Data from the Nature Index suggest China-based authors are increasingly publishing without international colleagues. When China overtook the United States in the Nature Index for contributions to natural-sciences research articles last year, it marked a watershed moment for the database and for Chinese science. Since the index was launched in 2014, China’s ‘Share’ — a […]
Nature Index
Obsession with novelty sidelines deeper learning
Too much focus on generating new ideas in science is driving the replication crisis. An overemphasis on novelty has meant that funders and journal editors are neglecting the equally important work of revisiting old problems, says molecular biologist, Barak Cohen, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “If we always have to be finding something […]
Automated software saves researchers valuable hours
Online tools are lightening the load for authors and journal editors. An international partnership is developing online tools that could save authors and journal editors hours in manuscript checking, while ensuring, with the help of peer review, that published science is high-quality, replicable, and useful. Read more in Nature Index.
Mapping the spread of predators and prey
Bogus journals and their victims are widespread, study finds. The advent of open-access publishing has made scientific literature more accessible, but it has also given rise to ‘predatory’ publishers — shady outfits that will reproduce just about anything that resembles a research paper, without the safeguards of peer review or quality editorial standards. David Moher, […]
Canadian researchers do more with less
Growing participation in large international research projects may explain the drop in Canada’s index performance. Researchers at Canadian institutions are publishing more papers in top journals, but make up a smaller part of the collaborative teams that publish them, according to the latest data from Nature Index. Between 2012 and 2015, the number of publications […]