A recent Universities UK report found that 37% of UK-authored articles are freely available immediately, compared with 25% globally, and most UK articles can be accessed 12 months after publication through open access green and gold schemes. Around half of research articles searched for online are open access, and many funders now require research to be published in an open access journal. Read more
Young scientists are sometimes asked to explain their science to the public as if they were talking to a grandparent. For me, that meant boiling down my studies in DNA structure to reach my grandmother, who has a 4th-grade education and Spanish as her first language. The challenge of demystifying my science was daunting. Read more
It is becoming increasingly clear that the current method of publishing scientific findings does not make the most of the vast amounts of data generated during scientific investigation. The message from the #SciData17 conference, held in London on the 25th of October, was that making data, code and detailed methods openly available will increase reproducibility, decrease redundancy and allow scientific discovery to advance at a faster pace. Funding bodies and journals are taking steps to encourage this kind of open research policy, and the decision to release datasets usually sits with lab heads or PIs, but there is a place for bottom-up change from students and postdocs too. Read more
Fake news seems to be a new fact of life. Fake science news, though, is not a new phenomenon. From my background in medical oncology, I’ve seen first-hand the impact of ‘alternative’ scientific fact. Read more
