“EU commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn made a strong pitch for the indispensability of the humanities in understanding issues such as climate change …” (more)
[Paul Gillespie, Irish Times, 11 May]
“If there is one thing you learn in politics, it is that nothing ever stays the same. The world is constantly changing. And big changes force hard choices, especially for politicians. Science and research are invaluable for decision-makers, and it is usually the so-called ‘hard’ sciences that grab the headlines …” (more)
[Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Irish Times, 8 May]
“While we’re on the subject of Reinhart and Rogoff, Tyler Cowen has a nice little post on ‘Who shares data’. Basically, most economists don’t share data, and the ones who do are more likely to be full professors with tenure and a clear personal commitment to sharing …” (more)
[Megan McArdle, The Daily Beast, 18 April]
“As debate continues over the benefits and risks of open access to the humanities and social sciences, one concern that has been voiced above the rest is the disruption caused to the funding of scholarly societies in the UK …” (more)
[Adam Crymble, Impact of Social Sciences, 12 March]
“The Green Open Access route, which encourages the use of institutional repositories for depositing manuscripts as drafts or after a publisher’s embargo period, seems to many in the Humanities and Social Sciences like a more agreeable way to widen access to scholarly work. Mike Taylor is not convinced …” (more)
[Impact of Social Sciences, 6 March]
“For quite some time, I have been interested in/incensed by the scholarly publication system; the exclusions, iniquities and absurdities of it can be clearly seen from only a brief survey of the economic field …” (more)
[Martin Paul Eve, 9 January]
“Publishing can sometimes be seen as acting as the fuel behind the academic world. Yet, across social sciences, woman are not publishing their share of research papers …” (more)
[HT: Sharon Flynn]
[Karen Schucan-Bird, Impact of Social Sciences, 7 August]
“The European Alliance for the Social Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) has rejected the European Commission’s view that social sciences and humanities are adequately covered in the European Union’s proposed Horizon 2020 research programme …” (more)
[Jan Petter Myklebust, University World News, 30 March]
“If in the event that someone was so desperate as to ask me for just one piece of advice, right now it would be to postpone any prospective plans of going to university to study the arts or social sciences, by-pass it completely if at all possible …” (more)
[Hubris, 16 March]
“European Union Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has responded to calls to give more weight to social sciences and humanities in Horizon 2020, the EU’s funding programme for research and innovation …” (more)
[Jan Petter Myklebust and Brendan O’Malley, University World News, 17 November]
“… There has never been a more important time to mark the significance of research within the College, as in the national context we await the Forfas prioritisation report which may have implications for the amount of research funding made available for AHSS …” (more)
[Caroline Fennell, creative Head space, 14 September]
“Anyone attending yesterday’s congressional hearing on funding the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences at the National Science Foundation is likely to have come away thinking that NSF had dodged a metaphorical bullet aimed at decimating support for those fields. But appearances can be deceiving …” (more)
[Jeffrey Mervis, Science Insider, 3 June]
“… In a discussion with Members of the European Parliament and the EU Commission in Brussels, researchers of Freie Universität Berlin and The London School of Economics warned against limiting EU funding programmes to natural science and engineering. In a globalised Europe, social science and humanities play an outstanding role for providing solutions to societal challenges …” (more)
[AlphaGalileo, 20 May]
“A group of scholars at the Freie Universität in Berlin is distributing via E-mail and their website alarming information about downsizing of the EU research funding in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The EU is currently drawing up its 8th framework program, in which it decides how to allocate its money …” (more)
[Ingrid Robeyns, Crooked Timber, 13 December]
“… This current Report underlines the significant role that the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) play in our economy and society both directly and indirectly. It recognises that while the AHSS provide skills for specific economically important occupations and sectors, they also enhance quality of life generally and help to make Ireland an attractive place in which to live and do business …” (PDF, 7Mb)
[IRCHSS and HEA, 29 September]
“The number of social science publications in international journals is much lower than those for the natural sciences and medicine. So the natural sciences and the medical fields dominate university rankings while the strength of universities’ social sciences scarcely contributes to their position …” (more)
[Geoff Maslen, University World News, 29 August]
“The most distinctive feature of North American social science, besides its size, is the extent of the investment made in time, facilities, training and incentives for research since the Second World War, says Craig Calhoun, President of the US Social Science Research Council and a social sciences professor at New York University …” (more)
[Geoff Maslen, University World News, 29 August]
“How can social science researchers most effectively make a contribution to public policy formation? The recent debates surrounding how best to address the fiscal crisis facing Ireland cast a spotlight on two challenges that confront researchers who attempt to intervene in the wider public discussion …” (more)
[Jane Gray, Ireland after NAMA, 17 December]
“When Alan McKee submitted a paper on pornography to a leading social science journal, he did not attempt to spare readers’ blushes. But the language he used did more than raise eyebrows: it earned him a ticking-off from the academic referees who reviewed the paper …” (more)
[Rebecca Attwood, Times Higher Education, 12 November]
“‘Academic narcissism’ and a focus on self-promotion over scholarly substance are being blamed for bringing the humanities and the social sciences to the brink. At a conference on the future of the disciplines held in Brussels last week, scholars warned that they were on a self-destructive course. One of those to sound the alarm was Sasa Bozic, associate professor of sociology at the University of Zadar, Croatia, who accused his peers of displaying narcissistic traits …” (more)
[Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education, 29 October]
