Drawing on survey evidence from several western countries, Eric Allen Jensen, Aaron M. Jensen, Axel Pfleger, Eric B. Kennedy and Ethan Greenwood find that COVID-19 has coincided with a general rise in public trust in science and scientists. Based on this re-affirmed public trust, they suggest there is a new window of opportunity to accelerate … Continued
Category: COVID-19
The hard labour of connecting research to policy during COVID-19
The worlds of policy and academia are often distant and can be difficult to span. In this post Kathryn Oliver and Annette Boaz reflect on their experience of working in the Government Office for Science to help produce the government’s new Areas of Research Interest and the particular challenges involved in establishing and mobilising networks … Continued
The Post-Covid future of virtual conferences
For many researchers, 2020 will have been the first year in which they have attended any virtual academic events. In this cross-post Gina Sipley reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of virtual conferences and whether they may become a permanent fixture of the post-pandemic university. In January when I saw the call for papers for the … Continued
How the pandemic changed editorial peer review – and why we should wonder whether that’s desirable
Since its onset, COVID-19 has significantly accelerated and expanded scientific publishing. Drawing on research into open peer review in medical journals, Serge P.J.M. Horbach discusses what impact COVID-19 has had on the practice of peer review and what shifting assessment thresholds for academic research on COVID-19 might suggest about the future of peer review itself. … Continued
Communicating statistics through the media in the time of COVID-19
Professor Kevin McConway and Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter discuss their experiences of communicating statistical research to the media and offer 12 tips for researchers to effectively engage with the media. The coronavirus pandemic has brought an unprecedented demand from the media for statistical commentary. Whereas a trip to a studio for a radio or TV interview was … Continued
For the sake of all involved, we should stop the REF clock
Emily Yarrow and Julie Davies argue any benefits of the current March 31st submission date for REF2021 should not outweigh the human costs to the academics and staff currently working to achieve this deadline. The UK is in the midst of the worst health and financial crises for several generations and the REF deadline of … Continued
Podcast: Has social science influenced the policy response to COVID-19?
The latest episode of LSE IQ poses the question: What’s the point of social science in a pandemic? When governments across the world were forced to take unprecedented measures in response to COVID-19 in 2020, much attention was focused on the teams of scientific and medical experts assembled to advise and develop national policy responses. … Continued
Look to the commons for the future of R&D and science policy
A feature of the research and development landscape brought to the fore by COVID-19, has been the way in which massive public investments in collaborative open scientific research have ultimately led to zero-sum competition between companies, who hold the intellectual property rights to the outputs of this work. Samuel Moore argues, following the work of … Continued
The COVID-safe university is an opportunity to end the default ableism of academia
Universities and academic institutions are making radical changes in an attempt to make their spaces and practices COVID-safe. In this post, Dr Stuart Read, Dr Anne Parfitt and Dr Tanvir Bush, put forward that this restructuring of academia presents a clear and present opportunity to expand inclusivity in academia and to redress the ableism currently … Continued
COVID-19: Where is the data?
The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has led many to argue that scholarly communication and publishing is undergoing a revolution, in terms of not only the wider opening of access to research, but also the data underlying it. In this post Julien Larrègue, Philippe Vincent-Lamarre, Frédéric Lebaron, and Vincent Larivière, discuss findings from their study … Continued