Impact of Social Sciences: Recent Episodes
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Since the award of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, AI has become further embedded in processes of scientific discovery. Chirantan Chatterjee considers the … Continued
The post Who Deserves the next Nobel? AI, genius and serendipity in science first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
The recent High Court ruling in India to block Sci-Hub and similar sites providing pirated access to research has led to a public outcry. Rituparna Patgiri argues that blocking the … Continued
The post Banning Sci-Hub highlights India’s unequal access to knowledge first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
Drawing an analogy between professional sports and research careers, Stefan Wallaschek argues a system defined by competition, precarity and quantification ultimately leads to a loss of meaning Imagine reading the … Continued
The post Academic careers have become a professional sport first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
The Australian Research Council is consulting on the future of research evaluation. Given the rejection of its previous iterations on the grounds of its administrative burden and failure to demonstrate … Continued
The post The “least worst” exercise – What direction will research evaluation in Australia take? first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
Discussing the current state of open educational resources and e-textbooks, Niamh Tumelty and Caroline Ball argue they should form a central part of university strategies for public engagement. Access to … Continued
The post Open educational resources should be central to the public mission of universities first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
The future of the People Culture and Environment element of REF 2029 is currently under scrutiny. Drawing on interviews with institutional decisionmakers as part of the COMET study, Gemma Derrick, … Continued
The post The People Culture and Environment element of REF2029 is already changing the sector — we shouldn’t give up on it now first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
It is a truism that editors are busy and at times hard to reach. However, Disha argues editorial silence can be particularly damaging for researchers at start of their careers … Continued
The post Editorial silence is an unfair burden on early career and marginalised researchers first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
Recent evidence suggests AI use amongst students is pervasive. Mark Carrigan argues university staff and teachers are still struggling to develop coherent, contextual and disciplinary institutional responses to AI’s impact … Continued
The post A new academic year has begun, but UK universities are still struggling to respond to AI first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
Commenting on a recent meeting of scholarly publishers organised by the Council of Science Editors, Eleonora Colangelo considers how scientific publishers can exercise ‘soft power’, through their role in managing … Continued
The post How scholarly publishers wield soft power first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
Health choices and behaviours are shaped by a variety of factors. Chirantan Chatterjee argues that by conflating causation and correlation recent announcements by the Trump administration may require many years … Continued
The post The Tylenol/Paracetamol autism scare poses a grave challenge for science communicators first appeared on Impact of Social Sciences.
Autoethnographic accounts can be powerful indictments of unjust social and organisational structures in higher education. However, Margaret Merga suggests, particularly in the context of Australian non-disparagement and defamation law, this research method may also expose researchers to legal repercussions. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that involves sharing your own story, connecting personal experiences to … Continued
Bringing together a range of studies into various aspects of how preprints interact with the wider information ecosystem, Natascha Chtena, Juan Pablo Alperin, and Alice Fleerackers argue that the speed, accessibility and low barriers to entry that preprints offer to scholarly communication risk being undermined by attempts to make them more aligned to traditional academic … Continued
Reporting on a nationwide survey among researchers in Denmark, Serge P.J.M. Horbach, Evanthia Kalpazidou Schmidt, Rachel Fishberg, Mads P. Sørensen and colleagues find three clusters of attitudes towards GenAI use for research. They argue these variations reflect differences across disciplines and different knowledge production models. For better or worse, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is being … Continued
The way climate change and the need for concerted action is communicated often takes place with an expert scientific and technological frame of reference. Kristian Noll argues that for climate communication to be effective, religious understandings of climate change cannot simply be ignored. Talking about climate change rarely leaves us feeling hopeful. On a certain … Continued
Drawing on a study of priorities in health research, Moumita Koley, Ismael Rafols and Alfredo Yegros argue a metascience approach can refocus Indian research towards areas that are most needed by Indian society and that are understudied globally. India recently launched a new funding agency, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF). Its mission is to … Continued
Discussing a new project to mobilise research based knowledge for public health, Liz Such, Andy Tattersall, Joe Langley and Fiona Marshall outline how local government, civil society groups and researchers can collaborate in mutually beneficial ways to unlock the impact of existing research. The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the UK … Continued
There is a long history of attempts to unify and rationalise academic research. Taking the example of VINITI, the Soviet Union’s centralised approach to organising global research, Björn Hammarfelt and Johanna Dahlin explore how an organisation that at its height employed tens of thousands, provides a parallel and precursor to contemporary challenges in scholarly communication. … Continued
The emergence of an open access publishing system based on article publication charges has introduced substantial global inequities. Stephanie Kitchen, David Mills and Mame-Penda Ba argue that for African research to have local and global influence requires a focus on ‘Afrostructuring’, the creation and maintenance of African scholarly publishing infrastructures that derive from and serve … Continued
The interactional skill of large language models enables them to carry out qualitative research interviews at speed and scale. Demonstrating the ability of these new techniques in a range of qualitative enquiries, Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel, present a new open source platform to support this new form of qualitative research. 📨Enjoying this post? Subscribe … Continued
Women are underrepresented in senior academic positions in economics. Ria Ivandić and Anne Sophie Lassen assess the impact of having children on men and women’s career trajectories and suggest how the sector can adapt. On average there is one woman for every four or five men at a senior level in university economics departments in Europe and the United … Continued
Based on an analysis of over 32 million abstracts published over the last fifty years, Adrian Barnett and Nicole White find a marked rise in common spelling errors. Evidence they suggest of a culture of quantity over quality in academic writing. Many academics feel pressure to publish lots of papers every year because demonstrating their … Continued
Drawing on their research into gender disparities in Indian medical culture, Julie Davies, Emily Yarrow and Kamal Gulati argue that for Indian medical training and practice to become safe for women, more focus should be placed on training staff in organisational and systems thinking so they can drive through required changes. On 9 August 2024, … Continued
In the age of AI, has long-form writing in higher education reached a dead end? Martin Compton and Claire Gordon discuss the unique aspects of the essay and introduce a manifesto to revitalise the essay You can read the Manifesto for the essay in the age of AI via the link. You can find more of … Continued
Drawing on a study of COVID-19 research papers, Liang Hu, Win-bin Huang and Yi Bu find more interdisciplinary research to have greater relevance and be more heavily cited in policy documents. Interdisciplinary research is increasingly seen as a solution to today’s complex scientific and social problems. In recent decades, governments and public funding agencies have frequently … Continued
In case you missed it the past week has been peer review week. This year’s theme has been the intersection of innovation and technology. In recognition of this theme we published two pieces on the LSE Impact Blog, the first post by Adrian Barnett, focused on the very human element of doubt that occurs when … Continued
Researchers and policymakers have long been seen as two communities, which although dealing with similar issues, have distinct institutional norms and bounded rationalities. Lucile Maertens, Audrey Alejandro and Zoé Cheli suggest roleplay can be a useful tool in reducing these differences and creating more productive interactions between research and policy. How can we facilitate constructive dialogue … Continued
Studies have increasingly shown the widespread use of generative AI in research publications. Faced with the consequent uptick in the number of publications, Simone Ragavooloo argues that editors and reviewers should embrace AI tools to undertake the heavy lifting of statistical and methodological review and to allow them to focus on areas that require human … Continued
Jonathan Grant and Tom Kennie explore the role of third space professionals, those who work between academia and various fields of practice, and suggest how universities can better support their careers by breaking down the existing binary between academic and professional service staff. The in-tray of any university leader in the UK at this time … Continued
Peer review decisions are definitive, and depending on the style of peer review practiced at a journal, reviewers can usually make one of three recommendations: accept, reject, revise and resubmit. Discussing a new study into the levels of certainty reviewers have making these choices, Adrian Barnett suggests how embracing this doubt could improve peer review processes. … Continued
Drawing on discussions from a recent workshop hosted by the Department of Methodology at LSE, Thomas Robinson highlights three ways in which AI is reshaping research across the social sciences and how it raises questions around the reflexivity of social science outputs in a world where AI is increasingly mainstream. Readers can watch highlights from … Continued
Reflecting on writing her own thesis by publication and her work in developing institutional thesis by publication policies Margaret K. Merga highlights how arbitrary article limits and rigid rules around publication can make this doctoral pathway less attractive to students. Like this post? Get all LSE Impact blog posts straight to your inbox in one simple … Continued
The Research Excellence Framework is primarily a mechanism for assessing the quality of research and allocating research funding. However, as Andrea Padilla describes in the context of UK international development, REF outputs and in particularly impact case studies hold value for many actors outside of higher education institutions. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) plays a … Continued
Drawing on a bibliometric study, Hongyu Zhou, Lin Zhang and their co-authors explore how and why life sciences researchers cite the social sciences and how this relationship has changed in recent years. Which is more challenging: developing a vaccine for an unforeseen pandemic in under a year, or convincing people to take it? A lesson from COVID-19 is … Continued
For research communications professionals and academics, X can feel a little like being the band on the Titanic, defiantly playing on as the once great ship slides under the water. As a number of academic and civil society organisations question their presence on the platform, Andy Tattersall assesses why research organisations might stay on the … Continued
The creation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has led to a heated debate on the balance between peer review and evaluative metrics in research assessment regimes. Luciana Balboa, Elizabeth Gadd, Eva Mendez, Janne Pölönen, Karen Stroobants, Erzsebet Toth Cithra and the CoARA Steering Board address these arguments and state CoARA’s commitment to finding … Continued
Charting the history of open access policy for long form publications in the UK, Simon Kerridge argues that the most recent delay may herald an even more distant future for open access books. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the national system in the UK for assessing the quality of research in institutions of higher … Continued
The public expects scientists to be certain and unbiased when informing policy. Often they can’t be, which leads to distrust. Vanessa Schipani argues journalists can help scientists earn the public’s trust in these cases by pointing out when scientists are being responsive to alternative hypotheses and the public’s values. Midway through the 2016 U.S. presidential … Continued
Drawing on a review of the published research into the societal impact of open science, Nicki Lisa Cole and colleagues find considerable evidence for the benefits of citizen science, but a much thinner evidence base for the impact of other aspects of open science. Their findings suggest that there is a greater need to consider … Continued
Deep social ventures are social ventures (including charities), where the products, services and interventions they offer draw directly on research expertise for the public good. Chris Fellingham makes the case for how new ways of funding deep social ventures could deliver more diverse opportunities for social innovation and benefits to society. In the early 2000s … Continued
Studies in psychological and behavioural sciences are often framed around understanding why the subjects of research deviate in irrational ways from a preferred outcome when making decisions. Jens Koed Madsen and Lee de Wit argue that this core assumption requires re-examination if the field is to design effective and contextualised interventions. Psychological and behavioural studies … Continued
Research assessments regularly focus on outstanding and unique achievements, rather than the everyday failures and disappointments associated with academic work. Discussing a recent self-assessment and annual research report at Maastricht University that took a more candid approach to failure, Sally Wyatt suggests that research culture can benefit from a more realistic appraisal of failure. ‘Third … Continued
Anthropologists have often explained human behaviour as though people predictably act in their own interests. But in Against Better Judgment, Patrick McKearney and Nicholas H. A. Evans compile research on the contradictory and commonplace phenomenon of “akrasia”, whereby individuals decide against the best course of action. Highlighting akrasia’s complexity and its implications in clinical, religious and wider social contexts, this rich, … Continued
The UK has a well-respected and extensive official statistics system, but does this system lean too heavily towards the needs of government at the expense of public use? Outlining a vision of statistics that function in an official capacity as well as meeting the problem-oriented needs of the public, Paul Allin, sets out why the … Continued
Academics and universities put on a wide range of public facing events, but how much time is put into differentiating these events from those aimed squarely at scholarly audiences? Wade Kelly offers seven considerations for those looking to put on high quality public events. Film composer John Powell said: “Communication works for those who work at it.” … Continued
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, finding participants for qualitative studies has increasingly become an online process mediated by social media or platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Yet, how confident can researchers be that these participants are who they say they are? Exploring this issue, Becca Muir suggests it presents challenges, but also opportunities, for researchers … Continued
Lessons from Regional Responses to Security, Health and Environmental Challenges in Latin America explores these three areas in terms of governance challenges post-COVID-19. Editor Ivo Ganchev brings together diverse regional perspectives that critically analyse US influence in the region, regional versus national approaches and alternative tools for governance. While its contemporary focus may risk obsolescence, the book is a … Continued
The search for the origin of the phrase ‘publish or perish’ has been intriguing since it was first raised by Eugene Garfield in 1996. Drawing on recent discoveries in relation to this question, Vladimir Moskovkin, discusses the evolution of the term and pinpoints its earliest known usage to date. The origin of the phrase “publish or perish” … Continued
In Brave New Words, Salman Khan argues that educators should harness AI’s potential to transform learning through personalised tutoring services like his own platform, Khanmigo. Although Khan’s book lacks an examination of how the broader spectrum of generative AI could disrupt education practices, he presents a captivating vision for how it can be used to enhance teaching and … Continued
The transition towards an open access scholarly communication system has transformed the technology and underlying function of journals. Damian Pattinson and George Currie argue one consequence of this change has been the rise of journals as holders of brand value over research quality and offer three ways of escaping this dynamic. It would be convenient … Continued
Research and research impact are often represented and recorded as the product of discrete research projects and individuals. Drawing on their research into the wives of famous sociologists, Rosalind Edwards and Val Gillies suggest how reconsidering the impact of these researchers can nuance our understanding and approaches to public engagement and impact. ‘Plan your engagement … Continued
In Pragmatism and Methodology, Alex Gillespie, Vlad Glăveanu and Constance de Saint Laurent advocate for pragmatism as a flexible framework for impactful social science research. Balancing philosophical and psychological depth with accessibility, the book effectively shows how a blend of methodologies grounded in real life can enable researchers to navigate contemporary challenges, writes Job Allan Wefwafwa in his review. … Continued
The retraction of academic papers often functions as an indictment against the reputation of a researcher. Tim Kersjes argues that for retractions to function as an effective corrective to the scholarly record they need shed this punitive reputation. Retractions have a bad reputation. If an article gets retracted, it seems someone somewhere must have done … Continued
The recording and indexing of research plays a vital role in how it can be found and used, but what happens when the output from a research project is not a written document, but a performance, series of events or an artistic work? Holly Ranger, Jenny Evans and Adam Vials Moore discuss findings from a … Continued
Universities espouse a universalist approach to creating and accessing research-based knowledge. However, as Helen Kara and Petra Boynton argue, seen from the outside these claims are hollow. Perhaps you are familiar with the phrase ‘computer says no’, but what about ‘institution says no’? Unless, like us, you work with institutions from outside, as we do … Continued
The format for this year’s Election Nights on TV in the UK was set in the 1970s. Since then it has got glitzier with computer graphics, but all the original ‘horse race to power’ defects have persisted and got worse, as social media now does a far better and quicker sorting out of what matters. Patrick … Continued
In Fluke, Brian Klaas explores the phenomenon of chance, examining how seemingly random happenings and actions can profoundly shape our lives. Klaas skilfully interweaves different perspectives – from physics, neuroscience and philosophy to real-life stories – to persuade readers that we live within a complex, interconnected system rather than a predictable one driven by cause and effect, writes Ulviyya … Continued
Poetry likely appears in relatively few impact case studies. However, outlining a new project focused on the intersection of evidence, place and policymaking, Joseph Owen and Nicky Marsh argue that poetry provides a unique rejoinder to narrative expertise. The claims are well-rehearsed: literature transforms lives, offers radical critique and models alternative worlds. Defenders of the … Continued
Responding to the growing momentum of movements, such as DORA and CoARA, Giovanni Abramo argues for a more nuanced balance between the use of metrics and peer review in research assessment. In academia, debates over how to best evaluate research are as common as coffee stains on a professor’s desk. The Coalition for Advancing Research … Continued
How should we hold appropriate discussions of ‘cults’ and minority religions? It’s a sensitive topic with varied implications for academic disciplines and supportive organisations. Aled Thomas and Edward Graham-Hyde outline the challenges surrounding the term and share insights from their upcoming book, ‘Cult’ Rhetoric in the 21st Century: Deconstructing the Study of New Religious Movements. Why is the term ‘cult’ … Continued
Universities are often invoked as vital drivers of local economic growth, innovative technologies and businesses. However, as James Evans discusses their influence on local innovation may be overestimated in comparison to the role they play in organising and helping these businesses develop. One argument used against those who say universities are financially unsustainable and too … Continued
How many times have you read an article that confidently states there are few other studies in this area? And how confident are you that this is the case? Richard Phelps argues outside of the sciences there is rarely a lack of pre-existing literature, but claiming so is a rhetorical move to give priority to … Continued
In 2024 half of the worlds population will be affected by the outcomes of elections. A key value underpinning free and fair elections is the availability of accurate information for voters. However, in recent years, fears of misinformation, infodemics and even an epistemic apocalypse have led many to question whether our current information environment is … Continued
Reporting on research ethics in political science and international publications has in recent years taken on greater importance as a means of modelling best practice and building trust in these fields. Examining these reports across two decades of publications, Eleanor Knott and Denisa Kostovicova show how ethics work remains a marginal and highly gendered activity. … Continued
In Science v. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators, Emma Frances Bloomfield parses the complexities of conveying scientific knowledge amid rampant misinformation and eroding public trust. Acknowledging the dual power of narrative to inform and divide, Bloomfield’s engaging text shares tools for crafting effective stories and urges inclusive discourse in the face of polarisation, writes Chris Featherman. This blogpost originally appeared … Continued
One of the benefits of generative AI is the ability to transform one media from text, to speech, to imagery to video. In this post Andy Tattersall explores one aspect of this ability, by transforming his archive written blogposts into a podcast format, Talking Threads, and discusses why and how this could be beneficial for research communication. … Continued
As the REF open access (OA) consultation draws to a close, Anthony Cond and Peter Berkery argue that one way to ensure an equitable distribution of funding for OA books would be to use a small amount of the QR funding distributed via the REF to fund book processing charges. Imagine a scenario in which … Continued
Research into the minds of other animals and particularly invertebrates raises questions about how we define and understand consciousness itself. Daria Zakharova discusses how creating an artistic interpretation of the mind of a spider can inspire new legislation and shed light on how we understand developments in new forms artificial of intelligence. Visitors can see … Continued
Following the release of ChatGPT Edu, OpenAI’s enterprise offer to universities, Daniela Duca assesses the landscape of AI adoption in higher education and the different and emerging AI options available to universities. Last week, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Edu, an enterprise offering developed through a collaborative effort with institutions like Arizona State University, marking their first … Continued
Research integrity and trust in science have made global news this year. Reflecting on the scientific norm of organised scepticism, Panagiotis Kavouras outlines how building trust in science requires commitments to social and technical means of ensuring transparency and reproducibility across scientific processes. “Οὐδέν κρυπτόν ὑπό τόν ἥλιον”; this famous ancient Greek saying translates into English as … Continued
On 1 January this year, the UK became an associated country to Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research scheme, and to the EU’s Earth observation programme Copernicus. Linda Hantrais and Anouska Nithyanandan consider the broader implications of association for the social and human sciences and review the preparations that UK social scientists should be making to re-establish their international … Continued
Drawing on new data, Lin Zhang, Zhe Cao, Gunnar Sivertsen, and Dmitry Kochetkov explore how the conflict in Ukraine has changed Russian science and how international sanctions have played a minor role compared to domestic politics in isolating Russian scientists. Does geopolitics influence science? Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, many international scientific agreements … Continued
Examining the academic lineages of Nobel laureates Richard S.J. Tol, shows how they form relatively closely related and self-replicating groups. This year LSE hosted three Nobel laureates in economics, Claudia Goldin, Joseph Stiglitz and Esther Duflo. LSE Business review recently caught up with Claudia Goldin about their research on women and economics, you can read … Continued
Drawing on findings from a new survey of equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging policies in European academic publishing, Lynne Bowker, Mikael Laakso, Janne Pölönen, and Claire Redhead outline the intersectional nature of scholarly communication’s diversity challenge and present new resources for actors across the system to implement changes. Scholarly publishing is a complex and multifaceted … Continued
Drawing on the findings of the GENIAL project, which focused on how generative AI tools are used in practice by students in real time, Dorottya Sallai, Jon Cardoso-Silva and Marcos Barreto analyse how students use these tools differently across qualitative and quantitative subjects and offer recommendations for how educators can integrate these findings into their … Continued
Focusing on the recent public outcry around a potentially wide-ranging OA policy for books in the next iteration of the REF, publisher, Lucy Barnes and author, Judith Fathallah make the case for recognising the important role played by no-fee academic book publishers, particularly for early career researchers. Recent proposals to include an open access (OA) … Continued
Based on an analysis of the relationship between peer review reports and subsequent citations, Abdelghani Maddi argues that longer and hence more constructive and engaged peer review reports are closely associated with papers that are more cited. Peer review continues to be the focus of considerable debate across academic fields as diverse as the sociology … Continued
The 18th of May is International Museums Day (IMD), which, in 2024, focuses on the potential for museums and collections to unlock knowledge. Kylie Message suggests that although this objective is uniquely suited to university museums, it can only be realised if the discoverability, management, and accessibility of their collections is vastly improved. University collections … Continued
Discussing the findings of their recent independent review of the ESRC’s research data policy, Paul Allanson, Angela Daly, Alistair Geddes, Maeve Malone, Niamh Nic Daeid, and Lucille Tetley-Brown, outline how the research funder can develop its policies in response to a changing data landscape. For interested readers in Scotland the team will also be launching … Continued
How individuals and groups are named and designated is inextricably linked to the expected outcomes of policy decisions aimed at influencing them. Discussing her recent work on these ‘objects of credence’, Anna Mahtani suggests that an attentiveness to the plurality of possible designators can help policymakers be more aware of the underlying choices inherent to … Continued
Reflecting on the challenges and benefits of publishing research under a group name, Robert Thibault argues group authorship, although at present poorly supported, could be an important means of realigning rewards and recognition in scholarly communication. Imagine working for a company where every employee was leading their own project. They could help out on a … Continued
The word ‘stakeholder’ stands in for a range of people and practices across many research fields. Caitlin Hafferty, Ursula Pool and Pedi Obani argue that the colonial connotations and ingrained inequalities of the term, require scholars to rethink its use and take greater care with the way in which words shape attitudes and approaches to … Continued
In Who’s Afraid of Gender?, Judith Butler confronts contemporary attacks on gender from right-wing movements that have undermined the rights of women, queer and trans people in areas from reproductive justice to protections against violence. The book deftly unpacks the phantasm of gender as it has been weaponised against queer and trans people and argues for countering it not … Continued
As the landscape of social media is constantly shifting, and with many academics migrating from Twitter, LinkedIn has become an increasingly popular platform and is considered by many academics to be an essential tool. Discussing the recent trend for sharing images and stories that highlight vulnerability on the platform, Shani Orgad explores whether this is indicative of a new … Continued
Social media and a rolling news cycle have led to significant increase in and diversification of the types experts and expertise circulating in the public sphere. It has also introduced media dynamics into the production of knowledge. Drawing on the findings of new report, Christina Boswell and Molly Morgan Jones, suggest that the link between … Continued
From job markets, to housing prices, to shifting quality standards, academia is arranged in a way that benefits senior faculty to the detriment of early career researchers argues Kyle Siler. In the 2022 book Generation Gap, political scientist Kevin Munger chronicled the continuing dominance of the baby boomer generation in the leadership and control of … Continued
Reflecting on the cancellation of New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Fund, Roger Smyth explores the origins of this policy change and what it might mean for the future prospects of the REF in the UK. The UK general election looms just as universities and Research England start to prepare for the 2029 research evaluation under … Continued
Popular elections and changes of government have a significant impact on the kinds of research that are prioritised. Julián D. Cortés and Catalina Ramírez draw on a study of research calls made by the Colombian government to explore how different governments have shaped research in the country and how evidence based approaches to tracking these changes … Continued
Reflecting on his appearances on the GB News channel to discuss issues relating to climate policy, Bob Ward argues that research communicators should engage in spaces where opposing views hold a monopoly. Over the past month I have been interviewed twice by Jacob Rees-Mogg on his television show on GB News, and have faced the … Continued
Last year saw significant changes in data protections laws across Europe, the UK and the USA. Daniel Spichtinger outlines how these changes have created a more complex but GDPR aligned regulatory environment for researchers. The management of research data has become an important part of ethical and legal compliance. Data protection laws pose challenges to researchers … Continued
Drawing on a study of 223,587 science news stories, Hao Peng, Misha Teplitskiy, and David Jurgens find that researchers with non-Anglo names are more likely to not be directly named in news stories and have their names replaced with those of their institutions. News media plays a key role in disseminating research findings to the … Continued
Following the announcement of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s new open access policy, Richard Sever assesses whether this change signals the beginning of a wider preprint-led open access transition. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the second largest charitable foundation in the world) recently announced a new open access (OA) policy. They will require … Continued
What exactly is a 4 star REF output or impact case study worth? Jon Collett runs the numbers and suggests how universities might use this information to shape submissions for REF 2029. With the announcements in summer 2023 of the next REF, I asked myself, how much are the REF2021 impact case studies and outputs worth … Continued
In policy and legal systems, focusing too narrowly on one discipline can lead to questionable conclusions. Tsuyoshi Hondou and Ismael Rafols introduce ‘Concurrent evidence’, as a framework to consider evidence from multiple disciplines to reach more robust decisions. Studies on transdisciplinary research (research that cuts across disciplinary and academic boundaries) often focus on how different … Continued
In The Big Con, Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington claim that our overreliance on the consulting industry has negative consequences for society, inhibiting knowledge transfer and corporate and political accountability. The authors expose how consultancies’ goal of “creating value” may not align with addressing major issues such as climate change, arguing convincingly for greater transparency and a revitalised public sector, writes Ivan … Continued
Reflecting on a recent LSE Library late hosted by The Women’s Library at LSE, Gillian Murphy considers the ongoing influence of the The Women’s Library on research, education, culture and society. “The reading room was buzzing!” “People talking about objects from my youth and events that I lived through as ‘archives’ made me feel … Continued
Considering how sustainability research fits into the landscape of academic publishing and responding to a critique that half of sustainability research adds little to the field, Thomas Bauwens, Denise Reike and Martin Calisto argue that rather than being misplaced, sustainability research offers new ways of thinking about how academic research can contribute to solving global … Continued
Demonstrating a specialism for research impact is an increasingly sought after attribute for academics, research adjacent staff and growing numbers of impact professionals. Drawing on work carried out to design a course in foundational knowledge for research impact, Ged Hall and Tamika Heiden explore three dimensions of research impact expertise. Having a combined total of … Continued
University rankings and their subsequent league tables presuppose higher education institutions exist in a linear hierarchical structure and that presenting information in this way is useful to perspective students. Deploying a comparable methodology to the rankers, Kyle Grayson and Paul Grayson argue that English universities largely fall into two non-hierarchical groups with comparable characteristics. The … Continued
In The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media, Emily Hund examines how digital creators seeking work after the 2008 financial crash spawned a multi-billion-dollar industry that has redefined culture, social media and advertising. Tracing the mass-marketisation of social influence, Hund unpicks the elusive concept of authenticity and offers an essential analysis of the “economics of influence,” write Mark Carrigan and Milan Stürmer. This … Continued
The environments and infrastructures that support research, such as research software and the engineers who develop it, are increasingly becoming a focus for research policymakers and funders. Eric A. Jensen and Daniel S. Katz present a call for participation in a new project aimed at better understanding and promoting the value of research software. In … Continued
The Manhattan Project is often invoked as a model for mission-driven research projects, such as the search for a Covid-19 vaccine. Daniel P. Gross and Bhaven N. Sampat argue that the broader U.S. approach to mobilising science and technology in World War II, led by the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), provides a … Continued
Drawing on the findings of a sustainability review of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Joanna Ball and Andrea Chiarelli reflect on why funding this type of resource is a complex endeavour. They consider challenges shared by all open scholarly infrastructures and tease out upcoming changes to DOAJ’s support mechanisms. Just after its 20th … Continued
Drawing on their experience of designing higher education courses centred on AI tools, Bert Verhoeven and Vishal Rana discuss how, rather than being a threat, AI can be used in ways that are compatible with traditional teaching methodologies and offer a golden opportunity to make course design learner centric. The ability of Large Language Models … Continued
English is often claimed as the international language of research and academia. However, important bibliodiverse scholarly traditions exist across the globe. Shubhada Nagarkar describes the UGC-CARE project and how efforts to list and record social science and humanities scholarly traditions in India, highlight the shifting boundaries of knowledge production in the country. Research published in … Continued
Drawing on qualitative evidence from community engaged academics, Wade B. Kelly and Lisa M. Given outline how two frameworks for context-informed, community engagement can support researchers and research institutions to foster social change. Effective community engagement, as a potential pathway to societal impact of research, requires deep understanding and adept navigation of the highly complex … Continued
The value of generative AI is often dismissed after it fails to produce coherent academic responses to single prompts. Mark Carrigan, argues that careless use of generative AI fails to engage with more interactive ways in which it can used to supplement academic work. The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 almost a year ago inaugurated … Continued
In Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds, Arseli Dokumacı argues that in the adaptive ways they improvise everyday tasks, disabled people demonstrate how all people can create a more habitable planet. Connecting ideas from the fields of ethnography, psychology, disability studies and performance studies, Dokumacı’s original work challenges normative, ableist conceptions of activism and environmental protection, writes Kostadin Karavasilev. … Continued
The recent launch of Threads, Meta Platform’s (formerly Facebook) answer to X (formerly Twitter), highlights how social media is undergoing a period of reinvention. However, drawing on a recent study of Meta’s corporate messaging around the launch of the Metaverse, Brent Lucia and Matthew Vetter, show how despite rhetorical offers of greater user freedoms, privacy … Continued
Drawing on survey data across a ten year period, Josh Borycz, Alison Specht, and Kevin Crowston, explore how attitudes to open data and more broadly open science have shifted and identify three factors that shape uptake of open science practices. Open Science is a game changer for researchers and the research community. The UNESCO Open … Continued
Considering the key skills required for effective research communication, Andy Tattersall, discusses how he has used AI tools to augment his work and what this might mean for academics and professionals looking to engage wider audiences. Depending on what you read, AI is either coming to take your job (and life), or heralding a new … Continued
As Twitter, now ‘X’, the preferred social media platform for academics, undergoes a period of change, Gina Sipley argues that part of what made the platform and may make new social media platforms attractive to academics, were the benefits it afforded to those who didn’t publicly engage with the platform, or ‘lurkers’. Like many around … Continued
In E-cigarettes and the Comparative Politics of Harm Reduction: History, Evidence and Policy, Virginia Berridge, Ronald Bayer, Amy L. Fairchild and Wayne Hall scrutinise the history underlying the current debate over electronic cigarettes. Exploring the reasons for contrasting public health approaches to nicotine use in the US, UK and Australia, this edited volume makes an important contribution to the discourse on e-cigarette policy and … Continued
Drawing on an analysis of academic contracts and the numbers of ethnic minority staff in the UK, Roxana-Diana Baltaru argues the value gained from strategic commitments to race equality in UK universities is limited by precarious and unequal job prospects offered by some institutions. Find a UK university that has not committed itself to achieving … Continued
Knowledge Brokering Organisations (KBOs) play an important role in the interface between research and policy. Drawing on a study of comparable international organisations, Eleanor MacKillop, James Downe and Hannah Durrant outline how they perceive their position and role as shapers and producers of evidence for policy. The rise of Knowledge Brokering Organisations (KBOs) has changed … Continued
Open science is increasingly becoming a policy focus and paradigm for all scientific research. Ismael Rafols, Ingeborg Meijer and Jordi Molas-Gallart argue that attempts to monitor the transition to open science should be informed by the values underpinning this change, rather than discrete indicators of open science practices. Following a flurry of policies and investments … Continued
Reflecting on his role as an academic and member of a research funding organisation, Duncan Green, considers how impact has in some ways still not become embedded in research culture and is often treated a bureaucratic hurdle to overcome. Because I have one foot in the LSE and one in Oxfam, I sometimes get hauled in … Continued
Artificial intelligence models are particularly good at pattern matching, one potential application of this is the development of tools that detect and identify author styles, a situation that has implications for nominally blind peer review processes. Drawing on a recent study, Leonard Bauersfeld, Angel Romero, Manasi Muglikar and Davide Scaramuzza show how this could be … Continued
Analysing the recent government messaging on the value of university education, Zoe Hope Bulaitis, argues this rhetoric drastically simplifies how and where higher education adds value to society. In a predictable manner, the calculation of the economic value of university courses continues to be the primary focus of the government’s interest in higher education in … Continued
Classrooms have become a focal point for a range of ‘culture war issues’. Daniel Beaudoin reflects on his own teaching practice and offers 8 pointers for maintaining a constructive learning environment in the classroom. If you are white (I am), male (I am), in a position of relative authority (I am), and disagree with something … Continued
Drawing on findings from a new report into how the social sciences, humanities and arts (SHAPE) disciplines are understood and deployed in policy and industry, Eleanor Hopkins suggests inconsistent reporting and incentives contribute underestimation of SHAPE’s value to research, development and innovation. The UK has a complicated history with research and development (R&D). At one … Continued
AI and algorithmic decision-making tools already influence many aspects of our lives and are likely to become increasingly embedded within businesses and governments. Drawing on recent research and examples from across the social sciences, Frederic Gerdon and Frauke Kreuter outline where and how social science is vital to the ethical use of algorithmic decision-making systems. … Continued
Considering a series of proposed policy changes by the National Institutes of Health, Micah Altman and Philip N. Cohen, argue they highlight wider systematic gaps in the evaluation of operational science policies and signal an urgent need to increase funding for metascience. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest public science funder in the world, has … Continued
In Anti-Racist Scholar-Activism, Remi Joseph-Salisbury and Laura Connelly explore how anti-racist scholar-activists navigate the challenges and leverage the opportunities of the university in pursuit of social justice. Illuminating the complicated, often uncomfortable position of the scholar-activist, this book is a valuable resource for anti-racist struggle both inside and outside academia, writes Camila Andrade. This blogpost originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. If you … Continued
New ways of analysing data from images and text are being used by economists to study discrimination in the labour market. A recent workshop, hosted by the Centre for Economic Performance and the Department of Social Policy at LSE, discussed cutting-edge research on discrimination and gender stereotypes in the field of economics. Conference organiser Almudena … Continued
Book reviews, let alone academic book reviews, have received many premature notices of their demise. However, as Christina Lembrecht and Vassiliki Gortsas, discuss alongside a crisis in authorship, reviews also run the risk of being excluded from funding for open access publication. The academic book review has been declared dead many times. There are many … Continued
Higher education institutions have long been locked in a Sisyphean struggle with students prepared to cheat on tests and assignments. Considering how generative AI reveals the limitations of current assessment regimes, Utkarsh Leo argues educators and employers should consider how an obsessive focus on grades has distorted teaching and learning in universities. Despite a long … Continued
Kaitlin Thaney argues the current momentum building for “no pays” academic publishing models and establishing the “reasonable costs” of publication, present opportunities to rebalance the inequities, costs, and power dynamics initially bred by the push towards Open Access “at any cost” over the past two decades. The EU Council’s recent call for immediate and unrestricted … Continued
The rise of digital networking and conference platforms in recent years has led many to question the value of conferences on environmental and accessibility grounds. Yet, one frequently cited example of their value is the opportunity for serendipitous unplanned interactions. Exploiting evidence from conference scheduling conflicts and subsequent publications, Misha Teplitskiy, Soya Park, Neil Thompson … Continued
The Council of the European Union recently announced its support for scholar-led open access infrastructures. Per Pippin Aspaas draws on the Norwegian concept of the ‘dugnad’ to project the kinds of social infrastructures scholar-led academic publishing requires and how they might be funded. On 23 May 2023, the Council of the European Union adopted its … Continued
In Data Paradoxes: The Politics of Intensified Data Sourcing in Contemporary Healthcare, Klaus Hoeyer examines the paradoxes surrounding healthcare data, looking at Denmark as a case study, arguing that increased data collection does not always result in more efficient services. The book’s extensive interdisciplinary research results in a rich guide for how we can think about our relationship to … Continued
With over a 100 million new users, the launch of Threads has a real potential to unseat Twitter as the default platform for academic social media. Taking stock of Threads, Andy Tattersall, examines the positives and negatives of the platform and suggests how it might develop as a platform for academic communication. When Facebook’s parent company … Continued
Interest in and recognition for communicating academic research in creative ways that reach different audiences is growing. Deborah Lupton reflects on how adopting the role of curator enabled her to bring together different skills, people and ideas to make research accessible in way that appeals across the senses. Currently showing in an exhibition space in … Continued
How does change happen in communities that have been persistently marginalised? Drawing on work for his recent book focused on successful movements for social change, Sascha Haselmayer argues against short-term interventions and fixes and for a ‘slow lane’ process of building trust and capabilities at the local level. In 2008, Rosanne Haggerty and her team … Continued
Discussing recent research into how the REF distorts research and academic publishing patterns in the UK Moqi Groen-Xu and Peter Coveney argue for a researcher, rather than a rules centred REF. All governance systems – states, parents, or research evaluations – fall on a spectrum between authoritarian and democratic. Authoritarian systems can be better in … Continued
Nicholas Barr dispels some of the commonly held myths around higher education funding and outlines the core elements of a financing system guided by principles of fairness and efficiency. This post originally appeared on the LSE British Politics and Policy Blog. Everyone knows that the welfare state exists to relieve poverty (the “Robin Hood” element). Less … Continued
The recent publication of a series of reviews and the early decisions for REF2028, has highlighted an increased focus on research cultures and environments that extend beyond traditional researchers and research publications. James Baker, Lyndsey Ballantyne, Neil Chue Hong, Gemma Derrick, Andy Dixon, Georgina Fletcher, Jude Fransmann, Simon Hettrick, Emma Karoune, Simon Kerridge, Kirsty Pringle, … Continued
Drawing on a large-scale comparative study of scholars in the UK and Germany on how pressure to publish is experienced across research careers, Marcel Knöchelmann, argues that the structural incentive to publish inherent to research assessment in the UK shapes a research culture focused on output and monologue at the expense of an engaged public … Continued
Drawing on recommendations from students and scholars, The Department of Methodology at LSE, presents ten books that address new ways of thinking and new interdisciplinary methodologies for exploring LGBTQ+ issues. The Department of Methodology at LSE is known for its interdisciplinary research and the teaching it delivers to thousands of LSE students each year. But … Continued
A PhD by publication, that is, a PhD submitted in the form of a dossier of published papers with varying degrees of connective writing, has become an increasingly common thesis format. However, as Lynn P. Nygaard and Kristin Solli point out, there are significant variations in how these pieces are put together. Outlining these differences … Continued
In OK, Michelle McSweeney charts the history of the word ‘OK,’ from its origins in the steam-powered printing press through inventions like the telegraph and telephone and into the digital age. McSweeney illustrates how the linguistic creativity accompanying technological change enabled this versatile word to transition through new modes of communication, writes Chris Featherman. This blogpost originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. If … Continued
Consultancies play an important role in developing policies and strategies for international agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO). Drawing on a recent study, Tine Hanrieder and Julian Eckl argue that consultants’ formidable ability to curate and draw together preferred evidence for influential case studies is enhanced by the low funding environment these agencies operate in. Consultants … Continued
In many disciplines across the social sciences there are debates around whether research and research writing are under-theorised or over-theorised. Gorgi Krlev, argues that whilst these debates can provide insights, they fail to clarify why and when theorising can be useful at all. To promote better theory making he presents a framework for thinking through … Continued
Altmetrics are generally seen as indicators for online engagement and attention. However, taking the field of political science as an example, Gustav Meibauer, Kiran Phull, Audrey Alejandro & Gokhan Ciflikli use altmetrics to analyse the dynamics of knowledge production in the field. Finding that altmetrics show a highly hierarchical and gendered spread of attention to … Continued
For their supporters, narrative academic CVs present a means to bypass aspects of a research evaluation culture that is overly focused on the volume and venue of publications. Drawing on a sample of work promoting this format, Frédérique Bordignon, Lauranne Chaignon and Daniel Egret, show how these texts more often foreground the problems they are … Continued
From esoteric passion projects to mainstream talk shows, academic podcasting, like the medium as a whole, has grown considerably over the past decade. Drawing on interviews with all kinds of academic podcasters as part of his new book, Ian M. Cook argues the future of the academic podcast is still undecided and that it continues … Continued
As teaching and learning in higher education increasingly becomes an online activity opportunities for and instances of cyberbullying have become more common. Drawing on a recent study of Canadian academics in Quebec, Jérémie Bisaillon and Stéphane Villeneuve¸ find cyberbullying to be endemic to academic life and that those affected often lack knowledge or institutional structures … Continued
Drawing on work for their new book, Kay Guccione and Jon Rainford, discuss how part-time doctoral students can manage the challenges and thrive, whilst undertaking part-time doctorial studies. “I’m only part-time” is a refrain we often hear from doctoral students as if their mode of study is inferior to those working on a doctorate full-time. … Continued
The ability to manipulate and generate images with new technologies presents various challenges to traditional media reporting and also scholarly communication. However, as Joshua Habgood-Coote discusses the history of fake images shows, rather than heralding a mass breakdown in trust, technological innovations have fed into ongoing social problems around the production of knowledge. We seem … Continued
Generative AI is causing many fields of expert and professional knowledge to reassess fundamental practices and their value. Taking law, a field that has long been warned of potential threats of automation, as a focus, Giulia Gentile outlines the socio-technical challenges facing the discipline and considers how new technology may rebalance relationships between lawyers, technologists … Continued
In How to Engage Policy Makers with Your Research: The Art of Informing and Impacting Policy, editors Syahirah Abdul Rahman, Lauren Tuckerman, Tim Vorley and Phil Wallace compile advice from a varied range of contributors on how academics can achieve research impact by connecting with policy makers. This practical resource takes stock of a growing impetus to facilitate pathways from academic research … Continued
During the COVID-19 pandemic it was regularly highlighted how the pandemic would create an opportunity for virtual/digital innovation and a reset of established ways of working. Reflecting on research carried out at the height of the pandemic, Sonja Marzi and Jen Tarr argue that in an increasingly precarious world, hybrid participatory methods offer new ways … Continued
As AI becomes increasingly entangled into different forms of knowledge work, Bert Verhoeven and Vishal Rana discuss how higher education can adapt to meet the needs of a changing labour market. Pointing to the limits of traditional forms of testing in higher education and the benefits of study in practice and authentic assessment, they argue … Continued
A decade on since their inception, Andy Tattersall considers how academics can make use of altmetrics in ways that go beyond counts and metrics. When the term altmetrics first appeared in September 2010, originating in a Tweet by ImpactStory co-founder Jason Priem, it sent a shudder down many an academic spine. A new set of … Continued
Since the UK decided to link research assessment to research funding, there have been critiques that the competitive nature of the REF assessment creates a winner takes all environment. Whilst this is difficult to assess, Banal-Estanol et al. use a novel method to evaluate UK research performance against that of a US-based counterfactual. They find … Continued
Bias in academia can often be difficult to pinpoint and separate out from difference. Responding to a recent call from the journal Nature to set new guidelines for studies dealing with race and ethnicity, Vincent A. Traag and Ludo Waltman, outline how concepts from causal inference can clarify approaches to studying gender bias in higher … Continued
In The Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education, editors Michelle Addison, Maddie Breeze and Yvette Taylor bring together contributors to reflect on the crisis of imposter syndrome in higher education. The book gives fascinating insight into ‘imposterism’ and offers useful context and advice to readers looking to understand their own experiences, writes Chris … Continued
In the aftermath of COVID-19, the Falkland Islands Government has taken concrete steps to tackle long-standing inequalities, prompted by evidence of the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on local communities. How was the evidence-policy gap bridged in this instance? Flora Cornish and Kate Cochrane reflect on relational policy-making in small countries. In early 2020, as governments … Continued
Responding to the publication of UKRI’s EDI strategy, Helen Kara and Linda Baines argue that by excluding the work of independent researchers, the strategy will struggle to achieve its objective of promoting an inclusive research system. Earlier this year, UKRI published its EDI strategy which, in their words, ‘outlines our ambition for a thriving research … Continued
In Social Media and Hate, Shakuntala Banaji and Ramnath Bhat explore the problem of hate speech on social media platforms, offering case studies of India, Brazil, Myanmar and the UK. The book is a timely and insightful exploration of the intersection of misinformation and social media hate in contemporary societies, writes Deshdeep Dhankhar. If you … Continued
There has been a marked trend for the increased use of hyperbolic adjectives in academic writing in recent decades. Drawing on a study of REF 2014 impact case studies, Ken Hyland finds this genre to include even greater degrees of hype than research writing and explores how this persuasive language is deployed differently across different … Continued
From undergraduate, to post-graduate research and practice, the discipline of economics is an outlier in its lack of diversity. Discussing findings from a recent Royal Economics Society report, ‘Who Studies Economics’, Stefania Paredes Fuentes and Tim Burnett argue that lack of diversity in economics across several dimensions continues to limit the variety and relevance economic … Continued
Despite high levels of informality, Africa’s statistics on COVID-19 mortality have been paradoxically low in comparison to countries in the Global North. Examining studies that attribute low counts to poor statistical reporting, Kate Meagher argues that excess death estimates tell us more about the assumptions of the modellers than they do about the realities of … Continued
Reflecting on the interplay of historical and social scientific concepts, Roland Betancourt discusses the extent to which current social and cultural trends influence the study of the past. Responding to critiques of current research being ‘presentist’, he argues for the value of historical research through its ability to enlighten understanding of both past and current … Continued
A decade on from the foundation of the What Works Network, an initiative designed to improve the use of social scientific evidence in the design and delivery of public services in the UK. Michael Sanders and Jonathan Breckon discuss their effectiveness and outline three ways they might be improved in the future. It is now a decade since … Continued
In Being You, Anil Seth takes us on a comprehensive tour through the science of consciousness, drawing on the most up-to-date data, lessons and theories in the field. This is a compelling book that will leave readers pondering whether new technologies and smart experimental designs will further deepen our understanding of the mind, writes Manh Tung Ho. This blogpost … Continued
Whilst the ability of generative AI to produce text in English has been widely covered, the implications of its ability to translate and act as a cultural broker into English have received less attention. Considering use contexts in education and research, Dimitrinka Atanasova, suggests higher education policymakers should adopt a cultural lens when developing policy … Continued
Drawing on findings from The Responsible Knowledge Exchange, Engagement and Impact (2021-23) project, Alis Oancea, Aileen Marshall-Brown and Juliet Scott-Barrett outline six factors to consider when designing policies and practices to promote responsible Knowledge Exchange, Engagement and Impact. Transparency, integrity and responsibility are intended to underpin all elements of research practice and almost all research … Continued
Academia is nominally an evidence-based profession, but when developing policy around academic careers and management, higher education institutions more often that not draw on individual experience and anecdote, rather than systematic knowledge. Discussing work for his recent book, The Quantified Scholar, Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, argues higher education still has much work to do before it … Continued
Using data is often seen as a technical or computational challenge, especially for organisations with multiple streams of data. However, as Sarah Morton and Ailsa Cook, discuss, the fundamental challenges faced by organisations using data are largely human. Highlighting the importance of making time for ‘sensemaking’, they argue careful analysis and discussion of data has … Continued
Similar to other ed-tech trends, generative AI has led to a lively debate and divide between those boosting the potential disruptive nature of the technology and more critical perspectives. Mark Carrigan argues that as generative AI is already making inroads into professional and student practice, the higher education sector cannot avoid engagement and should find … Continued
Drawing on data showing a decline in academic freedom over the past decade, David Audretsch, Christian Fisch, Chiara Franzoni, Paul P. Momtaz and Silvio Vismara, analyse the relation of academic freedom to technological innovation, as represented by patents, finding a quantifiable causal link between reduced academic freedom to lower levels of innovation. Academic freedom is … Continued
Research policy increasingly encourages academics to undertake different activities, such as research, teaching and academic service, yet academic time remains finite. Using the introduction of tuition fees in 2012 as a natural experiment within the UK, Francesco Rentocchini and Ugo Rizzo argue that the implicit focus fees introduced on teaching, limited English and Welsh academics’ … Continued
Success in academia is popularly linked to hard work and individual ability. However, a study of how academics describe their research careers suggests luck plays a significant role. Following this observation, Sarah R Davies and Bao-Chau Pham discuss how we might understand and interpret the role luck plays in academic success. Most academics would agree … Continued
Funding for Research Development and Innovation and the aim of the government to ‘level-up’ the UK and improve productivity are closely linked. However, Adrian Webb argues in its current form these investments often work against this agenda, a state of affairs that requires a renewed focus on the impact of these funds and how they … Continued
Since its purchase by Elon Musk last year, Twitter has undergone a series of rapid changes, largely with an eye to making the platform profitable. Considering these developments and those on other platforms, Mark Carrigan, suggests that just as academic social media has become relatively mainstream the dynamics underpinning academic engagement on social media have … Continued
Drawing on their work on a major international and interdisciplinary research project, Alla Konnikov, Irina Rets and Karen D Hughes provide four lessons for researchers undertaking similar projects to reflect on. Interdisciplinarity is vital to addressing complex social challenges and promoting innovative research. This is particularly true when exploring emerging topics, such as the role … Continued
In ‘Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity.’ Sander van der Linden expertly lays out strategies for counteracting misinformation, but also highlights how difficult creating a better information environment will be writes Christie Aschwanden. Foolproof, Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity. Sander van der Linden. Norton 2023. This review was originally … Continued
Wikipedia’s gender gap is well documented and presents a challenge for women social scientists, who may as a result find themselves less discoverable in the worlds most used reference work and potentially less cited and recognised as a result. Reflecting on their work on Sage’s recent Wikipedia edit-athon, Mariah John-Leighton and Hannah Jane Pearson discuss … Continued
Drawing on his study of recent developments in Mexican science policy, Luis Reyes-Galindo, discusses how common concepts from social science have been weaponised to the expense of academic freedom. Epistemic justice, decolonising the curriculum, ontological diversity, the democratisation of science and knowledge co-production are influential concepts across the humanities and social sciences. At heart, these … Continued
Generative AI presents clear implications for teaching and learning in higher education. Drawing on their experience as early adopters of ChatGPT and DALL.E2 for teaching and learning, Bert Verhoeven and Vishal Rana present four ways they can be used to promote creativity and engagement from students. The emergence of generative AI and the release of … Continued
Across countries in the global north the transition to open access to research has in recent years been driven largely through library consortia and national institutions striking transformative agreements with commercial publishers. Drawing on recent work on The University of Sheffield’s content strategy, Peter Barr argues that academic libraries can play a larger role in … Continued
To be an open researcher is more than simply openly sharing research papers. Marcel Bogers and Ian McCarthy, draw on their research on open practices in business research to outline four ways of leveraging social media to be more ‘open’ as a researcher, the potential trade-offs this can entail, and how it can help forge … Continued
Chinese researchers are increasingly leading scientific research, yet their contributions are not fully recognized, notably by US researchers. Shumin Qiu, Claudia Steinwender and Pierre Azoulay discuss the reasons why articles written by Chinese academics receive significantly fewer citations from US researchers than those written by non-Chinese researchers. Following China’s unprecedented rise as exporter of goods, … Continued
The concept of resilience is often positioned as a solution to social challenges, notably the unfolding climate crisis. However, as Benedikt Fecher, Ali Aslan Gümüsay, Stephan Bohn and Anna Jobin discuss, resilience on its own is insufficient without accountability. Linking resilience to the vastly increased powers of digital technology, for better or worse, to track, … Continued
What produces a happy society and a happy life? Richard Layard and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve suggest that through the new science of wellbeing, we can now answer this question empirically. Explaining how wellbeing can be measured, what causes it, and how it can be improved, they argue we are only at the beginning of a … Continued
Many research projects in the humanities and social sciences result in creative and artistic outputs, but whilst a sprawling and contested industry has emerged to monitor and evaluate written research outputs, the impact of visual art is less well understood. Drawing on a study using Q Methodology to evaluate an art exhibition, Lesley Brook discusses … Continued
Assessing the findings of a recent survey into the publishing practices of independent academic publishers, Danielle Padula, head of marketing and community development at Scholastica, finds these publishers to be moving incrementally towards fully open access models while still working to identify the options with the best long-term growth potential in the wake of recent … Continued
In Gender and the Dismal Science: Women in the Early Years of the Economics Profession, Ann Mari May explores the historical roots of gendered inequalities within economics. This is an excellent feminist reading of institutionalised discrimination within the discipline, writes Swetarani Tripathy. This blogpost originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. If you would like to contribute … Continued
Despite the prospect and existence of AI generated texts having been around for some time, the launch of ChatGPT has galvanized a debate around how it could or should be used in research and teaching. Putting aside the ethical issues of using AI in academic writing, Mark Carrigan argues that the dynamic of ChatGPT and … Continued
The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerated a trend in academic meetings and conferences to move from real world to digital environments. Whilst this has potential gains in accessibility and inclusivity, drawing on a study of physicists, Harry Collins and Will Mason-Wilkes* argue in person meetings are still vital in creating and sustaining academic communities. What are scientific … Continued
University communications functions can from the outside seem monolithic and impenetrable. Offering a brief overview of different kinds of research comms, Andy Tattersall suggests how researchers can navigate and work effectively with different professional communications staff. Academics and research groups unfamiliar with dissemination activities often come up against multiple challenges. Notably, academic departments are unlikely to … Continued
Drawing on her study of authors and publications across various journals focused on Asian Feminism, Francesca Earp finds that Asian feminist voices continue to be underrepresented. As these voices are critical to both the relevance of research in the region and in their contribution to wider feminist thought, she argues more needs to be done … Continued
How has digital open access transformed academic communication for the better? LSE Press’s Editor in Chief, Patrick Dunleavy, explores the impact of chapters in edited books. Once the Cinderella of academic publishing, doomed to obscurity under paywall books’ formal and de facto access restrictions, chapters in books are, thanks to digital open access, once again rivalling journal … Continued
Research and media stories often highlight how digital technologies have had a negative impact on our lives. But what might it mean to set out a vision of the ‘digital good’? Director of a new ESRC-funded network focused on the digital good, Helen Kennedy, outlines key debates in the field and how working across disciplines, … Continued
During the COVID-19 pandemic, preprint servers became a vital mechanism for the rapid sharing and review of vital research. However, discussing the findings of a recent report, Naomi Penfold finds much of the infrastructure supporting non-commercial preprint publications is precariously governed and at risk of being acquired by commercial publishers. The value of rapid sharing … Continued
Reflecting on a recent interview with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Mohammad Hosseini, Lex Bouter and Kristi Holmes, argue against a rapid and optimistic embrace of new technology in favour of a measured and evidence-based approach. The rapid rise of ChatGPT deserves special credit for having mainstreamed large language models … Continued
Empirical research on public sexual harassment relies on categorical (mostly binary) methodological approaches to gender. Ioanna Gouseti suggests shifting from categorical to continuous measurements of sex and gender and utilising interdisciplinary methodological perspectives, can help provide a more thorough understanding of the gendered nature of public sexual harassment and help develop more effective responses. Public … Continued
In the last three decades, spectrum auctions around the world have demonstrated the successful application of theory to practical regulatory processes to award licences to mobile phone companies to utilise valuable airwaves. In his new open-access book, Geoffrey Myers shows how theory and practice are intertwined in a continual cycle of learning and improvement. The … Continued
Research is often reported on and assessed in singular, rather than aggregate terms. For example, single papers, datasets and findings. As a debate around the way research syntheses are valued within national research systems, such as the REF, continues, Michael Matthews and Thomas Kelemen advocate for the benefits of meta-research for communicating and making sense … Continued
Rosalind Edwards and Pamela Ugwudike discuss how the increased use of linked social data and predictive machine learning is changing the state’s relationship to families, from the here and now to an anticipated future and from one grounded in a sociological context to one of larger group pattern matching. Suggesting how this could facilitate a … Continued
Research Impact, especially as conceptualised in the Research Excellence Framework, is often seen as bounded within a clearly defined project timeframe. In this post, Ryan Nolan, discusses how the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) Programme, has developed an interdisciplinary and long-term approach to research impact by focusing on education and community building. The importance … Continued
Racist and classist mechanisms within higher education are often presented as abstract intangible processes that produce unequal outcomes for those attending university from non-traditional backgrounds. Drawing on evidence from their new book, Kalwant Bhopal and Martin Myers, argue whilst racism and classism can be systemic, it also directly and in plain sight supports and rewards … Continued
Social structures are often invoked as the cause of various problems in society. In this post, Lauren N. Ross discusses how social structural causes can be understood as constraints and why clarity on this point is not just a problem of definition, but important for addressing key policy issues. Some causes are harder to understand … Continued
In Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History, Andie Tucher explores how journalistic practice has often pivoted on disinformation throughout US history. This is a first-rate study that will give readers a greater understanding of the origins, role and impact of fake news in the past and present, writes Jeff Roquen. … Continued
Discussing the findings of a study of over 40,000 academic job ads, Lilia Mantai and Mauricio Marrone, highlight how the skills required for academic progression differ over career stage and geography. The skills required to progress from PhD to professor – the classic academic trajectory –are not at all clear, despite lots being written on … Continued
The word nostalgia connects a sense return and homecoming with sadness, and was originally used in a medical sense to describe the melancholy felt by soldiers fighting away from home. In this post Mary Evans considers how nostalgia for a past academy presents both a painful reckoning for UK higher education’s imperial legacy and current … Continued
Discussing their analysis of a new dataset of journals published via the Open Journals Systems publishing platform, Saurabh Khanna, Jon Ball, Juan Pablo Alperin and John Willinsky argue that rather than being an aspiration an open, regional and bibliodiverse publishing ecosystem is already in existence. While no one really knows how many academic journals exist in the world, our recent study … Continued
Despite being the focus of sustained critique university rankings have proven a resilient feature of academic life. Considering the recent moves by U.S. institutions to remove themselves from rankings, Julian Hamann and Leopold Ringel explore this relationship and suggest rankers and their critics in fact play a role in sustaining each other. Shock waves rippled … Continued
In Digital Lethargy: Disparities from An Age of Disconnection, Tung-Hui Hu explores digital lethargy as the burnout, exhaustion and restlessness experienced under digital capitalism. Neo Yee Win recommends this thought-provoking and innovative book to anyone seeking different perspectives on how to view and navigate digital infrastructures. This blogpost originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. If … Continued
Reflecting on comparisons with the US and the results of the recent International Research Integrity Survey (IRIS), George Gaskell, Nick Allum, Miriam Bidoglia and Abigail-Kate Reid argue that robust research integrity cultures depend on support from different institutions across the research ecosystem. The journal Nature has in recent years featured hundreds of pieces on research … Continued
Global society is beset with many ‘wicked problems’ that are unlikely to be resolved by traditional disciplinary research methods. In this post, Kristina Bogner, Michael P. Schlaile and Sophie Urmetzer discuss the concept of transformative research and how it can be applied to create the conditions for a sustainable and just transition in mobility. The … Continued
As speculation mounts that ChatGPT might replace Google Search, Tristan Greene cuts through the hype, arguing ChatGPT at present cannot replicate Google’s search function – “Saying ChatGPT will replace search is like saying podcasts will replace universities. They do two different things.” This article was originally published on Undark, you can read the original article here. Since OpenAI unveiled … Continued
Despite the efforts of journals and editors to the contrary, the well-known academic folk-devil, Reviewer 2 continues to make the lives of researchers miserable. Gorgi Krlev and Andre Spicer draw on a recent encounter with reviewer 2 and the subsequent twitterstorm over what counts as epistemic respect. They explain what epistemic respect means, what needs … Continued
Reflecting on the ongoing professionalisation of academic communication and increased opportunities for researchers to engage, Andy Tattersall argues researchers and research funders should be mindful of the communication requirements of their projects and factor them into their bids and tenders. As recently as a decade ago, almost all research communications were at best tagged onto … Continued
There is often a presumption amongst scientists that communicating the evidence on a given issue is on its own persuasive enough to change minds. Anne H. Toomey argues thinking in this way itself ignores evidence from other fields of research and presents four ways by which researchers can engage with findings from the social sciences … Continued
During the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, the public heard government ministers ask for the ‘next slide please’ on a near-daily basis. Charts and infographics featured on national television like never before. But as William Allen, Justyna Bandola-Gill, and Sotiria Grek report in new research, the use of these images reflected and conveyed … Continued
As nominations for this year’s prize open, Madawi Al-Rasheed reflects on the experience of judging the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding and considers how research based non-fiction writing can reach beyond local and disciplinary concerns to engage global audiences. Serving as jury member of the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural … Continued
In New Mediums, Better Messages?, editors David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock explore how international development is being represented and understood through new insights from practitioners working across a range of communications media. This volume moves forward critical conversations on cultural production about global poverty and development, showing the need for input from producers, consumers and the voices of those … Continued
In this blog post Mike Thelwall, Kayvan Kousha, Paul Wilson, Mahshid Abdoli, Meiko Makita, Emma Stuart and Jonathan Levitt discuss the results of a recent project for UKRI that made recommendations about whether artificial intelligence (AI) could be used as part of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It assessed whether AI could support or replace the decisions … Continued
In Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts, Bec Evans and Chris Smith offer a concise guide to readers looking to develop effective writing practices tailored to personalised writing styles. ‘Written’ will be an invaluable guide to those looking to find new ways to approach their own academic writing and to … Continued
The growth of original, AI-generated content demands that we reconsider methods of student assessment. Clare Williams explores the impact of ChatGPT on pedagogy, identifying three current weaknesses that instructors might bear in mind when setting student assessment questions. Recently, an instructor from a higher education institution in the United States posted this on Reddit: Figure … Continued
Historically, there has been a tight link between journals, journal publications and a community of scholars working in specific fields of research who contribute to and manage them. As journal publishing has become a global undertaking and moreover, an undertaking that is increasingly mediated through online digital interactions, Aileen Fyfe asks, do we need to … Continued
There is often an assumption in evidence based policy, that evidence means the findings of quantitative studies or randomised control trials. However, in practice evidence is often understood differently. Drawing on a study of Welsh policy actors, Eleanor MacKillop and James Downe highlight four different approaches to evidence in policymaking and suggest how researchers and … Continued
Reflecting on nearly twenty years of transdisciplinary practice and research and the recent publication of their new book, New Mediums, Better Messages? How Innovations in Translation, Engagement, and Advocacy are Changing International Development, David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock consider how the role of popular and vernacular knowledge is essential to international development. Launched … Continued
Want to know what the ten most read LSE Impact Blog posts were this year? We count down the ten most read blogposts published in 2022. 10. Requiem for a Tweet – Is there a future for the academic social capital held on the platform? As the real possibility of platform death looms for Twitter, Mark Carrigan reflects … Continued
The ways in research shapes and influences the wider world are a key focus of the LSE Impact Blog. This post brings together eleven of the top posts on the subject of research impact that featured on the LSE Impact Blog in 2022. The true costs of knowledge exchange – a checklist Planning and budgeting … Continued
Research communication is a moveable feast and as varied as the media and communication channels used to reach an intended audience. This annual review pulls out eleven posts focusing on different aspects of research communication that have been featured on the LSE Impact Blog in 2022. The focus on misinformation leads to a profound misunderstanding … Continued
From the war in Ukraine to the politics of citation, this annual review brings together twelve posts that explore issues in higher education and how they are shaped by the world within and without the ivory tower. The responsibility of intellectuals in times of war War is a quintessentially social phenomenon that has provoked thinkers … Continued
This post brings together ten of the best pieces focused on the practice and particularities of academic writing published on the LSE Impact Blog in 2022. New AI tools that can write student essays require educators to rethink teaching and assessment AI tools are available today that can write compelling university level essays. Taking an … Continued
Froom books to papers, in 2022 longstanding ways of producing and thinking about academic publications have been in a state of flux. This post brings together ten of the best posts on the theme of the culture of academic publishing that were published on the LSE Impact Blog this year. Five lessons from four centuries … Continued
Drawing on research from their recently published edited collection, Syahirah Abdul Rahman, Lauren Tuckerman and Tim Vorley explore the diversity of ways in which academics can engage with policymakers and consider how these interactions can change over the course of research careers. Policy engagement in academia is increasingly encouraged by universities, and is required as … Continued
The role of AI in the production of research papers is rapidly moving from being a futuristic vision, towards an everyday reality; a situation with significant consequences for research integrity and the detection of fraudulent research. Rebecca Lawrence and Sabina Alam argue that for publishers, collaboration and open research workflows are key to ensuring the … Continued
Drawing on work carried out for the Realising Just Cities programme, Beth Perry discusses how co-production enabled participants to collectively develop and refine a form of critique that can drive positive change. The challenge of measuring and valuing the impact of co-produced research has been widely recognised by academics. One reason why this is the … Continued
In Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button – available open access from University of Westminster Press – Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake explore digital disconnection across fields including health, the welfare system, citizenship and education. This urgent book uses a suspenseful narrative to understanding of the impacts of enforced digitality, writes Trine Syvertsen. This blogpost originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. … Continued
The transition towards open access to research articles has become a question of how, rather than why and the rise of transformative agreements has enabled publishers to strike agreements with large institutions and national research organisations to provide open access and authorship to their members. In this post, Arthur J. Boston puts forward an alternative … Continued
Reflecting on Twitter’s trajectory under the ownership of Elon Musk, Charlie Beckett, suggests recent events have highlighted both the value of the platform for mass-communication and how pre-existing tensions on the platform are similar to those experienced by traditional media organisations. A combination that is most likely to end in further regulation. There are a … Continued
The continuing development of AI generated writing has led to a debate around its use in higher education. In this post, Simone Natale and Leah Henrickson, draw on their research into computational creativity and introduce the concept of the ‘Lovelace Effect’, to explain how creativity is often a product of social conventions and why as … Continued
Reporting on their findings from qualitative research project focused PhD students across China, Hugo Horta and Huan Li explore how a culture of publication has become central to doctoral study and discuss how this can negatively impact wider aspects of academic life. Doctoral students are increasingly expected to have their research results published during their … Continued
In The Science and Art of Interviewing, Kathleen Gerson and Sarah Damaske offer a new overview of why interviewing is a useful and powerful research tool and how we can make better use of it. Guiding us through the process, from identifying our research questions to reporting our findings, this book makes a compelling case for interviewing as a research … Continued
Policymakers may have ballpark ways to figure out what is ‘going on out there’, but the sure-fire way to know whether a policy is achieving its intended outcomes, for whom, and to learn lessons, is to evaluate. Raj Patel examines the challenges of assessing social, economic and public health interventions – and how longitudinal data … Continued
The editorial guidelines for academic book reviews regularly instruct authors to focus on the content of the works being reviewed, rather than the authors. But, how far does this hold true in practice? Drawing on evidence from historical book reviews, Sjang ten Hagen argues the personal has in fact played a prominent role in book … Continued
For some academics being asked to write a research blogpost can feel like shouting into the void, another addition to a constantly expanding mass of online content. However, the network of connections that can spring out of these engagements and their potential to influence the wider world are significant, and they are also increasingly traceable. … Continued
The phenomenon of predatory publishing is well known following the work of Jeffrey Beall and others in highlighting and popularising the issue. In a new book titled The Predator Effect, Simon Linacre draws on his experience in tackling deceptive publishing practices, and urges the scholarly communications industry to focus, less on predatory publishing as a … Continued
In this cross-post, Christie Aschwanden reviews James Vincent’s Beyond Measure, The Hidden History of Measurement, finding a book which highlights the social complexity and limits to measurement, whilst at the same time opening up new ways of knowing the world. Today, we take it for granted that we can reliably measure precisely how hot or cold something … Continued
As the real possibility of platform death looms for Twitter, Mark Carrigan reflects on the role of the platform as stage for the accumulation of academic social capital and urges academics, learned societies, funders and those involved in the field of scholarly communications to think carefully about their role in the future of online academic … Continued
Responding to a recent paper supporting the implementation of double-anonymised peer review criteria as a means of reducing bias in favour of high profile academics, Serge P.J.M. Horbach, Tony Ross-Hellauer and Ludo Waltman, suggest open peer review may be more effective at bringing to light and mitigating different biases in peer review. Discussions about bias … Continued
The collection and analysis of data about us now occurs across many aspects of everyday life, but how do people come to understand these complex processes? Drawing on Living With Data research, Susan Oman, Hannah Ditchfield and Helen Kennedy show that people’s understandings of data uses are based on past experiences and predictions about the … Continued
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the potential strengths and existing weaknesses of open science practices and open data sharing to addressing urgent social and technological challenges. In this post, Lucia Loffreda and Rob Johnson present a new report from the UK Government’s Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, highlighting how support for open data and … Continued
In a previous blogpost Colette Einfeld and Emma Blomkamp argued bringing together nudges and co-design in practice illuminated fundamental differences underlying these approaches. Reflecting on a project to improve healthy food choices in a hospital setting, Colette Einfeld and Sarah Allen, explore how these tensions emerge in practice and suggest how this might inform the … Continued
The fate of Twitter, both for academics and everyone else, has been a pressing issue in the past weeks. In this post Andy Tattersall argues that whilst individual academics could quite easily leave the platform, the centrality of Twitter to academic institutions makes a wholesale departure unlikely. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has ignited much … Continued
It would be difficult to develop new ideas if everyone you associated with was hostile to them. The varying degrees of safety provided by the exclusion of people and ideas opposed to certain forms of knowledge is thus an often unacknowledged part of knowledge work. However, whilst this can be benign, it can also lead … Continued
As the world focuses its attention on COP-27 the question of what role science and researchers should play in driving the response to the Climate Crisis is central. As researchers in growing numbers subscribe to movements, such as Scientist Rebellion, Giuseppe Delmestri argues that researchers have a duty to take positions that align with their … Continued
In Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project that Matters to You (and the World), Thomas S. Mullaney and Christopher Rea offer a new guide to deciding on your research topic and formulating your research questions to develop a project that really matters. This easy-to-follow, innovative and empowering book may help to make the next search for research questions easier … Continued
After much speculation, Twitter has been acquired by Elon Musk. In this post, Mark Carrigan asks, if now is the time to rethink academic twitter by separating out the knowledge exchange and academic community building functions that have up to this point taken place side by side on Twitter. It finally happened. After months of … Continued
Following the publication of the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment under the auspices of the European Commission, countries across Europe are reconsidering their research assessment systems and policies and how they might align more closely to the qualitative and contextualised aspirations for research assessment set out in the consensus document. Ismael Ràfols and Jordi Molas-Gallart … Continued
A central tenet of research policy is that funding and the ability to form research collaborations produces better research. However, whilst this may hold true for incremental research building on existing knowledge, does it also support novel research? Drawing on a recent quantitative study, Dieter F. Kogler and colleagues argue that non-funded blue-sky research is … Continued
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted academic lives differentially, not the least of which, those who have lost relatives and live with the effects of the virus. For other groups, such as carers and academic parents, the pandemic has brought about a significant disruption to their working lives, but how exactly can this be accounted for? … Continued
In Horizon Work: At the Edge of Knowledge in an Age of Runaway Climate Change, Adriana Petryna explores ‘horizoning’ as a conceptual device that sets up new ranges and circumstances for action in the face of climate crisis. Drawing on interviews with emergency responders, climate and wildlife scientists and Indigenous groups, Petryna’s anthropological approach introduces nuanced human and cultural perspectives … Continued
For the past seven years, The City-Region Economic Development Institute (City-REDI) has worked to develop evidence- based policy engaged research at city and regional scale. In this post, Simon Collinson, Rebecca Riley, and Anne Green reflect on the experience of developing City-REDI and the factors that have enabled it to produce research tailored to the … Continued
Launched in 2021 by cOAlition S (an international consortium of research funders) the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) aims to ensure that researchers funded by these organisations retain the rights to their work. Reflecting on the implementation of the strategy a year after its launch, cOAlition S Ambassador Sally Rumsey, outlines the aims of the RRS … Continued
Drawing on research from their recently published and open access history of publishing at the Royal Society, Camilla Mørk Røstvik, discusses how a long view of scientific publication can help us better understand and better respond to current controversies in scholarly publishing. Academic publishing is a peculiar beast. Some is free to read, some behind … Continued
As large commercial publishers adapt their business models to profit from an increasingly open access (OA) scholarly publishing landscape, there has been an increased focus on alternate scholar-led and diamond forms of open access. Andrea E. Pia and Filippo Zerilli, argue that to effectively compete and outcompete traditional publishers and bibliometrics, scholar-led publications can learn … Continued
In Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School – But Didn’t, Marc F. Bellemare offers a new guide to research economists to help equip them with the practical tools for ‘doing economics’. This book will be an excellent starting point for young students of economics who are thinking of pursuing a career in academia, writes Ritwika … Continued
In A Research Agenda for Experimental Economics, Ananish Chaudhuri brings together researchers in behavioural economics to explore the contribution of decision-making experiments to social science research. This wide-ranging collection will be of value to both newcomers and experts in the field, writes Egor Bronnikov. This blogpost originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. If you would like to contribute to … Continued
In recent years, a new wave of climate activist groups, such as Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future and the Sunrise Movement have reshaped public debates on climate action. In so doing they refer to scientific evidence. But, how exactly do they understand science’s relationship to society? Drawing on documentary evidence, Simone Rödder argues that the … Continued
Drawing on a recent survey of forty years of research papers in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and interviews with authors, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Kean Birch, Thed van Leeuwen and Maria Amuchastegui observe an increasing homogenisation of published work. Weighing up the pros and cons of this development, they discuss whether it has … Continued
It is often taken as a given that higher education shapes the politics of students. However, drawing on evidence from the British Election Study, Tom Fryer finds students’ political attitudes do not change radically during their studies. Instead, students make modest movements to the left and become less ethnocentric, indicating overall a slight shift of … Continued
In Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control, Vili Lehdonvirta argues that the internet has become ruled by Silicon Valley despots who govern new marketplaces and need to be held more accountable, writes James Muldoon. This blogpost originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. If you would like to contribute to the … Continued
In qualitative research building a rapport and friendships with participants is often presented as a means to gain access and data from research participants. However, as Helen Kara discusses, using friendship in an instrumental way presents serious ethical issues for researchers. Trainee qualitative researchers, learning the most popular research method of interviewing, are routinely taught to use … Continued
Drawing on her book, Cut/Copy/Paste, Whitney Trettien reflects on the history of radical bookwork and what it can teach us about digital publishing today. (This feature essay first appeared on the LSE Review of Books Blog). John Mansir Wing (1844-1917) was something of a character. A printer, typesetter, publisher and newspaper reporter, he retired early in Chicago at 44 … Continued
In How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future, Vaclav Smil explores seven fundamental areas that govern human survival and prosperity, covering topics such as food production, energy and globalisation. While Smil’s educational efforts to expose some of the sinews of our modern economy are salutary, Iancu Daramus questions the book’s vision of the … Continued
As academic conferences and events re-emerge after a period of COVID-19 induced absence, Mark Carrigan, takes stock of the new post-pandemic world of academic meetings and provides four strategies for how academics can productively navigate and build networks in a world of hybrid interactions. I hesitate to use the term ‘networking’. There are few words … Continued
From the dawn of the popular internet in the 1990s to the present day, Open Access (OA) to scholarly research has been a goal for many researchers and advocates. Drawing on research into the early OA discourse of the 1990s, Corina MacDonald argues that many of the original optimistic arguments in favour of open access … Continued
Twitter can be written off as a distinctly unserious medium, a place for fads, bullying and the latest cat videos. However, as Steve Fuller discusses the unique format of a tweet can also be a space for concision, constructive ambiguity as well as a technology for teaching complex ideas. In October 2011, relatively early in … Continued
The introduction of impact into the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the results it provided had a transformative effect on perceptions and approaches to research impact. However, REF 2021 and the results of the first KEF have had a more subdued reception. Vincent W Mitchell argues a reason for this is a lack of … Continued
Misinformation has been a prominent paradigm in the explanation of social, political, and more recently epidemiological phenomena since the middle of the last decade. However, Daniel Williams argues that a focus on misinformation is limiting when used to explain these phenomena. Primarily, as it distracts us from more important ways in which information can be … Continued
The recent announcement by the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) set out a requirement for all federally funded research to be made immediately publicly accessible and in so doing has significantly accelerated a transition to Open Access publication models in the U.S. In this post Jeff Pooley argues that the proposals may also … Continued
Universities have only relatively recently started to invest in professional services relating to research communication, the impact agenda and in so doing policy engagement. Drawing on a survey of policy engagement functions in UK higher education institutions, Hannah Durrant and Eleanor MacKillop (Wales Centre for Public Policy, Cardiff University) identify four types of bodies with … Continued
In Driving With Strangers: What Hitchhiking Tells Us about Humanity, Jonathan Purkis argues that the nature of hitchhiking and its place in the world has important things to tell us both about who we are and who we might be. This hopeful book suggests that if we could harness the mutuality and generosity brought to the forefront during … Continued
Early career researchers have both been the most directly effected by the COVID-19 pandemic and responsible for some of the most innovative responses to it. Reporting on findings from the Harbingers-2 study, Dave Nicholas discusses how the international cohort followed by the study has adapted to an emerging ‘new scholarly normality’. Writing about Harbingers-2 in … Continued
Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic promoted faster and more open research practices, it also revealed ongoing issues of research waste, and the widespread duplication of research efforts. Till Bruckner provides evidence for how research waste continues to impact medicine and other fields and highlights the positive steps several funders have taken to promote the responsible publication … Continued
Literature and in particular science fiction is often seen as being prefigurative to the development of science and technology. Whilst this can on occasion be the case, drawing on a study of AI researchers and their reading and viewing material, Sarah Dillon discusses how literature and other media can have structuring effects on the formation, … Continued
In Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization: Practical Tools for Improving Teaching, Research, and Scholarship, Abby Day, Lois Lee, Dave S.P. Thomas and James Spickard bring together academics from across the globe to explore tangible actions those within the academy can take to foster diversity, inclusion and decolonisation. If there were a global syllabus for academics, this collaborative work should be required reading, writes Ellen … Continued
Reflecting on seven years of UK in a Changing Europe, Anand Menon and Jill Rutter discuss how the project has brought social science insights into the mainstream of a polarised public debate. Highlighting how this mode of engagement falls outside of orthodox ‘REF Impact’ and lessons learned, they suggest there are further opportunities to deploy … Continued
You’re writing a grant application, and you want to make a strong case for open science! You’ve seen colleagues use language from human rights treaties to support their arguments for open work in the past: but what does that actually mean? Does international human rights law really say that science should be open? In this … Continued
In this cross-post, Christina Boswell introduces a newly developed tool to help researchers map the activities they are engaged with the aim of exposing where activity is clustered. The tool has been designed to help researchers be more strategic and selective in what they take on and supports reflection about career priorities and goals. When I … Continued
Discussing recent trends in European science diplomacy, Kapil Patil and Maria Rentetzi argue that the post-Cold War consensus of high-level co-operation is giving way to more fractured and politicised model grounded in geo-political competition. The war in Ukraine is causing a fundamental rethink in Europe’s post-Cold War attempts to build a mutually interdependent global science … Continued
Drawing on a recent analysis of APC pricing and movements within the commercial publishing sector, Gunnar Sivertsen and Lin Zhang argue that APCs have now firmly established themselves as the predominant business model for academic publishing. Highlighting the inequalities inherent to this model, they posit now is the time to consider alternatives. In 2020 we … Continued
If you have read any research produced by universities, civil society organisations or think tanks, you will most likely have struggled to find any good jokes. However, throughout history, humour has played an important role in critiquing society and raising social issues to a popular audience. Drawing on a recent example of using humour to … Continued
In COVID-19 Collaborations: Researching Poverty and Low-Income Family Life during the Pandemic — available open access— Kayleigh Garthwaite, Ruth Patrick, Maddy Power, Anna Tarrant and Rosalie Warnock bring together contributors to explore the experiences of low-income families during the COVID-19 pandemic. This timely collection is not only an insightful reflection on the impact of the pandemic, but also a toolkit for moving forward through the next … Continued
Responding to a call for renewed thinking about how we understand and measure social science impact by Ziyad Marar, Ron Kassimir, outlines how the way in which impact is figured in the social sciences is often dependent on those external to its production. Returning to three fundamental questions around where social science makes a difference, … Continued
For many research disciplines English functions as the global language for research. But, how far does this align with patterns of research use globally? Drawing on download evidence from the OAPEN library of open access books, Ronald Snijder explores this global demand for open research and finds significant demand for regional research and research published … Continued
AI and algorithms shape many aspects of our everyday life, from the familiar algorithms structuring our social media feeds, to those subtly transforming more complex fields, such as policymaking and commerce. Stuart Mills argues that as these choice architects become increasingly autonomous and automatic, and produce nudges that are difficult if not impossible to explain, … Continued
European research policies and national research systems encourage researchers, especially PhD and post PhD, to relocate and change institutions. However, discussing new research, Marco Seeber identifies a broken pipeline between those moving institutions and those going on to achieve senior positions that has serious implications for early career researchers. Exploring the reasons for this gap, … Continued
In A Handbook for Wellbeing Policy-Making, Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel offer a new guide to wellbeing-driven public policy, focusing on the proposal to replace GDP with wellbeing as the key metric to assess societal progress. With the book comprehensively exploring the theoretical and methodological assumptions and implications of the wellbeing approach, Paulo Anciaes recommends this timely work to practitioners at all … Continued
Two recent papers have again brought into question the value and effectiveness of ‘nudge’ based policy interventions. Tony Hockley argues that as much as these studies reveal about nudge policies, they say more about the complex way social and behavioural science concepts have moved into the mainstream of policymaking. Pursuing impact can be a disturbing … Continued
Current images of AI – widely used and available in stock libraries – are dominated by tropes such as white humanoid robots, blue backgrounds, glowing brains and science fiction imagery. Research into narratives as forms of sense-making AI has shown that these can impede the public understanding of AI, mask human agency, and reinforce damaging … Continued
In Thinking Like a Climate: Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change, Hannah Knox offers a new ethnographic study of the local dynamics of climate change, focusing on the city of Manchester. This detailed analysis of local climate politics illustrates the need for a wholesale reconfiguration of how we think about human-nature relations and act collectively to … Continued
Research communication can often seem like a monolith, if you want to take your research beyond the walls of the university then do x-y-z. As Andy Tattersall describes, there are in fact many hands and styles of work that contribute to effective research communications. Outlining four styles of research communication he suggests knowing how to … Continued
Relations between Namibia and its former coloniser, Germany, are impacted by ongoing negotiations about reparations for a brutal and violent past. The 1904-8 genocide that decimated large parts of the indigenous population continues to cast a shadow in the present. One overlooked aspect, writes Tycho van der Hoog, is the Namibian book market, where German-Namibian publishing … Continued
In Creative Universities: Reimagining Education for Global Challenges and Alternative Futures, Anke Schwittay proposes imaginative strategies to secure radical change to higher education and resist the instrumentalisation and commodification of knowledge, teaching, learning and research. This powerful, bold, vivid and engaging account is an antidote to the challenges of our times and offers a critical-creative-imaginative manifesto for alternative educational and … Continued
Academic success is regularly framed in terms of a particular set of publishing activities that disadvantages women. In this post, Katie Wilson and Lucy Montgomery discuss their recent research into how women researchers have pioneered the use of open access and the potential this could have for developing programmes that support more diverse and equitable … Continued
Podcasts have become an established part of university communications and public engagement activities. Reflecting on the development of the medium and the creation of the ‘Isolation Pod’ podcast during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK, Mark Carrigan makes the case for the wider use of podcasts by academics in a lo-fi fashion, where increasingly … Continued
Almost all qualitative and quantitative research into human society involves the participation of other humans. However, they are frequently rendered passively in research outputs as ‘research subjects’. In this post, Helen Kara, argues that the way we define participants in research is outdated and presents three ways in which research participants can be made more … Continued
In Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork, Whitney Trettien explores how seventeenth-century English publishers cut up and reassembled paper media into radical, bespoke publications, arguing that this ‘bookwork’ contributes to understanding digital scholarship and publishing today. Through its magnetic prose that narrates weird and joyous entanglements with the printed word, Trettien reveals that the lives of books are … Continued
Improving scientific publishing is often framed as an issue of openness and speed and less often as one of context. In this post, Ludo Waltman and Jessica Polka make the case for a more contextualised approach to open access publishing and preprinting, and introduce the Publish Your Reviews initiative. Launched today by ASAPbio, the initiative … Continued
Students, even those from different countries and cultures are all too often thought of as a homogenous bloc. Drawing on research undertaken for their new book, Constructing the Higher Education Student, Rachel Brooks discusses the different ways in which students are imagined, by themselves, as well as policymakers and educators in Europe. Assumptions are often … Continued
Reporting on the findings of a recent survey of learned society members, Jonathan Roscoe discusses how diversity, equity and inclusion has become an increasingly salient issue for learned societies and suggests how societies might adapt to be more inclusive. Learned societies are central to the way academics organise to collaborate, publish research and promote their … Continued
The role of bibliometrics, such as impact factors and h-indices, in shaping research has been well documented. However, what function do these measures have beyond the institutional contexts in which, for better or worse, they were designed? Commenting on a study of bibliometrics in the Italian press, Eugenio Petrovich, shows how these numbers play important … Continued
In COVID-19 and Psychology: People and Society in Times of Pandemic, John G. Haas explores the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at all levels of society. This book will be useful for those in the social sciences, policymakers and the general public looking to understand how to build resilience through social support and combat the fear of … Continued
Reflecting on work uncovering the colonial genealogies of foundational works in the social sciences, Gurminder K Bhambra argues for a reparatory social science and highlights three challenges that any reparatory project must face in order to be successful. Sociology, and the broader social sciences, are shaped by the idea that the ‘modern’ world is … Continued
Planning and budgeting knowledge exchange activities can often be a black box exercise, with activity occurring in an ad-hoc and un-costed fashion. Drawing on case studies of successful knowledge exchange projects, Denis Karcher and Chris Cvitanovic present a framework for where costs fall in knowledge exchange processes and a checklist for researchers looking to plan … Continued
University rankings are often presumed to be value neutral, creating equal opportunities for the institutions they order to compete around fixed indicators of quality. However, highlighting new collaborative research, Roxana Baltaru shows how university rankings in the UK have differential effects, producing divergent incentives and pressures for institutions to respond to them. The financial sustainability … Continued
The shift to ‘open’ working across the social sciences as a discipline group entails a welcome but demanding cultural change. Yet, Patrick Dunleavy argues that there have already been three false starts: focusing only on isolated bits of the open agenda in ways that don’t connect and so are not meaningful; loading researchers with off-putting, … Continued
In Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation, Carolyn Pedwell examines how social change can be enacted through everyday habits and routinised practices, arguing that such ‘minor’ gestures may be just as transformative as major events. This exploration of the conditions of political possibility is an important endeavour, write Alice Menzel and Jessica Pykett, and will be of particular interest to … Continued
The chances are at some point you have looked at a text you have been highlighting, digitally, or in the traditional fashion with a highlighter, and thought, what do these blocks of fluorescent colour actually mean? In this cross post, Pat Thomson discusses effective highlighting practices and how they can contribute to learning. The short answer … Continued
Through different mechanisms pay to publish models have been established globally as one of the key routes to the open access publication of academic research. This model has introduced new kinds of inequalities into scholarly communication, but to what extent to researchers perceive the problematic nature of these business models? Drawing on findings from an … Continued
Impact has in the past two REF cycles established itself as an integral criteria of research assessment in the UK. However, the kinds of impacts that are valued and the ways in which the ‘reach’ and ‘significance’ of impact are interpreted by institutions can conversely de-value certain kinds of transformative research. Taking this into account, … Continued
In 2018, to mark the centenary of partial suffrage in Britain, the Towers at Clement’s Inn on LSE campus were renamed Pankhurst House, Fawcett House and Pethick-Lawrence House after three key suffrage campaigners with specific connections to LSE. In this post, Melissa Terras and Elizabeth Crawford reflect on the importance of feminist digitisation practices for editing Millicent Garrett Fawcett – available open access from … Continued
Academia, especially at PhD and Post-Doctoral level, is often associated with individual work and isolation. Reflecting on her experience of designing, facilitating, and working in writing accountability groups, Ann Gillian Chu discusses how to forge effective writing groups and the value they offer in relation to building academic community. When I was preparing for my … Continued
As universities have internationalised and academic careers have come to encompass relocation across countries and continents, it has often been argued that universities and their researchers have lost the ability to address the issues prevalent in their local geographies. Drawing on survey evidence, Kwadwo Atta-Owusu and Rune Dahl Fitjar explore this relationship and what it … Continued
Grant applications and impact statements for research projects are important points for researchers and assessors to consider the future impact of research and whether the proposed pathways to these goals are feasible. Drawing on evidence from REF2014 impact case studies, Lai Ma provides a framework for achievable impacts that can help both researchers and assessors … Continued
In Transnational Black Feminism and Qualitative Research: Black Women, Racialization and Migration, Tanja J. Burkhard explores Transnational Black Feminism as a qualitative research framework that centres the narratives of Black women. This book is a valuable resource for those committed to conducting more equitable research that disrupts extractive modes of knowledge production, writes Lydia Ayame Hiraide, and will particularly … Continued
As the UK Home Office unveils plans to attract the “brightest and best” individuals to the UK, Johnny Rich outlines how using university league tables as a proxy measure to achieve this goal is unlikely to be successful. The UK Government has announced a new visa scheme, ostensibly to attract the “brightest and best” graduates … Continued
The response of scientists and science policymakers to the war in Ukraine has been mixed, with different actors calling for varying degrees of engagement and withdrawal from Russian Science. In this cross-post from Frontiers Policy Labs, Eric Piaget, Luk Van Langenhove, and Luc Soete discuss how continued collaboration with Russian research is an important factor in … Continued
In Complaint!, Sara Ahmed follows the institutional life of complaints within the university, exploring how they begin, how they are processed and how they are ultimately stopped, thereby reproducing systems of whiteness, violence and silencing. Proposing complaint as a feminist pedagogy and a form of collective and social action, Ahmed’s work should provoke change to a resistant institution … Continued
Outside of specific institutional and organizational settings discussions about ‘impact’ often descend into confusion, as the term holds several meanings for researchers. Responding to a provocation from Ziyad Marar “On Measuring Social Science Impact” and reflecting on different ways of understanding impact, Anne-Wil Harzing, provides a guide to understanding different aspects of impact for academics … Continued
Extensive revising is required by many journals in the social sciences. It is expected that authors “revise and resubmit” (R&R) their manuscripts several times before they are accepted for publication, a process that is time consuming, demoralising, and stifling of creativity. In this post, Christine L. Williams discusses the potential benefits and drawbacks of abolishing the R&R … Continued
Rigorous empirical evidence is often presumed to be the most persuasive, notably in fields such as healthcare and medicine, where there are established frameworks for assessing the quality of evidence. In this post, Eivind Engebretsen and Mona Baker argue for the importance of narrative rationality, especially in areas where expertise is contested. Drawing on work … Continued
Researchers and research funders are increasingly seeking to ensure their work is aligned to societal needs and to prevent it from having foreseeable negative impacts, particularly in fast moving and ethically sensitive fields. In this post, Stefan de Jong, Michael J. Bernstein and Ingeborg Meijer, describe their work developing a tool that facilitates researchers and … Continued
In Narrative Expansions: Interpreting Decolonisation in Academic Libraries, editors Jess Crilly and Regina Everitt bring together contributors to explore the variety of creative initiatives undertaken by academic libraries and archives to open their doors to underrepresented voices. This timely collection is a brilliant effort to unite the thinking behind the movements to decolonise the curriculum, writes Amy Lewontin. This blogpost originally appeared … Continued
Are your writing habits the same as they were when you started your academic career? Are your lifestyle and responsibilities the same? In this post, Chris Smith explores how writing habits formed at the beginning of academic careers can be difficult to change later on and suggests mindfully reassessing your writing practice can help reshape … Continued
AI tools are available today that can write compelling university level essays. Taking an example of sample essay produced by the GPT-3 transformer, Mike Sharples discusses the implications of this technology for higher education and argues that they should be used to enhance pedagogy, rather than accelerating an ongoing arms race between increasingly sophisticated fraudsters … Continued
Reporting on their qualitative research into the online abuse faced by science journalists in the USA, Lisa Palmer and Silvio Waisbord, find an uptick in the online harassment of science journalists alongside a lack of institutional support, especially for reporters working in precarious freelance contracts. For the past several years, we’ve watched with rising concern as … Continued
Drawing on an analysis of HESA and case study data, Andrew Jenkins and Alison Wolf, explore the changing composition of the workforce in the UK higher education sector. Trends towards increased professionalisation and centralisation of roles, as well as specialisation in academic roles split between teaching and research were identified. They argue, rather than reflecting … Continued
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is underpinned by three areas of assessment: outputs, impact and environment. However, discussing the findings of their recent research Mehmet Pinar and Tim Horne argue that these elements correlate to the extent that assessing all of them is largely inefficient. If this is the case, they pose the question: is … Continued
The premise of postgrowth research is that environmentally sustainable wellbeing should replace GDP growth as the cornerstone of public policy. This interest in a transition beyond the existing parameters of ‘political reality’ means such research faces a significant barrier to influencing policymakers. However, there are both structural and tactical measures postgrowth researchers can take to … Continued
In Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory, Heather Love explores how queer theory was shaped by the Cold War-era world of deviance research. Presenting a careful, close reading of deviance studies, this book invites queer theorists to reconsider their intellectual heritage; how the field of queer theory will make meaning of these connections remains to be seen, writes Dani … Continued
Reflecting on developments in science diplomacy following the war in Ukraine and developing ideas from their previous post questioning the current conceptualisation of science diplomacy, Doubravka Olšáková and Sam Robinson, argue that we are at the beginning of a new era of ‘post naïve’ science diplomacy. ‘Science is politics by other means’ – as almost said by Bruno … Continued
A fundamental principle of open access is that publication technology enables the widest possible audience for research findings. However, the extent to which open research is used outside of academia is often underexplored. Drawing on a dataset covering over a million user comments about their use of US National Academies consensus study reports, Ameet Doshi, … Continued
Amongst other things, the war in Ukraine has demonstrated the failure of western diplomacy to contain the outbreak of war in Europe. Over the past decades, one aspect of this diplomacy has involved the role of scientific and research relationships between Russia and the west, or ‘Science Diplomacy’. In this post, Doubravka Olšáková and Sam Robinson discuss how the … Continued
As Twitter moves to become a private company owned by the billionaire Elon Musk, Mark Carrigan, reflects on the increasing importance academic social media and academic twitter has secured in universities for building academic communities and for public engagement and impact. Assessing what the acquisition might mean in terms of relations on the platform, he argues … Continued
To adapt the well-known saying: there are few constants in academia other than death and deadlines. Drawing on their experience as a writing coach and author, Delia Lloyd presents five strategies for getting writing done when you really need to. I was scrolling through my Twitter feed the other day when a post stopped me … Continued
The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented and time critical demand for policy relevant evidence syntheses and in so doing demonstrated how timely evidence reviews can shape policymaking. As the policy crisis of COVID-19 recedes, research is underway to assess how these methods could be applied to other policy areas. In this post, Jonathan Breckon considers … Continued
In response to the ever-growing volume of data, quantitative social research has become increasingly dependent on complex inferential methods. In this post, Kevin R. Murphy argues that whilst these methods can provide insights, they should not detract from the significance of the comparatively simple descriptive statistics often found in table 1, which play an important … Continued
Open Science and its wider application to the social sciences and humanities, is predicated on the idea that research can be reproduced and shared across digital platforms, but to what extent do researchers actually use digital tools a part of their work? Commenting on a recent study into the workflows of social scientists and humanities … Continued
The latest episode episode of the LSE IQ podcast asks: Do we need the arts to change the world? As the UK government looks to recover from the costs of the pandemic its decision to cut funding for creative higher education courses could be seen as a pragmatic response to the changed world or a short-sighted move. … Continued
Poetry can be perceived as the antithesis of science, indicative of a non-rational mode of thought, and famously banished from Plato’s ideal republic. However, as a form of communication poetry presents a unique way of engaging audiences and empowering them to think about complex issues. In this post, Sam Illingworth, reflects on his journey from … Continued
The personal blog was a defining feature of the early internet and there are still a number of high-profile academic blogs studiously maintained by lone scholars. However, for researchers new to academic blogging, is it still worth setting up your own blog? Reflecting on his own blogging trajectory Mark Carrigan, suggests that it may be … Continued
In Technology Is Not Neutral, Stephanie Hare provides a practical overview of the complex topic of technology ethics. This is an accessible introduction that guides the reader through common questions, including whether technology can be neutral, where we draw the line when it comes to technology ethics and how we can apply these ideas to real-world examples, writes Sophie … Continued
The Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of scientific advice to modern policymaking. But how can the use of expertise in politics be aligned with the needs and values of the public? Drawing on a recent book, Zeynep Pamuk sets out a new model for the relationship between science and democracy. The Covid-19 pandemic has put scientific … Continued
Since the term was popularised by Rittel and Webber in their seminal article, Dilemmas in a general theory of planning, the concept of ‘wicked problems’, or those that are resistant to optimal solutions, has posed a significant challenge to the creation of public policy. In this post, Brian Head, draws on his new book, Wicked … Continued
Academic CVs play a major role in research assessment and in shaping academic fields by sorting and selecting promising researchers. Their role in structuring and prioritizing information is therefore significant and has recently been criticised for facilitating judgements based predominantly on narrow quantitative measures. In the blogpost, Josh Brown, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Michaela Strinzel, Sarah de … Continued
It is relatively rare for social scientists as individuals to break through into the mainstream media. However, in recent weeks, two profiles of successful figures in the worlds of academia and academic publishing have featured in popular publications, in ‘The editor who moves theory into the mainstream’ the New Yorker profiled Duke University Press editor … Continued
In Subversive Pedagogies: Radical Possibility in the Academy, Kate Schick and Claire Timperley bring together contributors to explore teaching as a subversive space of radical possibility, drawing attention to pedagogies that are situated, embodied, caring and decidedly political. Judith Leijdekkers and Sander Hölsgens offer a conversation around the book, reading the collection as an invitation for fellow pedagogues to scrutinise, transform and resist the … Continued
Reporting on their recent international survey of impact strategies, Mark Reed and Saskia Gent discuss their findings, identify two main types of impact strategy and analyse six key themes that comprise the current sector standard for good impact strategies. The REF2021 submission in March last year concluded several years of introspection into university research by … Continued
Data and its visualizers have always exploited the latest trends in media and communication in its quest to make seemingly dull numbers engaging, affective and interesting. In this post Kalina Borkiewicz, Eric Jensen, Stuart Levy, Jill .P. Naiman, and Jeff Carpenter discuss the emerging concept of cinematic scientific visualization. Locating it between traditional scientific visualization … Continued
As Horizon Europe considers the inclusion of gender equality criteria to its research funding activities, Jörg Müller and Charoula Tzanakou assess what can be learnt from the international experience of implementing the Athena SWAN charter and awards scheme. Discussing a recent analysis of impact studies for Athena SWAN, as well as its shortcomings, they suggest … Continued
In the second of two blogposts exploring how research impact is increasingly dependent on expertise embedded within organisations rather than traditional research outputs, Rebecca Vine and Paul Nightingale discuss the role of projects as a focus for collaborative research activity. Highlighting how projects are vital to innovation in service-based economies, they show how a recent … Continued
In Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing, John B. Thompson explores the digital transformations that have turned book publishing on its head over the last 30 years. Offering a noteworthy study of recent changes to the publishing world, this work is well worth reading to understand where the book was in the latter part of the twentieth century … Continued
For many academics, long distance travel and flying are seen as both necessary and a perk of the profession. However, as concerns around the environmental impact of flying mount, especially the impact of high frequency fliers, there are growing calls to limit academic travel. In this post Agnes Kreil and Sara Ullström discuss their decision … Continued
Covid-19 ushered in a shift in research priorities pivoting researchers’ energies away from on-going projects. Presenting evidence from a new analysis of business, management and economics scholars, James Walker, Chris Brewster, Rita Fontinha, Washika Haak-Shaheem, Stefano Benigni, Fabio Lamperti and Dalila Ribaudo examine which researchers have been most affected by this shift, how it has … Continued
Researchers need to observe ethical standards during a pandemic, say Ben Kasstan,Rishita Nandagiri and Siyane Aniley, and journals should hold them to these standards. The pandemic has changed academic research. It has led to gender gaps in authorship, questions about the quality of scientific publishing, and shifts in peer review processes. As the effects — short and long term — of the pandemic continue, … Continued
In Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society, Zeynep Pamuk reimagines the relationship between democratic politics and scientific expertise, exploring the possibility of new political institutions that would make experts more accountable to the lay public. In a post-COVID world where contestation of both science and public institutions is on the rise, Pamuk’s book will … Continued
How we say things can be as important as what we say. In this post, Ella Whiteley explores the “framing effect”, its implications for education and research communication and in particular, its salience to discussions of sex and gender. Picture yourself in a fancy supermarket. There’s a food sample trolley down one aisle. You beeline towards it. (No one really grows out of … Continued
In Life After Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society, Firmin DeBrabander argues that rather than seeking to safeguard and revive privacy in the digital age, we should instead focus on becoming engaged citizens who contribute to a democratic public sphere. This lucid book is public philosophy at its best, writes Paul Showler, though he questions whether there might … Continued
AI is forecast to become increasingly central to many aspects of life and work. The same trends can also be detected in research. Drawing on a recent study of expert perceptions of AI uses in research and taking the recently launched tl;dr tool as a salient example, Jennifer Chubb and David Beer discuss AI’s emerging … Continued
Citizen science and its counterpart citizen social science are becoming increasingly established as research tools to address global and societal challenges. However, increased interaction between research and society also presents questions related to justice, power, and inequality. Based on their recent research into the commercial application of citizen science Sarah Blacker, Aya Hirata Kimura, and … Continued
Often thought of as ‘the last good place on the internet’, Wikipedia plays a key role in the online information ecosystem by linking its entries to current and historic research papers. But, after following these links, how much of this research is openly accessible? Presenting evidence from a recent study, Andy Tattersall, finds that around 50% … Continued
In Profit Over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet, Matthew Crain explores the historical rise of surveillance advertising, showing how today’s digital landscape was shaped by decisions taken in the 1990s. Revealing the emergence of a market logic that has placed individual surveillance at its core, this is a forceful and engaging book, writes Agustin Ferrari Braun. This … Continued
In the context of everyday research assessment citation counts are often taken as a simple indicator of the influence of any particular paper. However, all citations are not the same and can be deployed to achieve different ends. Commenting on a recent study of how researchers across 15 academic fields understand the influence of the … Continued
Taking stock of what Plan S – a funder led initiative to deliver widespread open access to research – has achieved since its conception and launch in 2018, Rachael Pells and Robert-Jan Smits discuss their new book “Plan S for Shock”. In making the case for Plan S and open access more broadly, they argue … Continued
In Listening to People: A Practical Guide to Interviewing, Participant Observation, Data Analysis, and Writing It All Up, Annette Lareau provides insight into the practicalities of interview-based research and participation observation. This is an excellent and exciting guide that offers useful recommendations to researchers before they land in the field, writes M. Kerem Coban. This review originally appeared on LSE … Continued
For researchers in Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) publishing and collaborating with academics on mutually beneficial projects is uncommon. Drawing on their experience of a major collaborative international research project on public attitudes towards inequality that resulted in a flagship report for Oxfam and a series of academic papers, Franziska Mager, discusses the barriers and benefits … Continued
Since its origins as a newspaper supplement, the Times Higher Education (THE) has become so much more than a higher education news company. As its business model and commercial raison d’être changed, so has its rankings-related journalism. In this post, Morten Hansen and Astrid Van den Bossche explain how recent research on THE rankings output … Continued