International peer review improved Irish research rankings
This is the text of a Correspondence published in Nature (460, 949; 2009) by Conor O’Carroll of the Irish Universities Association: … Read more
This is the text of a Correspondence published in Nature (460, 949; 2009) by Conor O’Carroll of the Irish Universities Association: … Read more
This text is from a recent Editorial in Nature (460, 667; 2009): … Read more
The ‘SciFlies’ project, according to a Nature news story (Nature 459, 305; 2009), will profile scientists from a range of disciplines and the new ideas they want to pursue, or ways in which they would like to expand their current research programme. Website visitors will be able to donate any amount to support the projects they find most interesting or worthwhile. Read more
Disease-orientated consumer online communities radically change the way in which individuals monitor their health, but they could also create new ways of testing treatments and speed patient recruitment into clinical trials. So starts the editorial in the September issue of Nature Biotechnology (26, 953; 2008). From the editorial: … Read more
Cross-posted at Nautlius: … Read more
From Nature 454, 928; 21 August 2008: … Read more
Charles Darwin comments on the latest UK government initiative to engage society as a whole with science: “Scientists pressed, sweating into corners as costermongers, corn-chandlers, dogs meat men, chimneysweep’s boys, executioner’s assistants, crimps, pimps, organ grinders, grooms of the stool, fullers, gentlemen of the road, members of the aristocracy and ladies of the night (to mention but a few) all clamour to press on you their views on string theory, stem cell therapy, plate tectonics or catalytic cracking. Read more
Ignazio R. Marino* writes in Correspondence in the current issue of Nature (453, 449; 22 May 2008): … Read more
Massimo Pinto has discovered an unusual qualification for being a peer-reviewer: paying your taxes. Since 2006, Italians have been allowed to donate 0.5 per cent of their taxes to charity in a highly specific way (previously, such donations had to be made to the church or the state). On his Nature Network blog Science in the Bel Paese, Dr Pinto points out that one can elect to donate one’s contribution to specific research institutes. Leaving aside the fact that some of the intended recipients do not yet seem to have received their 2006 or 2007 contributions, specifying an individual project could have the effect of bypassing the peer-review system, particularly in Italy, where science funding levels are low. Dr Pinto writes that taxpayers have three choices: … Read more
This post is a continuation of the discussion about blogging and peer-review by selected reactions at RealClimate (a climate scientists’ community blog) to Nature Geoscience’s two commentaries on blogging. Read more