The COVID 19 pandemic exposed the precarious positioning of two groups within the academic STEM system.

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. This week’s post features Fatou Bah, a master’s student in the School of Information Studies (ÉSIS) at the University of Ottawa (UOttawa), Data Support Specialist in Research Data Management at the UOttawa Library, and research assistant at the ScholCommLab.

Vor kurzem hat es also die Büros der großen NGOs getroffen. In einem wenig überraschenden Schritt hat die russische Staatsführung am 8. April entschieden, den Auslandsbüros von Amnesty International und Human Rights Watch die Rechtsgrundlage für ihre Arbeit zu entziehen. Da die beiden Organisationen im Sektor Menschenrechte arbeiten, war das – auf eine traurige Art – auch irgendwie konsequent.

Nachdem in den letzten Jahren die Familie viel Raum beansprucht hat, starte ich jetzt mit diesem Blog ein Projekt, auf das ich mich lange gefreut habe. In den letzten drei Jahren hatte ich weder die Zeit noch die Ruhe zum Schreiben und Recherchieren.

Im Projekt B!SON wird ein Empfehlungsservice für inhaltlich relevante, qualitätsgesicherte Open-Access-Zeitschriften entwickelt. B!SON nutzt Metadaten des Directory of Open Access Journals und OpenCitations, um die Ähnlichkeit zwischen einem zu veröffentlichenden Manuskript und bereits veröffentlichten Artikeln – basierend auf Titel, Abstract und Referenzen – zu ermitteln.

“Denying a professor tenure, Harvard sparks a debate over ethnic studies,” reads a New York Times story published in January 2020. “After twice being denied tenure, this Naval Academy professor says she is seeking justice,” a more recent headline proclaims. “Academic tenure: In desperate need of reform or of defenders?” asks another.

Since the 1990s, health experts have anticipated that we would be hit by an influenza pandemic in the not-too-distant future (cf. Caduff 2015; Lakoff 2008; Weir, Mykhalovskiy 2010). While we may have thought of pandemic primarily in terms of Covid-19 over the past two years, influenza pandemics have long represented the paradigmatic case of pandemic preparedness planning.

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Our latest post features Olivia Aguiar, a lab manager at the ScholCommLab and a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University’s Injury Prevention and Mobility Lab (IPML). In this Q&A, she tells us about creating science comics, interviewing “super seniors,” setting boundaries, and more.

In spring 2020, Italy, like other countries in Europe and around the world, was in the midst of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Lockdown measures were in place in the entire country in the attempt to limit the spread of the virus.

In academia, there is a clear understanding of how the quality of research work is assessed. This is done by academic peers in a peer review process. It is only then, through the discourse of expert opinion, that it is possible to determine whether the quality of a paper is good or poor. The peers themselves also determine when science is excellent without using formal criteria or even indicators. Science thus has a monopoly on quality;