To appreciate what a huge difference there is between the author of a peer-reviewed journal article and just about any other kind of author we need only remind ourselves why universities have their "publish or perish" policy: aside from imparting existing knowledge to students through teaching, the work of a university scholar or scientist is devoted to creating new knowledge for other scholars and scientists to use, apply, and build upon, for the benefit of us all. Creating new knowledge is called "research", and its active use and application are called "research impact". Researchers are
This article will discuss and comment some of the results obtained by the application of the questionnaire "Public perception of Science and Technology". The questionnaire is a translated and adapted Portuguese version from the original in Spanish produced by the group Centro de Estudios sobre Ciencia, Desarrollo y Educación Superior of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Carlos VogtRafael de Almeida EvangelistaMarcelo Knobel
Peer review is the evaluation method that has characterized the scientific growth of the last four centuries, the first four of what is called modern science, indeed. It is matter of scientific communication inside scientific community, a subject too poorly studied in comparison with its critical importance for a scientific study of science (science of science). Peer review has been used for scientific paper evaluation before publication (editorial peer review) and for research proposal evaluation before financial support (grants peer review). Both cases present similar pros and cons, so I
I still remember very clearly my first encounter with peer review: I was a Ph. D. student in physics and I had written my first paper, submitted it to a journal and - after what seemed to me a very long time - received a reply with the request for few changes and corrections I was supposed to include in my paper before it could be considered for publication. These very simple steps: the writing up of some original research results in a paper, its submission to a journal and the process of the work being read and judged by someone reputed to be an expert in the field is what we call peer review
Scholars and scientists do research to create new knowledge so that other scholars and scientists can use it to create still more new knowledge and to apply it to improving people's lives. They are paid to do research, but not to report their research: that they do for free, because it is not royalty-revenue from their research papers but their "research impact" that pays their salaries, funds their further research, earns them prestige and prizes, etc. "Research impact" means how much of a contribution your research makes to further research: do other researchers read, use, cite, and apply
n June, the 23rd of last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its Draft Report on the Environment, a report on environmental quality. The EPA is an autonomous federal agency known for its reliability on environmental studies and safeguards. Its Draft Report is considered by Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the nation’s most scientifically reliable analysis on environmental quality. The latest Draft Report makes no reference whatsoever to the changes in global climate.
In the field of scientific communication in Europe, science centres have gained increasing importance over the last ten years. Italy, beyond the City of Science in Naples, is also planning the set up of more science centres throughout the country. Their hands-on style makes them something between a museum and a fun fair and, beyond the issue of merit, no doubt the success of many science centres also depends on the fun offered. It is important then to be able to assess to what extent people can actually make use of the proposed themes. This report tries to point out the dialogue opportunities
In the last few years, a continuous series of food alerts have caught the attention of the media and the public in Europe. First, eggs and pork contaminated with dioxins; then, "mad cow" disease, while, all along in the background, a battle against genetically modified plants has been in progress. These food alerts have had complex repercussions on the perception of risks associated with food production. Experts have often been divided over these issues, and the uncertainty of scientific data has been indicated on more than one occasion as one of the factors that influence risk perception
In a brief article published by Science last October, British scientists stated that the expression "Public Understanding of Science" (PUS), which was traditionally employed in Anglosaxon societies to refer to the issue of the relationship between science, technology and society, is out-of-date. It should be replaced by "Public Engagement with Science and Technology" (PEST), a new acronym that clearly invites to reconceptualise the relationship between science and the public. The new approach involves the engagement of the public or rather the publics of science, through dialogue, in
In recent weeks, Britain’s Better Regulation Task Force report on scientific research regulation asked the Government to evaluate the risks associated with the development of Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies. The Government was also asked to prove its implementation of a specific policy to protect human, animal and environmental safety, were it to be threatened by the development of this emerging field of knowledge. These requests may sound rather alarming. However, objectively speaking, the precautionary attitude of the Better Regulation Task Force does not differ greatly from that of the U
This article describes a course on the representations of HIV/AIDS in the visual arts, concluding that discipline-based art education may be applied to medical humanities courses in a medical curriculum.