COVID-19 has accelerated calls for fast, open science to inform policy responses. However, when contradictory or false results become public, the negative consequences of this becomes hard to contain. Nate Breznau discusses the Heinsberg Study into COVID-19, outlining how the lack of appropriate scientific scrutiny led to policy responses that were misinformed and dangerous. Breznau … Continued
Category: open science
The public debate around COVID-19 demonstrates our ongoing and misplaced trust in numbers
COVID-19 data and numbers are everywhere. However, these numbers are also a source of debate and subject to vastly different interpretations. Every day we are posed with a question that divides even epidemiologists: what does it really mean that positive cases or mortalities are up or down? Yet the media and the public reads deep … Continued
Not yet the default setting – in 2020 open research remains a work in progress.
Responding to Daniel Hook’s post, The Open Tide – How openness in research and communication is becoming the default setting, Daniel Spichtinger argues that there remains much work to be done in order for open research practices to become the “new normal”. Highlighting unresolved issues around learned societies and the globalisation of open research policies, … Continued
To address the rise of predatory publishing in the social sciences, journals need to experiment with open peer review.
Predatory journals are here, but our attention to them is unevenly distributed. Most studies on predatory publishing have looked at the phenomenon in the natural and life sciences. In this post, Maximilian Heimstädt and Leonhard Dobusch analyse the harmful potential of predatory journals for social science and specifically management research. Identifying key threats posed by predatory publishing, they argue that […]
The State of Open Data 2019 – What are the key issues in open data for researchers?
As mandates and policies encouraging open data are becoming more widely established and enforced, the use of and sharing of data is becoming more central to scholarly communication. This has resulted in data sharing becoming increasingly entangled with the prestige economy of academia. In this post, Mark Hahnel presents findings from the largest continuous survey of academic attitudes to open data […]
Is our current research culture on the brink of major change?
The culture of research often appears timeless and self-evident. Despite the current system of research being critiqued for its lack of openness, diversity and at times quality, it has remained largely unchanged for at least a generation. In this post, Liz Allen, highlights how contrary to this view, a growing number of developments are currently taking place across different countries […]
Open Access Week 2019 – What are we talking about and where are we going?
The theme of this year’s Open Access Week is “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”. Open Access and the opportunity it presents to enhance the dissemination and understanding of social science and indeed all knowledge, has been, and is, a consistent focus of the LSE Impact Blog. In this post I have brought together a number of recent blogposts […]
Why social scientists should engage early in the research life cycle
Research in the social sciences can be a linear process of data collection, analysis, publication that ends with dissemination. However, in practice it can also be a non-linear cyclical process, especially as new forms of digital communication allow ideas and findings to be shared and receive feedback at different stages throughout a research project. In this post Michelle Kuepper, Katie Metzler and Daniela Duca highlight […]
An Analysis of Open Science Policies in Europe – New report from DCC and SPARC Europe
SPARC Europe and the DCC have collaborated since 2017 on reviewing Open Science Policies in Europe. Our report has to date been downloaded over 5000 times and we have had feedback from users who find this a useful resource to draw on in t…
An Analysis of Open Science Policies in Europe – New report from DCC and SPARC Europe
SPARC Europe and the DCC have collaborated since 2017 on reviewing Open Science Policies in Europe. Our report has to date been downloaded over 5000 times and we have had feedback from users who find this a useful resource to draw on in t…