With the start of the new year 2017, about 60 universities and other research institutions in Germany are set to lose subscription access to one of the main STEM publishers, Elsevier. The reason being negotiations of the DEAL consortium (600 […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Archive for science
161 results.
Dec06
Should public institutions not be choosing the lowest responsible bidder?
In: science politicsPublic institutions the world over are required to spend their funds responsibly. Commonly, this is done by requiring them to host bids for purchases or services above a certain threshold. If you work at a public institution and have wondered, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This is our first poster at this year’s SfN meeting in San Diego. It’s about decision-making in fruit flies. We find a probabilistic form of decision-making that suggests that without understanding the mechanisms behind this fundamental uncertainty, we will never […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Posted on November 13, 2016
at 17:46
Comments Off on Do flies in groups make individual choices?
A recurrent topic among faculty and librarians interested in infrastructure reform is the question of whose turn it is to make the next move. Researchers rightfully argue that they cannot submit their work exclusively to modern, open access journals because […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Aug01
What interacting with publishers felt like for this open access proponent
In: science politicsAt various meetings I get often asked by early career researchers, librarians or other colleagues what my interactions with publishers felt like. I usually answer that my last twelve years campaigning for infrastructure reform felt like academia was receiving the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
At seemingly every possibility in a discussion on peer-review, people apparently feel the need to emphasize that in the current model reviewers (or most academic editors handling peer-review) are not being paid. Inasmuch as the reviewer is employed at some […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The question in the title is serious: of the ~US$10 billion we collectively pay publishers annually world-wide to hide publicly funded research behind paywalls, we already know that only between 200-800 million go towards actual costs. The rest goes towards […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
“an academic career, in which a person is forced to produce scientific writings in great amounts, creates a danger of intellectual superficiality” Albert Einstein Isaacson W (2008) Einstein (His Life and Universe) (Simon and Schuster, New York), 1st Ed, p […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Scholarly journals, on the face of it, emerged in the 17th century as a medium to facilitate communication of scientific discoveries among interested scholars. In the 21st century, it’s not all that different: researchers form communities around topics in which […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Apr29
In which a Science editorial demonstrates the ineffectiveness of OA activism
In: science politicsIn her recent editorial on Sci-Hub (an initiative I support), editor-in-chief of Science Magazine Marcia McNutt wrote: For those who have such avenues but choose to pirate a paper instead, ask yourself whether it is worth risking the viability of […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
