Around the world, lots of researchers are currently at home, during a crisis, trying to work (as Parks Canada management so aptly said). The Australian Research Council, along with many other funding agencies, have released guidelines on responding to the impact of COVID-19 in grant applications (here is a UK version – 104 Kb PDF). I’d like to expand on their […] … learn more→

Academics are among the most vocal critics of discriminatory practices. Yet when it comes to recruiting those in their own image, they appear to be among the worse culprits. A bright spotlight currently shines on discrimination affecting women and black and minority ethnic staff and students – and rightly so – but the effects of […] … learn more→

Recently, both of us have been doing a lot of co-writing and co-editing, and it seems to us that quite a bit of discussion can be found on collaborative writing (for example this advice on collaborating and co-authoring, this checklist to enable effective management of co-authoring, and this review of the challenges and potential pitfalls of the trend […] … learn more→

This week’s announcement that scientists who publish in the Nature journals will be able to make their papers freely available online marks another significant step on the journey towards what we hope will be full open access. However, the move also underlines that the bulk of open access (OA) budgets continue to be spent on […] … learn more→

It was in June 2020, three months into the lockdown in Victoria, and the longest winter I have ever seen. I realised my days consisted of either crying for hours, or just staring vacantly. I am struggling to get anything done and the only thing that I feel like doing is cleaning the entire house. […] … learn more→

94% of Teens’ research by using popular search engines. They also use online encyclopedias. But using smartphones distract them the most. In this age of technology, the dependency on the internet has increased for everything including research. Teenagers have access to multitudes of research material online for their studies, and they do not shy away […] … learn more→

Many universities around the world pay academics to publish their research. Our recent study in South Africa, though, suggests they should be cautious of such practices. The country’s Department of Higher Education and Training funds public universities for every article published in academic journals on any of six accredited lists. The lists include journals that meet various quality indicators such […] … learn more→

What does a law professor need from a data visualisation specialist? What would an expert in the prevention of domestic violence see in billions of Tweets? How can a researcher use Big Data to enhance climate projections in Australia and overseas? What can universities do to promote Indigenous data sovereignty and governance? Can scientists transform […] … learn more→

Most of us work in occupied research territories. Other researchers have been around at least some of the things that we are concerned with. Their work offers particular interpretations and perhaps ‘evidence’ that may – or may not – be useful to us as we work out what we are going to do. Other people’s […] … learn more→

Australian university research funding is made up of discretionary income that comes from various sources, including international student fees. This is additional to the funding, including government grants, specifically received for research activities. Universities spent A$12.2 billion on research in 2018. Discretionary income used to fund Australian university research that year amounted to $6 billion, of which […] … learn more→