The evidence on the Journal Impact Factor

by Paul Wouters 3 Jun 2013

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), see our most recent blogpost, focuses on the Journal Impact Factor, published in the Web of Science by Thomson Reuters. It is a strong plea to base research assessments of individual resear…

Read the full article →

DORA – a stimulus for a new evaluation culture in science

by Paul Wouters 23 May 2013

We should urgently improve the ways in which the output of research is assessed by universities and funding agencies. Therefore, the dominance of the Journal Impact Factor in these evaluations should be terminated. This is the gist of a call published …

Read the full article →

Worldwide diversification of research continues

by Paul Wouters 19 Apr 2013

Last Wednesday, we published the new edition of the Leiden Ranking. The results are quite interesting. The range of countries with universities who score high on their number of highly cited publications is increasing. Thirteen countries are now listed…

Read the full article →

the Journal Nature on careers and open access publishing

by admin 8 Apr 2013

Opting for open access means considering costs, journal prestige and career implications Early-career scientists face a pressing question: how should they publish to advance their careers at a time when the scholarly world is being shaken up? New options in publishing have highlighted sticky debates related to the impacts of costs on individual researchers and [...]

Read the full article →

Fraud in Flemish science

by Paul Wouters 4 Apr 2013

Almost half of Flemish medical researchers have witnessed a form of scientific fraud in their direct environment. One in twelve have been engaged themselves in data fraud or in “massaging data” in order to make the results fit the hypothesis. Many …

Read the full article →

Vacancy post-doctoral researcher

by Sarah de Rijcke 14 Mar 2013

The Centre for Science and Technology Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Leiden University wishes to announce a vacancy for the following position: POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCHER (38 hours per week) Vacancy number: 13-062 The Centre for Science a…

Read the full article →

Changing publication practices in the “confetti factory”

by Sarah de Rijcke 18 Feb 2013

When do important reorientations or shifts in research agendas come about in scientific fields? A brief brainstorm led us to formulate three possible causes. First of all, a scarcity of resources can bring about shifts in research agendas, for instance…

Read the full article →

Diversity in publication cultures II

by Paul Wouters 4 Feb 2013

As said in the previous post on the topic of diversity in publication cultures, the recent DJA publication, “Kennis over publiceren. Publicatietradities in de wetenschap”, presents interesting and valuable personal experiences. At the same time, …

Read the full article →

Diversity in publication cultures

by Paul Wouters 16 Jan 2013

Last December, the “Young Academy” (DJA), a part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, published an interesting Dutch-language booklet about the experiences of their members (somewhat younger professors and assistant professors) in…

Read the full article →

Viridiana Jones and the privatization of US science

by Sarah de Rijcke 17 Dec 2012

Recently a deluge of books saw the light on commercialization of academia and the political climate that allegedly enabled this development: neo-liberalism. Examples include If You’re So Smart, Why aren’t You Rich? (Lorentz 2008), Weten is meer da…

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →