My answer to Is there an institution similar to perimeter institute but for mathematics? https:/
There are dozens and dozens of mathematics institutes most of which specialize in one or more particular sub-area of mathematics. Examples include:
* Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA (IPAM (http:/
* National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (http:/
many more can be found by googling the phrase "math institute" (along with any particular sub-disciplines one might be interested in).
Slightly larger than these and potentially more similar to the Perimeter are
* the Banff International Research Station (http:/
* The Clay Mathematics Institute (http:/
* NSF Mathematical Sciences Institutes (https:/
* MSRI (http:/
Surely there are plenty of others if you look around a bit.
<blockquote>"35 million academics, independent scholars and graduate students as users, who collectively have uploaded some eight million texts"</blockquote>
35 million users is a lovey number, but their engagement must be spectacularly bad if only 8 million texts are available.
<blockquote>"the platform essentially bans access for academics who, for whatever reason, don’t have an Academia.edu account. It also shuts out non-academics."</blockquote>
They must have changed this, as pretty much anyone with an email address (including non-academics) can create a free account and use the system.
<blockquote>“I don’t trust academia.edu,”</blockquote>
Given his following discussion, I can only imagine what he thinks of big publishers in academia and *that* debate.
<blockquote>"McGill’s Dr. Sterne calls it “the gamification of research,”</blockquote>
Most research is too expensive to really gamify in such a simple manner. Many researchers are publishing to either get or keep their jobs. And if anything, the institutionalization of "publish or perish" has already accomplished the "gamification", Academia.edu is just helping to increase the reach of the publication. Given that research shows that most published research isn't even read, much less cited, how bad can Academia.edu really be?
The article rails against not knowing what the business model is or what's happening with the data, I suspect that the platform itself doesn't have a very solid business plan and they don't know what to do with the data themselves except tout the numbers. I'd suspect they're trying to build critical mass so that they can cash out by selling to one of the big publishers like Elsevier, who might actually be able to use such data. And on that subject, where's the comparison to the rest of the competition including ResearchGate.net or Mendeley.com, which in fact was purchased by Elsevier?
In sum, it sounds to me like a bunch of luddites running around yelling "fire", particularly when I'd imagine that most feed into the more corporate side of publishing in major journals rather than publishing it themselves on their own websites. I'd further suspect they're probably not even practicing samizdat.
For academics who really want to spend some time and thought on a potential solution to all of this, I'll suggest that they start out by owning their own domain and own their own data and work. The #IndieWeb movement certainly has an interesting philosophy that's a great start in fixing the problem; it can be found at http:/
Finally! Research that may indicate a way to keep local birds from sounding like car alarms: Own Song Selectivity in the Songbird Auditory Pathway: Suppression by Norepinephrine http:/
I'll be this research could be used for acting too: Your body language shapes who you are http:/
@jgovern @JHU_Alumni @JohnsHopkins There is this list: https:/
@seanmcarroll And then there's research on global language networks from @cesifoti and @sapinker to boot http:/
MIT Dean Takes Leave to Start New University Without Lectures or Classrooms http:/
I wonder if it's because I know Kevin Bacon?
Chris Aldrich's average degrees of separation from everyone is 3.07.
The average distance we observe is 4.57, corresponding to 3.57 intermediaries or "degrees of separation." Within the US, people are connected to each other by an average of 3.46 degrees.
Three and a half degrees of separation | Blog | Research at Facebook https:/
Three and a half degrees of separation https:/
In Cambodia, 'Lucky' Iron Fish For The Cooking Pot Could Fight Anemia | NPR http:/
Brief review of "The Yard" by Alex Grecian
The book was alright and read at a reasonable pace. At first it seemed like there were a few too many main characters. There were certainly far too many points of view which could have been better done by an omniscient single one.
A few things seemed a bit too deus-ex-machina, and in particular the number of unfortunate circumstances which happened to Hammersmith. The characters were at least reasonably drawn out and delineated. The setting was a bit lacking to the point that I feel like I'd have to call out some serious historical flaws, but the research to ensure accuracy just isn't worth the effort. If the author did significant research to make sure the world was real, he didn't do that research justice within the final presentation.
The police procedural portions were generally okay, except the overwrought feeling given by trying to explain simple procedures like fingerprinting within a narrative in which they're new, but to an audience in which they're all too mundane. For this type of historical-type of fiction I far preferred Caleb Carr's [book:The Alienist|40024], which was far better done from both a plot and a character standpoint.
It also helps to look at where the “brand value” is within the system: almost all of it is bound up in a handful of publishing houses and separately in a larger group of large research institutions many of which are putting out 20,000 research papers a year. Researchers should endeavor to better become their own brand based on the work that they do and what they put out.
Perhaps they need to unionize to help change the system? This is essentially what the Netherlands is doing in the example cited.
Even more interesting is the fact that such a small percentage of papers are “read” and even fewer are cited. If a payment system was built on citations, this could certainly drastically turn the system on its head.
My reply to ‘Novel, amazing, innovative’: positive words on the rise in science papers | Nature News & Comment
http:/
I can readily posit a potential and very strong motivation for the uptick in the appearance of these words, and particularly for the word "novel", which the paper and this article fail to see.
Beginning in the early 90's, and certainly starting before that time, there has been an intensified interest for both research institutions and researchers writing papers for them to monetize their research outside the halls of the academy. (Particularly with decreased funding for faculty and intensified competition for research dollars - many research faculty either self-fund their salaries or rely heavily on 3rd party income.) Toward this end, individual researchers began more aggressively pursuing patents for their research work and at the institutional level, colleges and universities began very actively pursuing technology transfer to the point of opening up full offices and hiring large numbers of staff to better leverage the return of creating patents and pursuing sales and licensing deals for the resulting research work. The US Patent Office, in making a determination of whether or not to grant patents, (and even moreso when the underlying documents are published scientific research articles) uses words like "novel" and "innovative" as an indicator of their worthiness. Without a patent, it's incredibly difficult to protect the intellectual property contained within a published and public work. Other words like "amazing" which are also cited in the paper are geared (in a business sales sense) more toward potential corporate financial investors who may consider purchasing or licensing the resulting work of a research paper. What corporate bean counter wants to invest in a dull-sounding research paper title which is quite likely one of the only parts of the document they're likely to comprehend? Yet throw in some "excitement words" and you may have a sale!
When one looks at employment contracts of the professoriate (post-docs, graduate students, and the like), which presumably comprises the majority of those publishing papers with these words, one will see that professors prior to the 90's have contracts that don't mention intellectual property rights resulting from their efforts, or which grant them the lion's share. Current contracts after that period will almost necessarily keep either all or most of these types of revenue streams in the institution's pockets rather than the researchers themselves. I'd be willing to bet that this tide began turning in the mid-1970s and has certainly been overwhelming since the mid-90s.
It is these severe economic taskmasters which are almost assuredly the cause of the rise of these buzzwords in research papers, and most particularly in their titles. One need only ask themselves, which university wants to be the next proverbial "Stanford" to not have a piece of revenue from the intellectual property of a proverbial "Page rank" algorithm? Or in biomedical research, to not take a hefty cut out of a drug which could potentially cure cancer or HIV/AIDS? Take a gander at what something as simple as a HELA cell, which was taken and cultured without any notice to Henrietta Lacks, has become from an industrial perspective. If they can avoid it, academia certainly won't let multi-million (or billion) dollar enterprises spring up (again) without them receiving a piece of the pie.
Naturally, there are other factors compounding the issues at hand, particularly when one looks at negative research findings, which are sadly rarely ever published, particularly in an era of big data when what we know isn't true will surely help assist in defining the boundaries of what we do know and what could potentially be determined at that boundary. (Much the way that white space in photographs or in printed pages helps to define an image as much if not more so than the darker portions of the image.) Negative words are likely more difficult to get published as it may reflect poorly on researchers who are reliant on continued future funding and may see their sources disappear when they're not producing groundbreaking work. My hypothesis, however, is that it's more likely a direct economic impact based on technology transfer than it is the increased competitive landscape in academic research.