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 repo…
Author: Taster
Navigating co-design and nudge: Evidence and expertise in practice
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 se…
Academics can easily leave Twitter’s town square, but it will be much harder for their institutions
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 in…
When the safety of being right makes change hard – Introducing the Epistemic Bunker
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 kn…
Joining the Scientist Rebellion – Can research have impact without losing neutrality?
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, …
Book Review: Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project that Matters to You (and the World) by Thomas S. Mullaney and Christopher Rea
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 rea…
As Musk takes control are we heading to an ‘everything app’ or the break-up of academic twitter?
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 poi…
Reforming research assessment in Spain requires greater university autonomy
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…
Two minds better than one – Does research funding and support for collaboration lead to more innovative research?
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…
Measuring the toll of COVID-19 on academic parents and what we can do about it
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 sign…