Q&A about Elsevier's decision to open its citations

Last week Elsevier announced that it has signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and that it is going to make the reference lists of articles openly available in Crossref. In this Q&A, Ludo Waltman shares his perspective on Elsevier’s decision to open its citations.

Ludo Waltman • December 22, 2020 • 1 comment

The causal intricacies of studying gender bias in science

A recently published paper on the role of gender in mentorship in science has triggered a lot of debate. In this blog post, Vincent Traag and Ludo Waltman contribute to this debate by emphasizing the importance of understanding the underlying causal mechanisms.

Vincent Traag and Ludo Waltman • December 10, 2020

Responsible Research & Innovation or Open Science - does the label matter?

Here, we assert that Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science (OS) can be meaningfully compared as transformative change agendas for R&I. We propose looking for differences in terms of what motivates a transformative agenda, i.e. why do we need to open up the R&I system?

Clare Shelley-Egan, Rune Nydal and Mads Dahl Gjefsen • December 08, 2020

Knowledge integration for societal challenges: from interdisciplinarity to research portfolio analysis

For research to address societal challenges, indicators of average degree of ‘interdisciplinarity’ are not relevant. Instead, we propose a portfolio approach to analyze knowledge integration as a systemic process; in particular, the directions, diversity and synergies of research trajectories.

Ismael Rafols • December 01, 2020

On 'measuring' interdisciplinarity: from indicators to indicating

Indicators of interdisciplinarity are increasingly requested. Yet efforts to make aggregate indicators have failed due to the diversity and ambiguity of understandings of interdisciplinarity. Instead of universal indicators, we propose a contextualised process of indicating interdisciplinarity.

Ismael Rafols • November 30, 2020 • 3 comments

Is there a typical journal article in the field of science and technology studies?

An intermediary report from an ongoing research project to study the co-evolution of publishing practices and intellectual debates in the field of science and technology studies.

Maria Amuchastegui, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner and Kean Birch • November 25, 2020

The unintended consequences of task specialization in research careers

Researchers collaborate specializing in specific tasks. However, the research evaluation system only rewards specific profiles of researchers, threatening the diversity of the science ecosystem.

Nicolás Robinson-García, Rodrigo Costas, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Vincent Larivière and Tina Nane • November 23, 2020

How important are bibliometrics in academic recruitment processes?

In a newly published paper in Minerva I have analyzed confidential reports from professor recruitments in four disciplines at the University of Oslo. In the paper I show how bibliometrics are used as a screening tool and not as a replacement for more traditional qualitative evaluation of candidates.

Ingvild Reymert • November 20, 2020

Do not assess books by their publishers

In my PhD research, I investigate the practicalities of the evaluation of scholarly book outputs across countries. In this blog post, I discuss the inconsistencies I discovered in judgements about publishers. I also propose a model for future evaluation of scholarly books.

Eleonora Dagiene • November 18, 2020