A new post on Retraction Watch, “Peer review isn’t good at ‘dealing with exceptional or unconventional submissions,’ says study,” quotes the authors of the study of the title: Because most new ideas tend to be bad ideas, resisting unconventional contributions may be a reasonable and efficient default instinct for evaluators. However, this is potentially problematic because unconventional work…
Let’s face it: The traditional peer-review process was not meant for a digital age. It needs to be altered (not abandoned) so that it once again has a consistently useful function, working as something other than a wall to be breached. It needs to help move the best of scholarship to the fore while providing…
This is a guest post by Rebecca Jordan, a contributor to the recent November-December issue of Academe. Jordan is an associate professor of environmental education and citizen science, and director of the program in science learning at Rutgers University. Her interests are in Behavioral Biology, Learning, Development of Cognitive Models, and Public Understanding in Science. …
This is a guest post by Joshua M. Pearce, an online contributor to the recent November-December issue of Academe. Pearce is an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Michigan Technological University. Unfortunately, the simplistic thinking that uses “research expenditures” as a proxy…
The elite scholarly journals, long the gatekeepers of the ivory tower, have been losing their effectiveness this last decade or so–in their gatekeeping role, at least. As these journals increasingly become profit centers in the corporate publishing industry, their real impact is constricted to only those who can afford the toll. At the same time,…
The influence of outside money on education has always been strong–and fighting it is one of the reasons the AAUP came into existence. Rarely, though, do we educators have real power over the source of that money. In the case of Pearson, however, we can have just that. The company makes a good deal of…
On August 16, the Lafayette Journal-Gazette ran this small item [http://www.jconline.com/story/news/college/2014/08/16/ipfw-faculty-unhappy-daniels-comments/14181695/]: “Some Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne faculty members are unhappy with comments Purdue University President Mitch Daniels made about the role of regional colleges. “The Journal Gazette reports the former governor told a public radio host that higher-education advocates in Fort Wayne are mistaken…
Someone has disseminated what purports to be a portion of a presentation on Google’s progress in developing “Google Science,” an open-source platform for the publication of scientific papers that might radically transform not just the way in which the results of scientific research are disseminated but also the ways in which scientific research is conducted.…
The New York Post recently ran a story by Carl Campanile under this headline: “College Liberals Spurn $10M Gift from the Koch Brothers.” Mitchell Langbert, a faculty member in the Business School at Brooklyn College, had been in extended discussions with the Koch Brothers Foundation about establishing a “financial center” within the Business School. When…
Rick Perlstein’s new book The Invisible Bridge, is sure to anger some conservatives who think Ronald Reagan qualified for sainthood long ago. And it angered one Reagan lover in particular, Craig Shirley, who runs a PR firm for clients like Ann Coulter and Citizens United, and who wrote a book about Reagan 10 years ago…