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As scientists we like to think that modern societies and their members base their views, opinions and behaviour on scientific facts. This is not necessarily the case, even though we are all (over-) exposed to information flow through…
Science is a cumulative activity, which can manifest itself through the act of citing. Citations are also central to research evaluation, thus creating incentives for researchers to cite their own work. Using a dataset containing more than…
Analyzing a large data set of publications drawn from the most competitive journals in the natural and social sciences we show that research careers exhibit the broad distributions of individual achievement characteristic of systems in…
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…
Why do collectives outperform individuals when solving some problems? Fundamentally, collectives have greater computational resources with more sensory information, more memory, more processing capacity, and more ways to act. While greater…
An essential primitive for an efficient research ecosystem is \emph{partial-progress sharing} (PPS) -- whereby a researcher shares information immediately upon making a breakthrough. This helps prevent duplication of work; however there is…
The current work addresses a theme previously unexplored in the literature: that of whether the results arising from research activity in fields other than the scientist's pri-mary field have greater value than the others. Operationally,…
We describe two pilot studies of code review by and for scientists. Our principal findings are that scientists are enthusiastic, but need to be shown code review in action, and that just-in-time review of small code changes is more likely…
A primary goal of science and engineering (S & E) education is to produce good problem solvers, but how to best teach and measure the quality of problem-solving remains unclear. The process is complex, multifaceted, and not fully…
Acknowledgments are one of many conventions by which researchers publicly bestow recognition towards individuals, organizations and institutions that contributed in some way to the work that led to publication. Combining data on both…
This article aims to show the weakness of the current scientific assessments, based on a set of contradictory pseudo-axioms. The six pseudo-axioms are deeply analysed. From the analysis are derived several conclusions. In spite of the…
Rationality is frequently associated with making the best possible decisions. It's widely acknowledged that humans, as rational beings, have limitations in their decision-making capabilities. Nevertheless, recent advancements in fields,…
Research methods are essential parts in conducting any research project. Although they have been theorized and summarized based on best practices, every field of science requires an adaptation of the overall approaches to perform research…
While data science has emerged as a contentious new scientific field, enormous debates and discussions have been made on it why we need data science and what makes it as a science. In reviewing hundreds of pieces of literature which include…
As an epistemic activity, rational debate and discussion requires cooperation, yet involves a tension between collective and individual interests. While all participants benefit from collective outcomes like reaching consensus on true…
Why do firms produce scientific research and make it available to the public, including their rivals? Prior literature has emphasized the tension between imitation risks from disclosure and scientists' preferences for publication. This…
Economies are fundamentally complex and becoming more so, but the new discipline of data science-which combines programming, statistics, and domain knowledge-can help cut through that complexity, potentially with productivity benefits to…
So far, the relationship between open science and software engineering expertise has largely focused on the open release of software engineering research insights and reproducible artifacts, in the form of open-access papers, open data, and…
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have great potential to help address societal challenges that are both collective in nature and present at national or trans-national scale. Pressing challenges in healthcare, finance, infrastructure…
Scientific knowledge is a key driver of technological innovation, shaping industrial development and policy decisions worldwide. Understanding how patents incorporate scientific research is essential for assessing the role of academic…