Research

Report says distribution would change little if based on institutions’ research council income

Cardiff University’s dean of medicine has been cleared of research misconduct but the institution has found a former member of his lab guilty of image falsification in four papers.

Research Councils UK has removed from its guidance on its open-access policy an exhortation for institutions and authors to make sure a “proper market in article fees” operates.

The British Library – and the nation’s other legal deposit libraries – have officially taken on responsibility to archive UK web content, opening up immense opportunities for researchers.

Publication ethics committee issues new guidelines for peer review

Canadian human-rights case highlights disquiet at practices of Beijing-funded centres up on foreign campuses

Episciences Project offers new publishing formula

Universities should vet research outputs before they get to the publishing (and scandal) stage, say Roger Watson and Mark Hayter

US president Barack Obama’s announcement that $100 million (£66 million) is to be invested in an initiative to map the human brain has been welcomed by the country’s higher education institutions.

Newcastle University is to launch a new £7 million centre for undersea and offshore engineering on the site of a famous former shipyard.

The public-private balance of funding sources needs to be adjusted to protect the public interest, says Roger Brown

Colin Hay insists that work as chair of politics subpanel will be unaffected by new Sciences Po job

Senior humanities and social science academics come out in support of move to ‘take knowledge out of silos’

Chester tackles bodily totems and taboos. Matthew Reisz reports

REF factor may explain growing wage differential

Teams from six universities will make up the UK’s second cyber security research institute, it has been announced.

Christopher Higgins details academy’s cost burden to Booksellers Association conference

In a further demonstration of the lure of the so-called golden triangle, pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca has announced plans to relocate its UK-based research and development activities from Cheshire to Cambridge.

Council unveils five-year strategy

Chief executive Roly Keating tells Matthew Reisz he will help university libraries seek ‘the heart of the service’

‘Common principles’ plan aims to protect research from risk-averse committees. Paul Jump reports

Matthew Reisz visits an exhibition to celebrate the bicentenary of a pioneering epidemiologist

A feud at the heart of the discipline is undermining efforts to build a unified science of humanity, warns Camilla Power

Revised open-access guidance leaves unanswered questions

UK businesses are being failed by the government’s lack of a “coherent strategy to support the commercialisation of technological innovation in the UK”, MPs have said.

University of Birmingham professor appointed post-Higgs boson ‘spokesperson’. By Paul Jump

West London development will provide facilities for research, translation and commercialisation, explains Sir Keith O’Nions, Imperial president

A disastrous open-access policy lashes the promise of the digital age to an outmoded buggy of a model, laments Martin McQuillan

Sir Mark Walport looks back at a highly successful decade in charge

Collection established of personal accounts of Women’s Liberation Movement activists. Elizabeth Gibney reports

Matthew Reisz meets scholars whose enquiries are intertwined with their creative endeavours

Artistic practice can certainly be research - but the present model in UK universities is confused and lacks intellectual rigour, argues Nicholas Till

Longer embargo periods of up to 24 months for green open access will only apply when universities’ annual block grants for “gold” article fees have run out, Research Councils UK has confirmed.

Research gains in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Korea are not necessarily in their strongest suits, finds Thomson Reuters

They say ‘lessons have been learned’ after Research Councils UK is condemned for lack of dialogue

A professor of educational technology at Newcastle University has won a $1 million (£660,000) prize for his work teaching children from India’s slums how to use the internet

Universities and research institutes that do not investigate research misconduct properly could have their research council funding removed.

By Ry Rivard, for Inside Higher Ed

The UK’s higher education funding councils will not express a preference for either green or gold open access in their submission rules for future research excellence frameworks.

The UK’s higher education funding councils will not express a preference for either green or gold open access in their submission rules for future research excellence frameworks.

The lack of clarity over Research Councils UK’s new open access policy is “unacceptable” and government ministers should learn lessons from the confusion, according to a House of Lords report.

Welsh universities lead the UK in terms of output quality per pound invested, says report from Learned Society of Wales

Jack Grove on a European institution’s mission to foster cross-border scholarship

Religious sense ‘cover-up’ in emphasis on embryonic work

A bill has been introduced into the United States Congress that would require most papers describing publicly-funded research to be made open access within six months of publication.

‘Summer reading lists’ no basis for policy, says don

David Erdos believes a bid to tighten European data protection will have a chilling impact on social science and humanities research

Maintaining scholarly rigour amid demands for details about the discovery of Richard III was no easy task, but Lin Foxhall enjoyed it

Managerial staff one of few growth areas in HE employment

Open-access publishing, once a niche preoccupation, is now a hot-button issue. But concern is growing that unintended consequences of new publication mandates will cost individual scholars and the UK sector dear. Paul Jump reports

New assessment scheme will not be used to direct cash to institutions

People take refuge in drama when the bombs rain down, and the arts aid rebuilding when the guns fall silent, says James Thompson, who has travelled to some of the world’s most violent regions, only for the horrors of conflict to be felt closer to home

Critics say university’s announcement should have gone out to peer review, not a press conference

Germany’s science and education minister has resigned after a university revoked her doctorate, having ruled she had plagiarised parts of her thesis.

Swiss poo paper comes up smelling of roses

Salary boost from master’s degree rises while profile of students narrows, says Sutton Trust report

Randomised controlled trials can’t solve social policy conundrums any more than they can fit football to a formula, says Gary Thomas

Leaders of the Russell Group of research intensive universities have added their voices to the clamour calling for the European Union’s research and innovation funding to be protected.

Academics from the University of Leicester have confirmed a skeleton found beneath a car park in the city is that of the English king, Richard III.

Male scholars more likely to succumb to temptation as pressure to publish increases. Paul Jump writes