Scott Morrison recently announced a $2.2 billion Research Commercialisation Action Plan for the next ten years. The plan centres on a competitive grant scheme to promote start-ups and industry partnerships. The prime minister’s message to universities was clear: “we need to find and develop a new breed of researcher entrepreneurs in Australia”. The statement came on the heels of […] … learn more→

When a paper is published could seem obvious but this is not a trivial question. For some time now, a research article can display several different dates that can prove confusing when trying to work out when a scholarly publication is actually released. In the hardcopy print era, before the Web shook up the academic […] … learn more→

The polarization of the discussions but also the scale of the public health issues in the debate on the scientific reliability of preprints have not always allowed the general public to grasp the importance of the peer review process – also called “evaluation” – for the functioning of the scientific community. The publishing model in today’s academic […] … learn more→

On Christmas Eve 2021, the pub-test folly struck again. The two of us found ourselves, angry and heartsore, resigning from the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) highly respected College of Experts in protest at the minister’s rejection of grant funding recommendations. This was not a comment on the college, a laudable body of experienced research leaders committed […] … learn more→

An ill newborn’s life is hanging by a thread, and only the right diagnosis will afford her the treatment that may save her life. A cancer patient’s therapy can be tailored to the specific type of tumour they have, if only the doctors know what the molecular targets are that will make the drugs effective for that patient. Parents […] … learn more→

Sex is an expensive business, biologically speaking. Finding a suitable mate takes time and energy. Offspring are also a huge investment of resources. But sex does offer a rewarding possibility: children who are fitter than their parents thanks to new and “better” combinations of genes. Darwin realised that many animal species therefore carefully select their […] … learn more→

The acting minister for education and youth, Stuart Robert, wrote a letter last week to Australian Research Council (ARC) CEO Sue Thomas, listing four demands. These included changes to ARC funding models and an overhaul of the ARC itself. These “expectations” were repackaged for the public in a press release on Tuesday entitled “New direction for the Australian Research Council […] … learn more→

The COP26 meeting has sharpened the world’s focus on climate change. To adapt and thrive in a world of reduced emissions, Australian businesses and communities need access to the technologies and innovation made possible by the nation’s researchers. But most Australian research is locked behind publisher paywalls. Open access to research has become an important […] … learn more→

Project leadership is a complex, tricky beast. My first experience of leading a funded research project took place in 1989, in the UK. Since that time, I have been principal investigator (PI) on four projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and co-investigator on two others, as well as […] … learn more→

There are hundreds of poetry generation programs on the Internet – that is, systems capable of producing poetry automatically – but what can they be used for? Do these programs have an interest, beyond that of satisfying their designer? We have heard a lot about GPT2 or GPT3, these huge computer programs capable of producing very […] … learn more→