LSE Impact Blog

The People Culture and Environment element of REF2029 is already changing the sector — we shouldn’t give up on it now - Impact of Social Sciences The future of the People Culture and Environment element of REF 2029 is currently under scrutiny. Drawing on interviews with institutional decisionmakers as part of the COMET study, Gemma Derrick,…

👀 ICYMI: "Although the PCE won’t solve all the sector challenges, without it we are destined to support a sub-standard research culture and environment that will end up costing good research and researchers."

#REF2029 #PCE #ResearchCulture

Banning Sci-Hub highlights India’s unequal access to knowledge - Impact of Social Sciences The decision to block Sci-Hub in India brings inequalities in access to research based knowledge into sharp focus.

💥New: Banning Sci-Hub highlights India’s unequal access to knowledge

✍️Rituparna Patgiri

#AcademicSky #AcademicPublishing #SciHub

Academic careers have become a professional sport - Impact of Social Sciences Academia like professional sports is increasingly a system defined by competition, precarity and quantification does this lead to a loss of meaning?

💥New: Academic careers have become a professional sport

✍️ @swallaschek.bsky.social

#AcademicSky #ECRchat #AcademicCareers

Editorial silence is an unfair burden on early career and marginalised researchers - Impact of Social Sciences Editorial silence can be particularly damaging for researchers at start of their careers and those working outside privileged institutions.

👀 ICYMI: "For early-career scholars, especially those from marginalised backgrounds, the absence of a reply is not simply a neutral delay. It is a quiet act of exclusion"

#PhDchat #AcWri

In the blog post below, I use this analogy to make sense of the current state of science with the constant competition, quantification and precarity.

Academic careers have become a professional sport - Impact of Social Sciences Academia like professional sports is increasingly a system defined by competition, precarity and quantification does this lead to a loss of meaning?

💥New: Academic careers have become a professional sport

✍️ @swallaschek.bsky.social

#AcademicSky #ECRchat #AcademicCareers

Open educational resources should be central to the public mission of universities - Impact of Social Sciences Why open educational resources should form a central part of university strategies for public engagement.

💥New: Open educational resources should be central to the public mission of universities

✍️ @niamhtumelty.bsky.social & @heroicendeavour.bsky.social

#OpenResearch #AcademicSky #HigherEducation (@lsepress.bsky.social)

A new academic year has begun, but UK universities are still struggling to respond to AI - Impact of Social Sciences Mark Carrigan argues university staff are still struggling to develop coherent, contextual and disciplinary responses to AI’s impact on teaching and learning.

👀 ICYMI: "While 92% of undergraduate students are using Generative AI, only 36% said they had been offered support by their university"

#AcademicSky #HigherEducation

How Google Scholar transformed research - Impact of Social Sciences Google Scholar launched in November 2004 with the goal of making it easier to access scientific knowledge. But did it live up to this aim or simply create new problems? Kyriakos Drivas shows that…

🗃️ From May: Google Scholar launched in November 2004 with the goal of making it easier to access scientific knowledge. But did it live up to this aim or simply create new problems?

#GoogleScholar #AcademicChatter

How scholarly publishers wield soft power - Impact of Social Sciences Scientific publishers exercise 'soft power' through their role in managing and curating research, but how is this role changing in an open research landscape?

👀 ICYMI: By deciding how research is shared, who can access it, and how it connects to real-world challenges, they exert soft power through the values and choices embedded in how science is communicated.

#SoftPower #ScholComm #SciComm

The “least worst” exercise – What direction will research evaluation in Australia take? - Impact of Social Sciences Will a seemingly light touch and data driven approach to Australia's research assessment exercise (ERA) prove effective?

💥 New: The “least worst” exercise – What direction will research evaluation in Australia take?

✍️ Ksenia Sawczak

#HigherEd #ERA #ResearchEvaluation

Open educational resources should be central to the public mission of universities - Impact of Social Sciences Why open educational resources should form a central part of university strategies for public engagement.

💥New: Open educational resources should be central to the public mission of universities

✍️ @niamhtumelty.bsky.social & @heroicendeavour.bsky.social

#OpenResearch #AcademicSky #HigherEducation (@lsepress.bsky.social)

How to use Overton to develop impact case studies - Impact of Social Sciences Despite the lack of clarity surrounding the next round of the REF, university research offices are already collecting evidence and preparing. Tamsin Varney outlines three ways in which the policy…

👀 ICYMI: How to use Overton to develop impact case studies

#ResearchImpact #ImpactCaseStudies #REF2029 @overton.io

The Tylenol/Paracetamol autism scare poses a grave challenge for science communicators - Impact of Social Sciences By conflating causation and correlation recent announcements by the Trump administration may require many years of work to change health behaviours.

👀 ICYMI: "These consequences may remain even if there is not a relabelling of acetaminophen/paracetamol"

#Vaccines #SciComm #PublicHealth

The Tylenol/Paracetamol autism scare poses a grave challenge for science communicators - Impact of Social Sciences By conflating causation and correlation recent announcements by the Trump administration may require many years of work to change health behaviours.

👀 ICYMI: "These consequences may remain even if there is not a relabelling of acetaminophen/paracetamol"

#Vaccines #SciComm #PublicHealth

👋From our friends over at @lsepoliticsblog.bsky.social

#SocialScience

ChatGPT is blind to bad science - Impact of Social Sciences A new study finds ChatGPT fails to take into account retraction notices across a wide range of research.

👀 ICYMI: "This is not simply an issue of the model’s training data being out of date; the majority of the articles we tested were retracted long before the model’s knowledge cut-off date."

#AcWri #LitReview #AcademicSky

Subscribe to the Impact Blog - Impact of Social Sciences Want to be kept up-to-date with our daily posts on scholarly communication and academic impact? Get all LSE Impact blog posts straight to your inbox in one simple step and sign up to our mailing…

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The People Culture and Environment element of REF2029 is already changing the sector, we shouldn’t give up on it now - Impact of Social Sciences The future of the People Culture and Environment element of REF 2029 is currently under scrutiny. Drawing on interviews with institutional decisionmakers as part of the COMET study, Gemma Derrick, Amy...

💥New: The People Culture and Environment element of REF2029 is already changing the sector, we shouldn’t give up on it now

✍️ @gemmaderrick.bsky.social Amy Devenney, Lizzie Ville & Rhian Pennie

#PeopleCultureEvironment #ResearchCulture #REF2029

ChatGPT is blind to bad science - Impact of Social Sciences A new study finds ChatGPT fails to take into account retraction notices across a wide range of research.

👀 ICYMI: "This is not simply an issue of the model’s training data being out of date; the majority of the articles we tested were retracted long before the model’s knowledge cut-off date."

#AcWri #LitReview #AcademicSky

The People Culture and Environment element of REF2029 is already changing the sector, we shouldn’t give up on it now - Impact of Social Sciences The future of the People Culture and Environment element of REF 2029 is currently under scrutiny. Drawing on interviews with institutional decisionmakers as part of the COMET study, Gemma Derrick, Amy...

💥New: The People Culture and Environment element of REF2029 is already changing the sector, we shouldn’t give up on it now

✍️ @gemmaderrick.bsky.social Amy Devenney, Lizzie Ville & Rhian Pennie

#PeopleCultureEvironment #ResearchCulture #REF2029

Editorial silence is an unfair burden on early career and marginalised researchers - Impact of Social Sciences Editorial silence can be particularly damaging for researchers at start of their careers and those working outside privileged institutions.

💥New: Editorial silence is an unfair burden on early career and marginalised researchers

#PhDchat #ECRchat #SciComm #AcWri

How to use Overton to develop impact case studies - Impact of Social Sciences Despite the lack of clarity surrounding the next round of the REF, university research offices are already collecting evidence and preparing. Tamsin Varney outlines three ways in which the policy…

👀 ICYMI: How to use Overton to develop impact case studies

#ResearchImpact #ImpactCaseStudies #REF2029 @overton.io

Editorial silence is an unfair burden on early career and marginalised researchers - Impact of Social Sciences Editorial silence can be particularly damaging for researchers at start of their careers and those working outside privileged institutions.

💥New: Editorial silence is an unfair burden on early career and marginalised researchers

#PhDchat #ECRchat #SciComm #AcWri

We are all losers in Trump’s ‘common sense’ war on social science - Impact of Social Sciences Beyond their short-term implications, Trump's executive orders represent a concerted effort to undermine scientific enquiry across all fields of research.

🗃️ From February: "Common sense is of a piece with “do your own research”

#AcademicSky #HigherEducation

A new academic year has begun, but UK universities are still struggling to respond to AI - Impact of Social Sciences Mark Carrigan argues university staff are still struggling to develop coherent, contextual and disciplinary responses to AI’s impact on teaching and learning.

💥New: A new academic year has begun, but UK universities are still struggling to respond to AI

✍️ Mark Carrigan

#AcademicSky #HigherEd #EdTech

Do scientists need to be ‘relatable’ for the public to trust their role in policymaking? - Impact of Social Sciences Christina Boswell and Molly Morgan Jones, suggest that the link between trust and relatability is important to good science communication.

🗃️ From the archive: "some of the most influential science communicators foregrounded aspects of their own lives to make technical mpox content more accessible"

#SciComm #Vaccines #Expertise

We are all losers in Trump’s ‘common sense’ war on social science - Impact of Social Sciences Beyond their short-term implications, Trump's executive orders represent a concerted effort to undermine scientific enquiry across all fields of research.

🗃️ From February: "Common sense is of a piece with “do your own research”

#AcademicSky #HigherEducation

ChatGPT doesn’t think like a human, so why does it speak like one? - Impact of Social Sciences Large language models like ChatGPT adopt aspects of human speech to give the impression of human intelligence. George Gaskell highlights the limits of ChatGPT’s conversational ethics, common sense…

👀 ICYMI: "At the heart of a satisfactory conversation, the philosopher Paul Grice, specifies four maxims; Quantity~ Quality ~ Relevance [&] Manner: avoid obscurity, ambiguity, and verbosity ~ it is not unreasonable to assume that it should follow them"

#ChatGPT #AcademicSky

A new academic year has begun, but UK universities are still struggling to respond to AI - Impact of Social Sciences Mark Carrigan argues university staff are still struggling to develop coherent, contextual and disciplinary responses to AI’s impact on teaching and learning.

💥New: A new academic year has begun, but UK universities are still struggling to respond to AI

✍️ Mark Carrigan

#AcademicSky #HigherEd #EdTech