos, and the like.

Surveillance Publishing

Threats and attacks on researchers can lead them to self-isolate and retreat from public communication. We look at strategies to prevent this from happening.

The question of how researchers engage in public communication or political decision-making processes has gained unprecedented attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many scientists experienced hostile attitudes when going public. Threats and science hostility are no new phenomena, but gain more importance as science is increasingly embedded in public debates.

How good science communication can support researchers in cases of hostility

The case of pandemic prevention is one of many examples to show that holistic perspectives in disaster prevention and related fields have gained prominence in recent years.

Since the 1990s, health experts have anticipated that we would be hit by an influenza pandemic in the not-too-distant future (cf. Caduff 2015; Lakoff 2008; Weir, Mykhalovskiy 2010). While we may have thought of pandemic primarily in terms of Covid-19 over the past two years, influenza pandemics have long represented the paradigmatic case of pandemic preparedness planning.

Who is an expert? Inclusion and exclusion of expertise in global pandemic prevention

In this Short Analysis, Jefferson Pooley is reviewing/introducing PubPub, a web-based publishing platform hosted by a nonprofit, the Knowledge Futures Group (KFG)

In 2019 researchers at Simon Fraser University set out to catalogue the world’s scholarly publishing platforms. They restricted themselves to open source projects, and yet still identified over 50 projects to produce and host scholarly journals and books. The platforms range from established (like Open Journal Systems) to fledgling (like Rebus Ink), and everything in between.

The Case for PubPub

A wrap up of 2021 on Elephant in the Lab by the Editorial Team

Around this time last year we took a look back at the Elephants in the Lab of the Year and the article started with the words “2020 was different for all of us…”  Sadly that remains true for 2021. However, the debates and discussions within the scientific community have shifted slightly as the pandemic continued and thus, it is worth it once again to take a look back.

Another Year in Elephants

Sami Nenno on the typical problems of the most common service providers for conducting online surveys and how to find the right one for your own project.

Conducting surveys and designing questionnaires is common research practice, and not only for the social sciences. One might think that there is a vast array of good software tools out there. The first half is correct: when looking for software for setting up a survey, one is confronted with plenty of options. However, depending on what you want to do, it can be tricky to find a good tool that checks all the boxes.

How to find the right Survey Tool: Problems and Proposals

Kateryna Suprun on the fast-track digital transformation Ukrainian universities are currently going through in the face of the Russian war of aggression.

Several universities in the country have been either completely destroyed or damaged. Most recently, the central building of the Taras Shevchenko National University standing in the center of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv suffered from an explosion nearby. At the same time, the interview itself illustrated the dramatic circumstances of this process: the online-talk was disrupted by air raid siren alerts.

Digital transformation ahead of schedule. How Ukrainian universities are surviving and transforming in times of war

In this short analysis P. Atkinson highlights the uncertainties associated with the field of evidence-informed policy making, especially in crisis situations such as Covid-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic experiences of many different countries have shown how an exceptional need for research evidence has led to rapid new deployments of scientists in advisory roles to aid policymakers in making evidence-informed decisions.

What the Covid-19 experience has taught us about the limits of evidence-informed policy making

Zhao et al. on an individual’s role in the scientific system and some coping mechanisms to alleviate the stress of the precarious working conditions of early career academics.

Many German scientists are under pressure due to the restriction of the 12-year scientific period (Lang et al., 2020). One has 6 years to submit the doctoral thesis and another 6 years in the postdoctoral phase to apply for a professorial position. Similar to the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, the path of a researcher is adventurous and arduous. Unfortunately, it does not always end happily.

Snails on the chase: How to cope with anxiety in an academic career

In this interview Teresa Völker speaks with Dr. Volker Meyer-Guckel about challenges and possible futures  of science communication.

Science communication is often considered equal with public relations or media coverage. However, the phenomenon is significantly more complex, and its most important aspects are not given enough attention. For instance, science includes how science can not only communicate but also interact with societal groups, and the potential impacts this can have on the perception of research in the public eye.

Science and Society need more interaction instead of mere communication. An Interview with Volker Meyer-Guckel

In this article, Mennatullah Hendawy shares some insights on structuring cumulative dissertations based on her own experience

“The whole is other than the sum of its parts”

~ Aristotle~ In general, there are two styles of doctoral dissertations: monographs (thesis as a book), and cumulative thesis (thesis by publications/papers). In this article, I will share some insights with regard to cumulative dissertations based on my own experience.

How to structure a cumulative dissertation: Five strategies

Donia Lasinger on the contribution of the Vienna Science and Technology Funds (WWTF) as a compareably small funding organization to equality of all genders

Where to start from…   Being embedded in an environment as well as in a system and understanding its influences and logic have always fascinated me. During my exchange year in Ireland, at Trinity College Dublin, I had a very important insight: a professor in organizational studies was discussing case studies and then turned to the students and asked: “What would you do in this situation?” After several rounds of guessing, I promptly realized

Breaking the status quo – The role of a small funding organization in gender mainstreaming

A group of researchers from the German N² network presents the results of a survey among PhD students on the abuse of power in science and outlines ways to counter it

This article results from a cooperation within N², a network of the Helmholtz Juniors, Leibniz PhD Network and Max Planck PhDnet. The International PhD Program Mainz (IPP) is an associated member of N². Representing more than 16.000 doctoral researchers, it is the biggest network of doctoral researchers in Germany.

Manifestations of power abuse in academia and how to prevent them

Kristin Eichhorn, co-initiator of #IchbinHanna, on fair working conditions in research and the failed reform proposal in Germany.

On Friday, March 17, The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) published a reform proposal that promises to improve working conditions in research. This was followed by a massive wave of criticism and protest from scientists across status groups and disciplines.

Now it is time to build up the pressure! How to improve working conditions in academia

This article explores the evolving phenomenon of science communication in social media and the norms and values that shape these online spaces. Science communicators on TikTok share how they use generative AI to produce science-related social media content.

Introduction   Social media platforms such as Facebook, X and Instagram have not only changed the way we communicate but also how we learn and acquire knowledge. Platforms have become spaces for disseminating academic knowledge, where science communicators convey academic knowledge to the public as “the new type of influencers” (Zhang &amp;

How TikTok Science Communicators Navigate Norms and Values in the Age of Generative AI

Martin Schmidt

What is the difference between bibliometric impact and societal impact?

There is a tremendous difference between bibliometric and societal impact. I devoted a blog post to this when I had the honour of reaching 100 publications in the peer-reviewed literature. I didn’t feel the sense of accomplishment that I imagined I might have—and should have—felt.

The balance between bibliometric and societal impact

The role of libraries in the 21st century is changing. One indication is the emergence of new services and job profiles: libraries offer services to support researchers throughout the creation, publication, dissemination and discovery of their research.


How libraries secure trust in the research process of the 21st century

Philip Nebe

Museums, libraries and archives play a pivotal role in the preservation of human knowledge. They also see themselves as custodians of cultural and natural heritage. The task of natural history collections is twofold: on the one hand, they preserve our knowledge about nature, on the other, they hold records of the history of human exploration and conquest of the earth.


Towards the Open Natural History Museum

In this short analysis the three authors aggregate findings from four research projects to answer questions regarding the accelerated digitalisation of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Introduction   The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a global and accelerated digitalisation of all education systems. This quickly revealed many inequalities in access to digital resources and lack of digital skills. What concrete impact has this had on learners and teachers worldwide? How can we address these inequalities in education?

Sharing knowledge: Impact of Covid-19 on digital teaching

In this opinion piece Isabella Hermann  reflects on AI and how the general perception of it is shaped by pop-culturel archetypes, represented for example in movies.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a focal point of debates in recent years, fueled by both real-world developments and speculative narratives. Renowned scientists, executives, and visionaries have voiced concerns about AI’s implications.

AI, science (fiction) and the need for a human-centric approach in academia

Niels Mede on how the rise of populist politics affects academic work, science communication practices of scholars engaging in public discourse and ways to address these challenges.

So, Niels Mede, tell us: who are you? And what do you do?

I am a post-doctoral communication researcher in the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich, and until recently, I was a visiting research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute.

Populism, Science and Public Discourse: An Interview with Niels Mede

Holger Bähr on the strengths and pitfalls of evidence-based policy advice in policy-making precesses

Evidence-based policy advice and evidence-based policy-making constitute two related concepts that are widely Evidence-based policy advice and evidence-based policy-making constitute two related concepts that are widely supported. Both political and scientific actors argue that political decisions should be based on scientific evidence in order to manage societal problems;

Opportunities and Limitations of Evidence-Based Policy Advice for Evidence-Based Policy-Making

In this contribution, Irene Broer &amp; Nataliia Sokolovska describe what inspired them to create their own taxonomy of advisory formats and dive into the characteristics of advisory organizations and how they can be systematized.

For most liberal democracies, scientific expertise is an important ingredient of political decision-making. Scientific forecasts and assessments of, for example, poverty or social mobility, the impact of exhaust fumes on public health or the risks of viral outbreaks, help governments to weigh arguments and decide on policy measures. But how exactly does scientific knowledge make its way into politics?

Scientific policy advice: An attempt to structurize types of organizations on the international level

In this article the authors argue for a utopia driven by SDG’s and respectful engagement with nature.

Human history is ridden with dreams of utopias. Ideas and visions outlining societies or communities that are free from faults and flaws, running perfectly according to plan. There is no shortage of examples. Many are political, some religious and others stacked somewhere in between.

The Utopia of a Sustainable Planet

This short analysis is showing up ways of how the quality of scientific policy advice, as an important part of the recognition of scientific activity, can be checked and how these processes and results can be made usable again for science.

In academia, there is a clear understanding of how the quality of research work is assessed. This is done by academic peers in a peer review process. It is only then, through the discourse of expert opinion, that it is possible to determine whether the quality of a paper is good or poor. The peers themselves also determine when science is excellent without using formal criteria or even indicators. Science thus has a monopoly on quality;

Out of the Box: Extended Peer Review as Quality Assurance in Scientific Policy Advice

Katrin Martens take on the struggles of transdisciplinary research.

Introduction

Katrin Martens As a young researcher, I have already worked in three large collaborative projects dealing with innovation governance in land use contexts. Transdisciplinarity was always a topic in my past work, but for me each of these projects had a different flavor of transdisciplinarity and brought me different insights.

Transdisciplinary research: Pain or Gain?

Lucy G. Gillis on inequalities in science reproduced by letters of reference and how to encounter them

Letters of reference (LORs) from early career researchers (ECRs) laboratory leaders are an integral part in moving ECRs to their next position.

Reducing the power imbalances in academic letters of reference

Linda Jauch on powerful dependancies of academics to funding bodies, their supervisors and what to do about it.

Introduction

Very early on in my PhD I decided that a life as researcher and university lecturer was not for me. I very much enjoyed talking and hearing about research, the constant “vibe of knowledge” buzzing in the air on a university campus, and, yes, I felt that research was important for understanding the world we live in, past and present. However, I did not want to spend more time in archives or secluded at my desk.

Power and Academia, an endless story

The pocket library for open content is an application designed to simplify the search for openly available research content and lay ground for a basic quality assurance mechanism.

Over the last years the number of open access publications has drastically increased. The recent Covid-19 pandemic has shown the rising role and relevance of bringing out and exchanging scientific results faster than ever. Tens of thousands scientific articles hosted on preprint servers were published only during the first ten months of the pandemic.

ploc &#8211; an app to discover and improve research

Why do we need scientific advice for cities based on urban research? Why is it not only a local, but also a global matter?

Scientific advice for cities cannot be seen as a local issue, particularly because sustainable development is a global matter itself and needs a common approach.

Science for Cities: Overcoming Borders

Karcher and Shellock on trust at the science-policy interface, how can you build trust when working with decision-makers and what can you do when it has been compromised or lost.

What is trust and why is it important at the science-policy interface? How can you build trust when working with decision-makers? And what can you do when trust has been compromised or lost?

Trust at the interface of environmental research and policy

A summary of the results of a workshop held by our authors on issues related to the measurability of the impact of the Social Sciences and Humanities.

Description   What does social impact mean for the Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH)? How can it be measured and evaluated? This was the topic of two workshop discussions between science studies scholars and representatives of SSH disciplines. This article summarizes the workshop results. Science is increasingly expected to address and help solve societal challenges.

Impact of social sciences &#8211; (How) Can it be measured?

Bronwen and Moritz highlight the institutional challenges posed to Higher Education Institutions by the pandemic and outline how these can be viewed as a window of opportunity

Texts on COVID-19 responses in education are plentiful: in particular, Germany’s school system and its lack of readiness for a pandemic, has been discussed frequently, also here at the institute. Our research interest and the focus of this blog post, however, lies in the tertiary part of the education system and possible answers to the challenges it faces.

Possibilities for Change – Higher Education and Digitalisation

Sabine Müller on the hierarchical system of German academia and why it could be a problem for the wellbeing of young academics and Ph.D. candidates. She compares it to her experiences at Oxford University and sheds light on the differences between the two research cultures.

“Researchers say that their working culture is best when it is collaborative, inclusive, supportive and creative, when researchers are given time to focus on their research priorities, when leadership is transparent and open, and when individuals have a sense of safety and security.

On creating a good research environment

The Wikipedia community has become a source of information for a broad and global public. Paul and Max argue that contributing to the encyclopedia as a scholar can be a powerful way of achieving a strong societal impact of their own expertise. Furthermore they provide a guide on how to write your first contributions.

Instagram, TikTok, Clubhouse: Today, researchers who want to share their work with non-academic audiences can choose between a vast array of digital platforms. Some of them vanish as quickly as they appear. Others attract an audience that is looking  for something other than scientific content.

Wikipedia as Science Communication: A Step-by-Step Guide

In August 2023 Benedikt Fecher conducted an interview with Clemens Blümel from the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) on the topic of ‘what happens when science opens up and communicates’ and the emerging challenges for future scientific communication.

What actually happens to science when it opens up? From your perspective as a science researcher, can you describe why this perspective is important?

I believe that science takes place in a social environment and certain images of science emerge or have emerged, which are questioned in many respects in a digital and now increasingly open context or are subject to tensions.

What happens to science when it communicates?

Beck, Poetz &amp; Sauermann on using AI tools when developing novel research ideas as input for writing grant proposals during an experiment at the OIS Research Conference 2022.

Abstract   Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly contributing to scientific breakthroughs in many fields. It is also clear that openness and cross-disciplinary collaboration are becoming key features of the process of modern science. Yet, we know little about the intersection of these two developments – whether and how AI may shape openness and collaboration in research.

How will Artificial Intelligence (AI) influence openness and collaboration in science?

As generative AI applications in science proliferate they prompt a self-reflection on work routines in scientific knowledge production. At the same time, scientific institutions, publishing bodies, and funding agencies are confronted with both regulatory challenges and the task of promoting the use of generative AI in line with good scientific practice.

ChatGPT was presented to the public in November 2022 and, since then, has spurred discussions about the future of work. The advent of Open AI’s ChatGPT and its siblings Google’s Gemini or Anthropic’s Claude has sparked a wide range of positive visions of enhanced velocity and efficiency as well as dystopian scenarios about job losses.

Generative AI in knowledge work

The Pandemic hit the vast majority of European HEI unprepared. The members of AEDiL saw this as a starting point for a collaborative project taking innovative methodological pathways.

The digital shock as a starting point for a collaborative autoethnography   The rapid and unavoidable shift towards emergency remote research, teaching and learning hit Germany at least as unexpectedly as it hit the vast majority of European Higher Education Institutions (HEI). While digitally based learning and teaching had continuously gained growing interest from policy-makers across Europe in the recent decade, the actual practical and

Opening up the black box of teaching in a digital era

This hands-on guide helps you setting up an RSS reader and build a personalized paper feed from your favorite journals.

What’s the matter? Keeping track of the latest articles published in the leading journals in one’s field of expertise can be challenging. But even if it is impossible to know literally every newly published paper in a field, having an overview of its recent, most prominent research agendas might be both inspiring and helpful to contribute to discussions with fellow scholars or students.

Using RSS to keep track of the latest Journal Articles

In 1997, SciELO, the biggest Open Access database in Latin America got some initial funding from the S​ão Paulo Research Foundation FAPESP. What triggered the launch of such an infrastructure and what were the main goals back then?

Back then a few local scientists approached us with the idea to set up a repository for journals edited in Brazil.

An Accelerator for Science in Latin America: FAPESP

Description

The number of authors per article in the subject area

 Computer Science

is 4 on average with a maximum of 21 authors. The mean number of coauthors is increasing by 0.1 per year in the respective time period (Figure 1). The articles in this analysis (

 n

= 1558) were cited 11.4 times on average with a maximum of 199 citations.

11000111 authors

German universities and research institutions are playing a prominent role in the global trend of shifting academic publishing to open access. A nationwide consortium of scientific institutions, known as DEAL, aims to encourage academic publishers to adopt new licensing agreements for open access publication of scholarly content.

What’s the big DEAL and why is it so difficult to reach?

Description

The number of authors per article in the subject area

 Medicine

is 11 on average with a maximum of 1193 authors (Figure 1). Only

 Physics and Astronomy

(Schmidt et al. 2017a) as well as

 Biochemistry, Genetics, and Molecular Biology

(Schmidt et al. 2017a) have higher numbers regarding authors per article. The mean number of coauthors is increasing by 0.4 per year in the respective time period.

Doctor coauthor

In this short analysis, Sami Nenno takes a closer look at the content of fact-checks and misinformation in Germany.

2024 is a year of elections: USA and EU but there are also local elections in Germany for which current polls predict strong increases for the far-right. Misinformation is a constant concern regarding these elections. Even though disinformation is not as threatening as often depicted, it is harmful for democratic processes and we need a solid understanding of it.  Misinformation is a (moderate) threat to elections   2024 is a year of elections.

What’s the Content of Fact-checks and Misinformation in Germany?

Description

The number of authors per article in the subject area

 Multidisciplinary

is 3.3 on average with a maximum of 58 authors. The mean number of coauthors is decreasing by 0.1 per year in the respective time period (Figure 1). The articles in this analysis (

 n

= 1111) were cited 14.5 times on average with a maximum of 348 citations.

Multidisciplinary science – multiple authors?

How do you define “good scientific practices”?

ORI’s statute and regulations do not define “good scientific practices,” but ORI recognizes that every scientific discipline should have standards for how it defines good scientific practices.  We see many instances of poor record-keeping and documentation of experiments, as well as sloppy data handling.

Can digital technologies enable good scientific practices?

Motivation

As the major currency in the scientific reputation economy, the analysis of article publishing reveals different disciplinary cultures and working styles.

Factory science

Director of the Norwegian National Commission for the Investigation of Research Misconduct Annette Birkeland explains, why it is important to promote good research practices by developing guidelines and norms for good research and by advising scientists on ethical dilemmas.


Promoting good scientific practice. The Norwegian case.

Carrying museum artefacts in a suitcase and evacuating university hardware while hiding in shelters. This is the new reality for Ukrainian researchers. Elephant in the lab talked to two of them.

In light of the current war in the Ukraine we want to support Ukrainian researchers who have had to leave their homes and jobs. For this purpose, we have decided to open a telegram group and a telegram bot. We gathered all relevant information about Grants &amp;

Running from missiles: How Ukrainian researchers experience the war

Teresa Völker

Open Science is a strange concept. Depending on who you speak to, it can be a set of scientific practices, a social justice issue, a complete fad, part of a political capitalist regime, or just a different but undefinable form of traditional science. This variety in thought is at once both a strength of Open Science, and its greatest weakness.


Do we need an Open Science coalition?

Antonia Lingens

In a series of short analyses we took a closer look on the practice of (co-)authorship in various disciplines, using a Scopus database (see www.elephantinthelab.org). We found significant differences among the subject areas that we analyzed. While in nearly all disciplines the mere number of authors per article increased (2010-2016), the average number of authors per paper in these disciplines varies considerably.


Authorship revised

Over the past 10 years, my colleagues and I have been doing research on research, on how academic knowledge is created (i.e. scholarly communication) and disseminated (i.e. research communication). We have been looking at how researchers collaborate and share data (here, here and here), how they perform quality checks (here), where they publish and how they engage with the public (here and here). Perhaps the most important insight I have gained


Embracing complexity: COVID-19 is a case for academic collaboration and co-creation

Meta Gorup

 Doctoral researchers


 represent a crucial group within the academic workforce.

They importantly contribute to their departments’ and universities’ research efforts by, among other, carrying out data collection, running experiments, helping with or leading publication writing, presenting at conferences, and sometimes applying for research funding.

When Relationships Between Supervisors and Doctoral Researchers Go Wrong

Description

The number of authors per article in the subject area

 Immunology and Microbiology

is 9.7 on average with a maximum of 83 authors.

Small organisms, high citation rates

Description

The number of authors per article in the subject area

 Energy

is 3.6 on average with a maximum of 11 authors. The mean number of coauthors is increasing by 0.3 per year in the respective time period (Figure 1). The articles in this analysis (

 n

= 1683) were cited 19.7 times on average with a maximum of 496 citations.

Authorship in engineering

Sharing data publicly adds value to research. The same data can potentially be used for new questions in different contexts. Furthermore, by making data publicly available, results become more transparent.


Data sharing and information literacy

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 What are from a media ethics perspective the biggest challenges for science in the digital age?

One of the biggest challenges in science communication is to create trust.

Science communication in the digital age

There has been increasing concern recently in ensuring that public funding for science and innovation creates truly public benefits.


Research Funding is critical to societally relevant research

Tinca Lukan explores TikTok’s use in ethnographic research on social media influencers, detailing how she integrated it into her PhD study on influencers’ working conditions in Slovenia.

Introduction   In this blog post I dive into the integration of TikTok as a methodological tool for doing ethnographic research on social media influencers.

A Journey from researcher to influencer: TikTok as a methodological tool

Can ethics in science be global and why is this topic relevant currently?

One of the main recurrent debates in the Global Ethics research team (GEST) has been whether ethics can be at all “global”. My opinion is that not only it could but it should. Notwithstanding the significant differences that we easily witness in cultural, social norms and behaviour, we are faced with a strongly interconnected and interdependent world.

Responsible research is a matter of education

Mafalda Sandrini  Some days ago, a friend of mine told me that while she was grocery shopping, a 60 to 70 years old man shouted at her because she was wearing a mask. She was shocked: how could the man not understand she wanted to protect him? “I could be a weapon to him”, she told me. My friend, as far as she knows, did not have the COVID-19 disease, but she claimed she could not know for sure.


Communicating COVID-19: Prospects for a bolder Science?

The infrastructures that natural sciences run on are many and varied. A mixed garden of tailormade instruments and laboratories designed to handle highly specific tasks.


Ideas as Infrastructure

Vannevar Bush gave us the most consequential, imaginary conceptualization of a machine for research infrastructure for the 20th century (Memex) and was one of the prime movers in the creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) – a superb, if flawed, administrative research infrastructure.  Superb: blue sky research; flawed: in some areas it’s been invaded by people representing particular schools of research and excluding others.


Towards a Global Research Infrastructure

The Web was created as a coordination and cooperation tool for scientists. Subsequently, it had a revolutionary impact on almost all aspects of our life. The rise of a “network society”  did in the end, however, only had a minor effect on the forms of organising among the scientific community. Its paradigm of scientific communication and cooperation between a scholar and a publisher dates back to the early 17th century.


Distributed Organisations for Collaborative Research

Description

The number of authors per article in the subject area

 Mathematics

is 2.9 on average with a maximum of 9 authors. The mean number of coauthors is increasing by 0.1 per year in the respective time period (Figure 1). The articles in this analysis (

 n

= 3657) were cited 8.2 times on average with a maximum of 357 citations.

Authorship in mathematics

This contribution is a crosspost from

 PLOS blogs

which was published in Part I and Part II. The article is a cooperation within N², a network of the Helmholtz Juniors, Leibniz PhD Network and Max Planck PhDnet. With more than 14.000 doctoral researchers, it is the biggest network of doctoral researchers in Germany.

Addressing the mental health crisis among doctoral researchers

“Predatory publishing” describes the practice of pseudo scientific publishers that promise scientists the rapid publication of their studies. They purport to carry out a peer review but actually do not do such a thing and basically publish anything if the publication fee has been paid.


Storm in a teacup: predatory journals are irrelevant

What is PeVO?

PeVO stands for “Publish and evaluate Onchain”. We are creating a decentralized publication platform which aims to change the way science is accessed, created, published and evaluated by using the blockchain technology. It helps us to create an immutable digital archive which is going to be free and unrestricted.

Revolution in science

His dissertation is excellent. He is widely recognized as a talented lecturer. Then the news comes: he is a fraud. And almost no one had noticed anything.   In the summer semester of 2014, Dr. Christian M. held the introductory lecture course, History of Political Thought, every Monday from 2 to 4pm. Plato, Kant, Marx, the great thinkers;


The Rise and Fall of Dr. M.

It’s no secret that we have an inequality problem within the hallowed walls of the academy. Much focus has been dedicated to problems of inequality—of status, of wage, of job security, of resulting social mobility, and beyond—mainly between tenured faculty and the growing precariat of contract teaching labour.


Prestige and inequality in the ivory tower

Communicating Science in Covid Times



During the Corona crisis, the value of science and science communication has been clearly demonstrated.

Communicating Science in Covid Times

In the beginning, there was a question. This is how every science story seems to start. But what if it doesn’t? Does research always require a question, or even a hypothesis? Is it possible to conduct science without a question? Can you “answer” a question that you haven’t posed before? My story started when social life had come to a halt. In late March 2020, the Coronavirus had paused public life and forced society into a global lockdown.


Elephant in the Lab

The Need for an African Lightsource

Towards a Global Research Infrastructure