According to the recently released Research Australia report, more than three-quarters of Australia’s early career researchers (ECRs) in medical science are employed on temporary contracts or as casuals. Those young postdoctoral researchers in their 20s and 30s are essentially serving apprenticeships, expected to produce publishable research while relying on short-duration contracts of usually one to […] … learn more→

People have searched for sex differences in human brains since at least the 19th century, when scientist Samuel George Morton poured seeds and lead shot into human skulls to measure their volumes. Gustave Le Bon found men’s brains are usually larger than women’s, which prompted Alexander Bains and George Romanes to argue this size difference makes men smarter. But John Stuart Mill pointed out, […] … learn more→

Blogs allow researchers to engage with a broad audience, including other researchers, in a less formal and more open way than traditional academic publishing. It provides an avenue to publish both research stories and expert commentary. Blogging in the academy is generally a labour of love. Most universities find it difficult to recognize blogging within […] … learn more→

We have a problem. Researchers make an astonishing 2 million contributions annually, but the majority of these end up just as academic papers and collect dust without ever being used to create change in our society. This is not just our problem, but broader society’s, too, since all of us lose if science continues to churn out studies without […] … learn more→

Very few aspects of our lives escape numerical evaluation for comparative purposes. Humanity’s current challenge is to keep Covid-19’s reproduction number, or R0, as low as possible to prevent its spread. This numerical fixation is certainly true of university research. Many measures of research output, quality and impact are used to guide recruitment, funding and […] … learn more→

It was possible when I was a graduate student in the mid 1980s to have read every article in my field of study, bacterial chemotaxis. I did so, and I was known among my colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley for having achieved a feat that would be impossible now. At a Gordon conference […] … learn more→

Earlier this year, French physician and microbiologist Didier Raoult generated a media uproar over his controversial promotion of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. The researcher has long pointed to his growing list of publications and high number of citations as an indication of his contribution to science, all summarized in his “h-index.” The controversy over his recent […] … learn more→

Publication credentials are known to heavily impact academic career progression. In this age of rankings and metrics, prestige matters. It would therefore be dispiriting to academics to find that journals perpetuate systemic biases that work to the detriment of colleagues at less prestigious institutions. But in US legal academia, it has long been suspected that […] … learn more→

COVID-19 comes with a set of pressing social challenges. These include environmental catastrophes such as the Australian droughts and bushfires, and the impending crisis of global warming. Social and health issues – include debilitating poverty, racial and income inequality, and chronic diseases – also loom large. In this turbulent environment, universities have an important role […] … learn more→

When I was awarded my PhD in medical research in 1991, going into business was not on my agenda. My aim was to make discoveries that would contribute to a body of knowledge on human health. Put simply, I wanted to make people’s lives better. I regarded the academic research environment, full of smart, inquisitive […] … learn more→