Issue 62

Open Science Newsletter

OPEN SCIENCE

COVID-19 Changed How the World Does Science, Together. This article in the New York Times summarizes how researchers are collaborating together on COVID-19 research, often as grassroots activities.

UNESCO has hosted an online meeting to promote open science and reinforced cooperation in the face of COVID-19. Representatives of 122 countries took part. 

Open Science: Why Should African Researchers Care? Caleb Kibet comments on the hurdles to implement open science practices, including costly research data management or article processing charges. “We need a framework that reduces the barriers to entry and provides a clear pathway to implementation.”

The Open Science MOOC Steering Committee has collectively stepped down, as the initiative seeks to renew and reestablish itself on a different technology platform.
  

PUBLISHING

Journal data policies: Exploring how the understanding of editors and authors corresponds to the policies themselves. This study explores how the effectiveness of journal data policies could be improved. (published in PLOS ONE)
  

RESEARCH

More financial concerns from US universities. UW-Madison braces for estimated $100 million loss because of COVID-19 pandemic, and the University of California, Berkeley has instituted a hiring freeze.

The Stewart Retractions: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis. A perspective on a set of retractions in sociology research suggests multiple deficiencies in the process. The analysis by a co-author of one of the retracted studies is based in part on emails obtained through the freedom of information act.

Kelvin Droegemeier Named Acting National Science Foundation (NSF) Director. He remains the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

PLOS

PLOS Biology is taking a fundamentally new approach to the assessment of research — with an emphasis based on the research question, and with new article types to support that approach. Details have been outlined in Nonia Pariente’s editorial as incoming Editor-in-Chief, an overview blog post by Veronique Kiermer, and my blog post on the redefinition of selectivity at the journal.