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While both society and astronomy have evolved greatly over the past fifty years, the academic institutions and incentives that shape our field have remained largely stagnant. As a result, the astronomical community is faced with several…
Astronomy is an observationally-led subject where chance discoveries play an important role. A whole range of such discoveries is continually made, from the trivial to the highly significant. What is generally needed is for luck to strike…
The development of inventions is theorized as a process of searching and recombining existing knowledge components. Previous studies under this theory have examined myriad characteristics of recombined knowledge and their performance…
Understanding determinants of success in academic careers is critically important to both scholars and their employing organizations. While considerable research efforts have been made in this direction, there is still a lack of a…
The road to becoming an astronomer is exciting, but often fraught with danger and conflicting messages. A PhD student is inundated with catch-phrases such as "publish or perish" and "it's not about the quantity, but the quality of work".…
The word 'researcher' is loaded and often confusing. It takes years to become one and to master all of its aspects. In this paper, we investigate whether or not this process of 'becoming' can be catalyzed through education. The focus will…
The dream of building machines that can do science has inspired scientists for decades. Remarkable advances have been made recently; however, we are still far from achieving this goal. In this paper, we focus on the scientific discovery…
Sir, We write as senior scientists about a problem vital to the scientific enterprise and prosperity. Nowadays, funding is a lengthy and complex business. First, universities themselves must approve all proposals for submission. Funding…
In order to attract, recruit and retain underrepresented minority students to pursue Astronomy and related fields, we must ensure that there continues to be a well qualified pool of graduate and undergraduate students from which to recruit.…
Scientific writing is an important skill for a career as a professional astrophysicist. Very few researchers, however, receive any formal training in how to write scientific research papers of high quality in an efficient manner. This paper…
This article looks at philosophical aspects and questions that modern astrophysical research gives rise to. Other than cosmology, astrophysics particularly deals with understanding phenomena and processes operating at "intermediate" cosmic…
Science is a collaborative endeavor in which "who collaborates with whom" profoundly influences scientists' career trajectories and success. Despite its relevance, little is known about how scholars facilitate new collaborations among their…
The dramatic confrontation between new observations and theories of the early and recent universe makes cosmology one of the most rapidly advancing fields in the physical sciences. The universe is a unique laboratory in which to probe…
Writing is a vital component of a modern career in scientific research. But how to write correctly and effectively is often not included in the training that young astronomers receive from their supervisors and departments. We offer a…
At time of writing, large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics. What implications does this have for our…
Team science dominates scientific knowledge production, but what makes academic teams successful? Using temporal data on 25.2 million publications and 31.8 million authors, we propose a novel network-driven approach to identify and study…
Academic challenges comprise effective means for (i) advancing the state of the art, (ii) putting in the spotlight of a scientific community specific topics and problems, as well as (iii) closing the gap for under represented communities in…
What do we teach and what should we teach? An honest answer to this question is painful, very painful--what we teach lags decades behind what we practice. How can we reduce this `gap' to prepare a data science workforce of trained…
The psychology of science is the least developed member of the family of science studies. It is growing, however, increasingly into a promising discipline. After a very brief review of this emerging sub-field of psychology, we call for it…
Momentum exists in the physics community for integrating computation into the undergraduate curriculum. One of many benefits would be preparation for computational research. Our investigation poses the question of which computational skills…