Now it is time to build up the pressure! How to improve working conditions in academia
Kristin Eichhorn, co-initiator of #IchbinHanna, on fair working conditions in research and the failed reform proposal in Germany.
Achieving (Partial) Generalizability
Mennatullah Hendawy on six decisions that made her findings from her dissertation, a case study on interdisciplinary urban planning in Cairo, more generalizable.
How will Artificial Intelligence (AI) influence openness and collaboration in science?
Beck, Poetz & Sauermann on using AI tools when developing novel research ideas as input for writing grant proposals during an experiment at the OIS Research Conference 2022.
Opportunities and Limitations of Evidence-Based Policy Advice for Evidence-Based Policy-Making
Holger Bähr on the strengths and pitfalls of evidence-based policy advice in policy-making precesses
Surveillance Publishing
Jefferson Pooley on Surveillance Publishing, its history in modern societies during the last couple of decades, and the potential costs of these practices for both service providers and their users.
Trust at the interface of environmental research and policy
Karcher and Shellock on trust at the science-policy interface, how can you build trust when working with decision-makers and what can you do when it has been compromised or lost.
ploc – an app to discover and improve research
The pocket library for open content is an application designed to simplify the search for openly available research content and lay ground for a basic quality assurance mechanism.
Another Year in Elephants
A wrap up of 2021 on Elephant in the Lab by the Editorial Team
How to find the right Survey Tool: Problems and Proposals
Sami Nenno on the typical problems of the most common service providers for conducting online surveys and how to find the right one for your own project.
Impact of social sciences – (How) Can it be measured?
A summary of the results of a workshop held by our authors on issues related to the measurability of the impact of the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Snails on the chase: How to cope with anxiety in an academic career
Zhao et al. on an individual’s role in the scientific system and some coping mechanisms to alleviate the stress of the precarious working conditions of early career academics.
Opening up the black box of teaching in a digital era
The Pandemic hit the vast majority of European HEI unprepared. The members of AEDiL saw this as a starting point for a collaborative project taking innovative methodological pathways.
Wikipedia as Science Communication: A Step-by-Step Guide
The Wikipedia community has become a source of information for a broad and global public. Paul and Max argue that contributing to the encyclopedia as a scholar can be a powerful way of achieving a strong societal impact of their own expertise. Furthermore they provide a guide on how to write your first contributions.
Possibilities for Change – Higher Education and Digitalisation
Bronwen and Moritz highlight the institutional challenges posed to Higher Education Institutions by the pandemic and outline how these can be viewed as a window of opportunity
How to structure a cumulative dissertation: Five strategies
In this article, Mennatullah Hendawy shares some insights on structuring cumulative dissertations based on her own experience
Breaking the status quo – The role of a small funding organization in gender mainstreaming
Donia Lasinger on the contribution of the Vienna Science and Technology Funds (WWTF) as a compareably small funding organization to equality of all genders
When your journal reads you
Renke Siems on user tracking on science publisher platforms, its implications for their individual users and ways to face this issue
On creating a good research environment
Sabine Müller on the hierarchical system of German academia and why it could be a problem for the wellbeing of young academics and Ph.D. candidates. She compares it to her experiences at Oxford University and sheds light on the differences between the two research cultures.
Reducing the power imbalances in academic letters of reference
Lucy G. Gillis on inequalities in science reproduced by letters of reference and how to encounter them
A Replication Crisis in the Making?
Jörg Peters on the lack of replicability of many publications in economics, the role of p-hacking and publication pressure, and reasons for cautious optimism in considering these issues
Sexual harassment in Academia
Kelsey Medeiros on sexual harassment, what role it plays in relation to power structures in academia, and possible ways to address it
Manifestations of power abuse in academia and how to prevent them
A group of researchers from the German N² network presents the results of a survey among PhD students on the abuse of power in science and outlines ways to counter it
Power and Publications in Chinese Academia
Ruixue Jia on the influence of administrative power in Chinese academia on researchers’ publication activity, their selection of co-authors, and the topics they are writing about.
Power and Academia, an endless story
Linda Jauch on powerful dependancies of academics to funding bodies, their supervisors and what to do about it.
A Year in Elephants
A look backwards from the editorial team.
Tear down this invisible wall
Katrin Frisch on encounters with the different forms of west german hegemony throughout her scientific training and everyday working life in academia.
From “I” to “We” – Addressing Gender Imbalances in the Natural Sciences
Haibo Ruan from the Lise Meitner Gesellschaft on the forms of power abuse in science, its gender dimension, and how to address and overcome it.
When Relationships Between Supervisors and Doctoral Researchers Go Wrong
Gorup & Laufer on how control is exercised and abused within relationships between doctoral supervisors and their students, what happens when PhD students challenge this control, and how we break free of this cycle of control.
Global competition and the emerging challenge to open data
Lennart Stoy on the growing problems for the efforts for a science with a rational of open data in the context of upcoming european legislation
Academic voices during the pandemic
Julia T. Scho on the challenges and positive experiences of researchers and scientists working around the globe during the pandemic