Phys.org September 5, 2023 A team of researchers in the US (George Mason University, St. John Fisher University) investigated the relationship between internal governance and firms’ innovation. They hypothesized that internal governance stemming from the difference in expected employment horizons between a CEO and the subordinate executives improves a firm’s innovation. Using the age difference between a CEO and their subordinate executives as the primary measure of internal governance, they found a strong positive relationship between internal governance and firms’ innovation output, and scientific and economic values. They showed that the positive relation was causal and the relationship between internal […]
Tag Archives: Science without borders
Out with the old, in with the new: Agile mentorship to support future scientists
Phys.com August 31, 2023 Existing mentorship models are limited by miscommunication, undefined roles, and mismatched goals. To address these limitations a team of researchers in the US (Mayo Clinic, Indiana University) leveraged insights from agile science and the existing evidence on effective mentorship models to support effective mentoring relationships in healthcare environments. They described the model and shared qualitative findings generated from the independent analysis of 18 months of mentee reflections. In two iterative cycles, reflections (n = 56) were analyzed using exploratory content and relational analysis and identified four main themes – identification of shortcomings, adaptive perspective, managing relationships, and personal […]
Fear of being exploited is stagnating our progress in science, say researchers
Phys.org June 27, 2023 Knowledge hiding in academia—the reluctance to share one’s ideas, materials, or knowledge with other researchers—is detrimental to scientific collaboration and harms scientific progress. In three studies, researchers in Germany tested whether (a) knowledge hiding could be predicted by researchers’ latent fear of being exploited (i.e., victim sensitivity), whether (b) this effect was mediated by researchers’ suspiciousness about their peers, and whether (c) activating researchers’ social identity alleviated or rather amplified this effect. Study 1 showed that victim-sensitive researchers whose social identity as a “researcher” had been made salient were particularly prone to knowledge hiding. Study 2 […]
MIT’s top research stories of 2022
MIT News December 21, 2022 To mark the end of the year, MIT News is looking back at 10 of the research stories that generated the most excitement in 2022. Stories covered include Designing a heat engine with no moving parts, Creating a lightweight material stronger than steel, Enabling portable desalination at the push of a button, Linking human genes to function, Improving supercomputing with a new programming language, Lifting people out of extreme poverty, Helping robots fly, Detecting a radio signal in a far-off galaxy, Proposal for a new, low-cost battery design. Popular stories this year covered the detection […]
When research data is shared freely
Phys.org December 21, 2022 In recent years, Norwegian researchers have increasingly published their research in open access journals. Some go one step further and share their data. The Research Council has followed the global open access trend and given Norwegian researchers a little nudge: open publishing, in some form or other, is a prerequisite for project funding, unless the researchers have good reasons for not doing it. In 2017, the Research Council also decided that researchers who received support from them must consider producing a data management plan. This should, among other things, show whether the data will be shared […]
Can offering choice to researchers reduce researcher bias?
Phys.org September 21, 2022 The review process is designed to safeguard high standards, help improve promising work and weed out problematic papers, but a well-documented issue is bias in peer review. Whether conscious or otherwise, it compromises fair judgment based on things like gender, name, nationality, affiliation, or career status. To mitigate this researchers at the Michigan School of Information introduced and tested double-anonymous peer review, where the identities of authors as well as reviewers are concealed. The Institute of Physics was the first STM publisher to offer double-anonymous peer review across all their propriety journals on a voluntary basis […]
Negative feedback is part of academia (and life). These six strategies can help you cope
Phys.org September 14, 2022 According to researchers in Australia feedback is a key component for any academic career and it is part of how the profession maintains rigor and quality in what it does. While it can be positive, research shows, it tends to be negative. On top of calls to improve training for academics, managers, and leaders on how to provide helpful feedback, being able to use the feedback we get is also important. Researchers suggest six things to do when you get negative feedback – 1. Empathize with the person giving feedback – when anonymous reviews are negative, […]
DARPA Unveils New Program to Recruit Early Career Scientists, Engineers
DARPA August 31, 2020 A new DARPA effort aims to recruit standout scientists and engineers beginning their careers for a two-year position at the agency. The DARPA Innovation Fellowship Program will select fellows to push the limits of existing technology through rapid exploration and analysis of a high volume of promising new ideas. The Projects will focus on answering high-risk/high-reward ‘what if?’ questions and assessing the impact of further investment on problems of importance to the Department of Defense. The fellowships are a great way for the nation’s future scientific thought leaders to have the opportunity to make extensive connections […]
The peer review system is broken. We asked academics how to fix it
Phys.og July 25, 2022 Peer review is an essential part of academic publishing, yet many authors, reviewers, and editors have reportedly encountered problems with the review process. Some scholars view peer-review as a necessary process for the advancement of science, while other scholars argue that for many publishers and journals, both authors and reviewers are being exploited. An international team of researchers (Australia, UK, United States) provides a narrative review of current perspectives and available research on the peer-review process to date and, summarizes potential solutions elicited from scholars on Twitter. A review of the literature identified several problems with […]
In science, small groups create big ideas
Phys.org January 21, 2022 An international team of researchers (Taiwan, Japan) explains the researcher dynamics of generating and developing Emerging Research Topics (ETs) in life sciences and medicine over the past half-century by analyzing the pre-, contemporary-, and post-participation of researchers publishing articles containing the emerging keywords that are elements of ETs. Their results suggest that, while manpower needs for publication have increased, less manpower is required to generate ETs. These trends illustrate a mode shift in the scientific practice of researchers that have generated and developed ETs over the last 50 years as well as highlight the significance of […]