“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…
Archive for science politics
120 results.
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…
Around 2005, German politicians decided on a plan to circumvent a newly created amendment to the German constitution that prevents federal funds from supporting state-owned institutions such as universities. Given the unanimous support of R&D among federal parties and the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Due to ongoing discussions on various (social) media, this is a mash-up of several previous posts on the strategy of ‘flipping’ our current >30k subscription journals to an author-financed open access corporate business model. I consider this article processing charge […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I am contemplating to apply to join the European Commission Open Science Policy Platform. The OSPP will provide expert advice to the European Commission on implementing the broader Open Science Agenda. As you will see, some of us have a […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Over the years, publishers have left some astonishingly frank remarks over how they see their role in serving the scholarly community with their communication and dissemination needs. This morning, I decided to cherry-pick some of them, take them out of […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Three years ago, representatives of libraries, publishers and scholars all agreed that academic publishers don’t really add any value to scholarly articles. Last week, I interpreted Sci-Hub potentially being a consequence of scholars having become tired after 20 years of […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Stevan Harnad’s “Subversive Proposal” came of age last year. I’m now teaching students younger than Stevan’s proposal, and yet, very little has actually changed in these 21 years. On the contrary, one may even make the case that while efforts […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
What do these two memes have in common? While they may have more than one thing in common, the point important for now is that despite both having an air of plausibility or ‘truthiness’ around them, they’re both false: neither […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
