The quantity and influence of generalisable data presents challenges and opportunities for public policy making. Helen Margetts discusses how social scientists can help policy-makers in this changed environment, ensuring that social science research remains relevant, and warns that social science … Continue reading →
Category: Impact
What happens when you make a book open access? New business models are emerging, but challenges still remain.
Initial studies into the effect of open access monographs suggest little to no impact on sales, but an increase in discoverability and online usage. But there are still many hurdles to overcome before OA books become a routine option for … Continue reading →
Absent from the Academy: The lack of black academics in the UK limits the wider impact of universities.
A conversation within UK universities is in order to address the lack of representation of black professors. Nathan Richards discusses his new film which explores the intellectual deficit within academia and how the marginalization of certain groups negatively impacts the university’s … Continue reading →
A replicated study on nuclear proliferation shows the critical necessity of reviewing accepted scientific results.
In replicating a 2009 study on the role of asymmetric nuclear weapons possession, Mark Bell and Nicholas Miller found that a computational error led to the overestimation of the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons by a factor of several million. It is … Continue reading →
Impact-monitoring research leads to clear EU policy recommendations to improve services for children of prisoners.
In England and Wales there are an estimated 200,000 children with a parent in prison, and on any given day, an estimated 800,000 children have a parent in prison in the European Union. The COPING team argue that this area … Continue reading →
Book Review: Q-Squared: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches in Poverty Analysis
This book aims to examine the underlying assumptions and implications of how we conceptualise and investigate poverty. Paul Shaffer’s book will no doubt be essential reading for poverty analysts but it could also prove a very useful guide to understanding the relationship … Continue reading →
The academic career path has been thoroughly destabilised by the precarious practices of the neoliberal university.
It is an increasingly difficult time to begin an academic career. The pressures of the REF, casualization and adjunctification of teaching and the disappearance of research funding are enormous obstacles academics face. Sydney Calkin looks at how academics have in many ways … Continue reading →
Exploratory analysis of researcher behaviour challenges the assumption that STEM subjects are more societally useful than SSH.
Using a database with information on over 1,500 researchers, statistical analysis was recently undertaken to test the hypothesis that technical STEM subjects were more societally useful than social science and humanities (SSH) subjects. Paul Benneworth describes the research process and … Continue reading →
Browse the entire eCollection: Open Access Perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Yesterday we co-hosted the event Open Access Futures in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The aim of the conference was to bring together a diverse range of voices within the wider community to examine and interrogate issues of openness, new horizons … Continue reading →