Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

Please read the Wellcome Trust’s policy on open access. It’s short so I’ve pasted it below. The policy states (with my emphases in purple): The mission of the Wellcome Trust is to support the ...

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for ...

Since its announcement on 4th September the European Commission’s plan to make a radical shift towards open access (OA) has caused quite a stir. Backed by eleven* national funding agencies, the plan ...

Regulars at this blog will be familiar with the dim view that I have of impact factors, in particular their mis-appropriation for the evaluation of individual researchers and their work. I have argued ...

Science has been extraordinarily successful at taking the measure of the world, but paradoxically the world finds it extraordinarily difficult to take the measure of science — or any type of ...

As part of its celebrations to mark the 350th anniversary of the publication of Philosophical Transactions, the world’s longest-running scientific journal, the Royal Society has organised a conference ...

The new and improved Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings 2020 were published this week with as much online fanfare as THE could muster. Unfortunately, they are not improved enough. The Impact ...

Really, who doesn’t love a good old tiled floor. So classy. We have tiled floors in our flat, of course we do. Our Regency flat (yes, I am persisiting in calling it that) only became a flat in the ...

Baoshu The Redemption of Time I generally don’t have time for fan fiction, but there’s fan fiction and fan fiction, and this one is of a superior sort. Baoshu (a pen name) is a fan, specifically of ...

Twelve months after the publication of the Finch Report, during which the new RCUK policy on open access has been published, dissected, debated (including by committees in both Houses of Parliament), ...

Ehsan Masood: GDP The astute reader will note that this is very similar to Masood’s book The Great Invention, which I read in January.And the astute reader would be correct: the latter book was ...