1. How can research benefit from increased spending in R&D?
The UK government has vowed to increase its total R&D expenditure to 2.4 percent of GDP by 2027. With this ambitious target in sight, now seems a good time to pause and reflect on where to focus investment to support the fourth industrial revolution and big data research, discusses Neil Jacobs, in his post in the Jisc Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Indeed, the lesson from other countries is that it's not possible to achieve a rapid increase in the percentage of GDP going into R&D unless the lion's share of the contribution comes from the private sector. This concern is also voiced by the CBI in its recommendation to focus on tax credits, which is an effective way to leverage funding with help from the private sector. There are other public spend measures that 'crowd in' private R&D funds. One of these is the Higher Education Innovation Fund scheme that backs development of a broad range of knowledge-based interactions between universities and the wider world. Open science, too, is a part of this picture, for example the world-leading work of the Structural Genomics Consortium. As diverse public-private research collaborations emerge to meet the aspirations of the UK industrial strategy, demands for relevant skills, secure infrastructure and a more healthy research culture to support them will surely grow............(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. DIY with ScienceOpen's fully-loaded publishing platform
Launching a new open access journal or an open access press? ScienceOpen now provides full end-to-end open access publishing solutions - embedded within the smart interactive discovery environment. A modular approach allows open access publishers to pick and choose among a range of services and design the platform that fits their goals and budget, notes Stephanie Dawson, in his post in the ScienceOpen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Beyond the first round of decision-making, the ScienceOpen platform offers a built-in infrastructure for open, post-publication peer review that has been used and improved since 2014. Broadly applicable questions refined with the help of over 100 editors, peer review experts, researchers and publishers form the basis for an article review. Users comment and review with their full identity and ORCID and a review requires a certain level of expertise, as measured by 5 peer-reviewed articles attached to the reviewer’s profile. All review reports receive a citable Crossref DOI. Authors may reply to reviews via the comment function, creating a transparent discussion platform. Reviews/comments are attached to a particular version of an article and the full history of a publication is visible. Reporting tools can provide both a view based on aggregated metrics for multiple versions, as well as individual metrics for each version............(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Grimpact – Time to acknowledge the dark side of the impact agenda
A critical blind spot in the impact agenda has been that impact is understood and defined solely in positive terms. In their post in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog, Gemma Derrick and Paul Benneworth introduce the concept of 'Grimpact', to describe instances where research negatively impacts society, and argue that the implicit optimism of research assessment has rendered researchers and science systems poorly equipped to deal with the fallout of grimpact.
The blog post says (quote): The standard reaction of normal science (on the assumption of normal impact) was futile, whether to produce further evidence against the message, or falsify his hypotheses through replication studies. The problem remains that behind the implicit optimism of impact agendas, the scientific sphere is ill-prepared to counter the contagion of grimpact beyond traditional armaments such as peer-review, sanctions, retractions and producing even more evidence. For MMR, these defences were insufficient to stop the contagion, nor alter the message fuelled by an emotive reaction to the fear of autism by groups who are immune to concerns of robustness or replicability. Indeed the spread of grimpact, and its adoption and transformation by further, non-academic actors cannot be fought by the provision of even further evidence. The result is a public that is, 'sick of experts'............(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Find out who's talking about your funded and Open Access research
Altmetric recently introduced some crucial new functionality to the Altmetric Explorer. The new search and filter options allow to find out how and by whom research funded by a specific organisation and/or published Open Access has been discussed online, notes Inez van Korlaar, in her post in the Altmetric Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Funders, research administrators and other people involved in research assessment are very interested in understanding how the Open Access status of research outputs influences the subsequent Altmetric attention that the outputs receive. For instance: do Open Access (OA) articles get more attention? Therefore, in the Advanced Search menu in the Altmetric Explorer, users can now tick a box to restrict the search results to "Open Access outputs only". This will return only research outputs that have an Open Access version publicly and freely available on the web. Whether or not a research output is OA is marked as “true” or "false" in a new column within the Research Output CSV spreadsheet exports. Open Access status is also listed in the Research Outputs and Mentions endpoints of the Altmetric Explorer API............(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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