Cercetator din cadrul Facultatii de Fizica, in topul IOP Reviewer Awards
Ionut TOPALA, cadru didactic in cadrul Facultatii de Fizica a Universitatii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iasi, se numara printre cercetatorii care au ajuns in topul IOP Reviewer Awards 2018, realizat de Institute of Physics (IOP) din Marea Britanie, in urma activitatii de referent stiintific pentru revista “Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics”.
Pentru realizarea topului Reviewer Awards 2018, editorii IOP Publishing au selectat cele mai bune evaluari si revizuiri de articole, iar castigatorii au fost alesi in functie de calitatea, cantitatea si relevanta articolelor recenzate.
1.244 referenti din 67 de tari au fost alesi de editorii IOP Publishing pentru topul IOP Reviewer Awards, printre care si cinci din Romania.
Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași
UAIC invita elevii de liceu sa participe gratuit la 9 scoli de vara
Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iasi (UAIC) organizeaza, in luna iulie a anului 2019, noua scoli de vara finantate din Proiectul privind Invatamantul Secundar (ROSE) de catre Banca Internationala de Reconstructie si Dezvoltare (Banca Mondiala), care au ca scop desfasurarea de cursuri si alte activitati relevante destinate elevilor de liceu, cu precadere celor dezavantajati social, pentru incurajarea finalizarii de catre acestia a studiilor liceale si facilitarea continuarii educatiei la nivel universitar.
Elevii de liceu se pot inscrie, pana luni, 10 iunie 2019, la una dintre cele noua scoli de vara:
- „Vreau sa fiu student la Litere! – Scoala de vara pentru elevi – LiteratIS”, (Facultatea de Litere) – 7-21 iulie 2019
- „Vacanta juridica DREPT in Iasi – Drept in Iasi!” (Facultatea de Drept) – 30 iunie-14 iulie 2019
- „Scoala de vara pentru Economisti – EconomIS” (Facultatea de Economie si Administrarea Afacerilor) – 7-21 iulie 2019
- „Descoperim Pamantul spre culmile cunoasterii! GEO-GEO” (Facultatea de Geografie si Geologie) – 30 iunie-14 iulie 2019
- „Experienta universitara timpurie pentru elevii aflati in situatii de risc: program-punte in domeniile Educatie Fizica si Sport si Teologie Romano Catolica – TEOSPOR” (Facultatile de Educatie Fizica si Sport si Teologie Romano-Catolica) – 7-21 iulie 2019
- „Scoala de vara pentru Stiinte: program punte pentru tranzitia de la liceu la universitate – Vara Stiintelor” (Facultatile de Biologie si Chimie) – 7-21 iulie 2019
- „Scoala de vara in domeniul Teologiei Ortodoxe si Istoriei pentru imbunatatirea oportunitatilor de participare la invatamantul universitar a elevilor cu risc de abandon – TEOIST” (Facultatile de Teologie Ortodoxa si Istorie) – 7-21 iulie 2019
- „De-ale viitorului: informatica si matematica – INFORMAT” (Facultatile de Informatica si Matematica) – 7-21 iulie 2019
- Hai la facultate! Sa descoperim impreuna vara universitara la Cuza! VINOlaUAIC! (Facultatile de Filosofie si Stiinte Social-Politice si Psihologie si Stiinte ale Educatiei) – 7-21 iulie 2019
Inscrierea elevilor se face prin completarea formularului ( pana la data de 10 iunie 2019. Lista liceelor eligibile este disponibila aici:
Prin participarea la o scoala de vara ROSE, elevii vor avea sansa de a descoperi viata de student inainte de absolvirea liceului. Programul scolilor de vara cuprinde cursuri atractive pentru fiecare specializare in parte, ateliere de lucru, simulari de examen, vizite de studiu, activitati recreative si sportive, activitati de consiliere profesionala si de orientare in cariera.Participarea la oricare dintre cele noua scoli de vara este gratuita, iar cheltuielile legate de transport, cazare si masa sunt incluse. Fiecare participant va primi un kit de instruire continand diverse resurse educationale utile pentru desfasurarea activitatilor educative.
Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași
Trei universităţi din Iași incluse într-un top internaţional
Criteriul de selecţie a fost „Publicaţiile interdisciplinare“. Cele trei instituţii de învăţământ superior sunt: TUIASI, UMF şi USAMV.
Trei universităţi ieşene se numără printre primele 25 de insituţii de învăţământ superior din lume la categoria „Publicaţiile interdisciplinare“. Astfel, Universitatea Tehnică „Gheorghe Asachi“ din Iaşi (TUIASI), Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie „Grigore T. Popa“ din Iaşi (UMF Iaşi), dar şi Universitatea de Ştiinţe Agricole şi Medicină Veterinară „Ion Ionescu de la Brad“ din Iaşi (USAMV Iaşi) au fost declarate în cadrul clasamentului U-Multirank ca fiind printre cele mai performante din lume la această categorie.
În Top 25 se regăsesc două universităţi din SUA, 19 din Europa, una din Africa şi patru din Asia.
Rectorul TUIASI, prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Caşcaval, s-a declarat onorat de plasarea universităţii între primele 25 din lume care manifestă un interes constant şi consistent în dezvoltarea domeniilor interdisciplinare şi care au şi rezultate vizibile în publicaţii care au caracter interdisciplinar.
„Însăşi existenţa acestui top confirmă atenţia care se acordă astăzi interdisciplinarităţii, căci a devenit evident că cercetarea într-un domeniu singular, fără contribuţia altor domenii sau ramuri ştiinţifice, nu mai poate acoperi întreaga paletă a interesului practic pe care îl manifestă dezvoltarea societăţii. Domeniul tehnic poate conferi sprijin oricărui alt domeniu, iar prezenţa noastră în acest top confirmă valoarea colaborărilor pe care le avem, atât în cercetare, cât şi în educaţie, cu universităţi sau instituţii de alt profil, din ţară şi din străinătate“, a punctat prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Caşcaval, rectorul TUIASI.
De asemenea, rectorul UMF Iaşi, prof. univ. dr. Viorel Scripcariu, a afirmat faptul că acestea „sunt sisteme internaţionale de clasificări universitare care aplică criterii comune tuturor instituţiilor de învăţământ superior, încurajând o «cursă» pentru prestigiu, pentru reputaţie academică. U-Multirank permite candidaţilor şi studenţilor să compare instituţiile cu misiune similară, creând posibilitatea universităţilor să-şi îmbunătăţească procesele şi activităţile distincte, susţinând astfel diversitatea învăţământului superior“.
În urma aceloraşi criterii, şi Universitatea de Ştiinţe Agricole şi Medicină Veterinară din Iaşi s-a numărat printre primele 25 de universităţi din lume la categoria „Publicaţiile interdisciplinare“.
Studiul celor de la U-Multirank a fost făcut public marţi, 4 iunie 2019, şi a inclus peste 1.700 de universităţi din întreaga lume.
Publicație : Ziarul de Iași și Bună Ziua Iași
Universities to trawl through students’ social media to look for suicide risk, under new project
Universities are to trawl through students’ social media to look for signs that they may be suicidal, as part of a new project funded by the higher education watchdog.
The new scheme, backed by the Office for Students (OfS), is aimed at reducing suicide rates and identifying students in crisis by harvesting data on individuals.
Northumbria University, which is leading the three year project, will design and pilot an “Early Alert Tool” which, if successful, could be rolled out at all British institutions.
The university has been running a project for the past two years where a team monitor students’ library use, lecture attendance and academic performance. They use this information to “nudge” students when their engagement drops off.
Under the new OfS-backed scheme, the data collected on each student would extend to monitoring social media posts, conversations they have with individual members of staff and information held by their accommodation provider.
Professor Peter Francis, deputy vice-Chancellor of Northumbria who is leading the project, said: “We know students use social media, they engage with one another, they use it in a variety of different forms.
“We are asking the questions – to what extent might that data provide some information to identify student profiles? This builds on what we have been doing. What other traces or types of data might we start to identify as being relevant?”
He said the project will explore new types of student data that can be analysed including “through conversations with individuals that might be collected but not shared, not bought together and reviewed centrally in a coordinated way”.
Prof Francis added that the scheme would be data protection compliant, and that students would have to opt in.
But privacy campaigners have warned that students should not be used as “guinea pigs” for “big data experiments” on mental health.
Jen Persson, director of the data privacy campaign group Defend Digital Me, said: “Students need to know that in a time of need they can have a private conversation. The last thing you need is to worry about people listening in.
“There is a huge pressure on supporting people’s mental health at universities – but institutions mustn’t rush in to thinking that big data is the solution to very sensitive unique problems for individuals.”
Silkie Carlo, Director of Big Brother Watch, said that using social media monitoring is an “oppressive" and "intrusive" approach to safeguarding students’ wellbeing.
She said it sets a “dangerous” example of the privacy and data rights young people should expect in later life.
“It is essential for young people's wellbeing that their privacy is respected but this intrusive approach risks making students feel monitored, anxious and judged," she added.
“Students' safety is of utmost importance and funding may well be needed for better mental health services, but this approach will understandably generate anxiety amongst much of the student population.”
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the OfS, said that too many students have the higher education “blighted by mental ill-health”.
She added: “Taking preventative action to promote good mental health is critical, as is taking a whole institution approach and involving students in developing solutions.
“In addition, the earlier we can identify issues developing, the more effectively we can give the vital support that is needed.”
It is one of ten projects that the OfS is funding as part of a £14.5 million drive to improve student mental health.
One project that won funding is aimed at supporting students through the transition from school to university. Another will address the specific mental health needs of international students.
Publicație : The Telegraph
Why does university chief Michael Arthur attract so much hostility?
‘I don’t shirk change’ says the UCL provost. But many of his staff are not happy about his big expansion plans
University College London, founded nearly 200 years ago, was inspired by Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher who believed that rulers should aim for “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. Today, UCL has grown to 42,500 students with plans to recruit a further 4,000, making it the largest UK university apart from the Open University. For the past six years, Michael Arthur, the softly spoken son of a cabinet-maker and a probation service assistant, who went to a state comprehensive in Harlow, Essex, has presided over this success story as UCL’s provost (vice-chancellor). But he has not achieved Bentham’s goal of the “greatest happiness” among UCL’s 6,500 academic and research staff.
All university leaders encounter hostility, but few can have attracted quite as much as Arthur. Some UCL academics feel such a “frenzy of hatred” against him that they would prefer “a blind, three-legged elephant” as provost – and that judgment, in a privately circulated note last year, came from his press officer (since departed). “He’s been a disaster,” one academic tells me. “This was once an egalitarian, collaborative place. It has become a Stalinist institution. The whole ethos has changed.”
Another says: “UCL is being run as a business, not as a university.” A poll of the 1,531-strong academic board (which includes all professors plus elected members) got 724 responses, of which only 100 declared their confidence in UCL’s governance. Arthur says the poll was “not properly conducted”.
Some professors took allegations of “acts of improper governance and breaches of the statutes” to the university Visitor, a largely ceremonial post occupied at UCL by the master of the rolls, England’s second most senior judge, currently Sir Terence Etherton. In an 86-page confidential report – seen by the Guardian – he found no “sustained or intentional infringement” of UCL’s constitution but described Arthur’s management style as “more top-down than that of some of his predecessors”.
On some occasions, Etherton continued, “challenge has not been received as it should have been”. There was “a loss of trust and morale” among “a significant number” of academics (though not a majority) and that “cannot be simply ignored”.
The academics’ complaints are wide-ranging and some date back to 2015, when the Nobel prize-winning biochemist Sir Tim Hunt resigned his UCL honorary professorship after comments made about his “trouble with girls”. Hunt’s supporters said the university, anxious to protect its “brand”, created an unnecessary fuss and gave Hunt no option but to step down. “Arthur was extremely unpleasant to him,” said one insider. “He was given no opportunity to explain himself.” Arthur replies: “I am confident we accepted a genuine resignation.”
But the nub of the grievances concerns UCL’s expansion – and particularly plans for a £516m, 11-acre second campus at the Olympic Park in Stratford, six miles east of the site it has occupied since 1826 in Bloomsbury, traditionally London’s academic and high cultural heart. The first hole in the ground for UCL East has just been dug, Arthur tells me when we meet in his awesomely spacious office.
UCL’s plans for a second campus at the Olympic Park in Stratford
Arthur has big ideas for the future: a school of politics and public policy to rival the Kennedy School of Government in the US; a school of “the health of the public”; a business school for the real estate industry (“for estate agents?” I ask; “definitely not for estate agents”, he says firmly). UCL, having recently swallowed the London University Institute of Education, will then cover just about all human knowledge and activity except theology and performing arts.
But isn’t UCL too big already? “We want to be a global player,” says Arthur. “Round the world, you’re seeing universities of 90,000, 100,000 students. If you have critical mass, you can create outstanding cross-disciplinary research on things like climate change. You can do research that makes a difference.” He mentions a treatment recently developed at UCL that makes HIV, the virus that causes Aids, untransmittable. If UCL didn’t increase student numbers, thus maximising fee revenue, such research would have to be cut back. “To me,” Arthur says, “that is unthinkable.”
His opponents disagree, saying UCL should make money from research spin-offs in areas such as healthcare, not from student fees, an unpredictable source of future income, particularly if the government carries out the Augar review’s proposal to cut them from £9,000 a year to £7,500. They point out that, of the top 12 in the world rankings (UCL is 14th), none has more than 22,000 students and two have fewer than 10,000. “Big universities reduce the staff and student experience,” one senior academic says. “The university becomes a sausage-machine.”
“Arthur hasn’t reached out to staff and got them to buy into UCL East,” says Sean Wallis, a UCL research fellow in English and vice-president of the academics’ union branch. Dissidents claimed that a £280m loan for the new campus from the European Investment Bank was rushed through without proper consultation. They accused Arthur of imposing stringent controls over “discretionary funds” – £78m donated by academics from private consultancy fees and the like and spent, for example, on supporting PhD students and entertaining guest speakers – because they were needed as loan collateral (which UCL denies). Meanwhile, the Bloomsbury site was being neglected. In another poll, 423 out of 492 academics thought teaching facilities were inadequate and one commented that “I have taught too many classes in rooms where the windows don’t close and the heating doesn’t work, with half the chairs broken.”
This may explain UCL’s poor performance in the National Student Survey, in which it languishes in 119th place. What is he doing to improve the student experience? He says he has changed the promotion system, introducing “teaching fellows” to give teaching more recognition. He is also “bringing research and teaching together” and has gone through every degree programme to see how that can be done. He explains: “If you explicitly engage students with the research process, they acquire really important life skills. They begin to understand how knowledge is created, how to deal with uncertainty, how to work in a diverse team. These are skills they can take to employers. I’m not trying to create 42,000 researchers but 42,000 critical thinkers and leaders.”
He admits, though, “We’re not doing as well on teaching as we’d like. We are on a journey.” When he started his last job, as vice-chancellor at Leeds in 2004, that university was, he says, “at a similarly low level in the student survey. Now it’s in the top three.”
Before Leeds, Arthur spent almost his entire academic life at Southampton University, starting a medical degree in 1972, going on to a research fellowship, a lectureship and a professorship, and then becoming a dean in charge of one-third of the university. His nine years at Leeds were also marked by a vote of no confidence from the academics’ union amid accusations that he was sacking 700 staff. In fact, he says, it was a voluntary severance scheme. If he attracts trouble, it’s because “I don’t shirk the need for change”.
He is not, I suspect, a natural enthusiast for the marketisation of universities, even though, as Russell Group chair from 2009 to 2013, he campaigned for rises in fees and ending the cap on home student numbers. “Would I have invented fees? Probably not. If I had been prime minister, I would probably have kept government funding.”
Since UCL was already set on expansion before Arthur arrived, it is perhaps just bad luck that he finds himself in the frontline of bitter struggles to reconcile the demands of a new funding regime with traditional academic values. But I wonder also if, as he climbed the promotion ladder, he suffered some kind of identity crisis that caused him to emerge, according to his UCL critics, as a man who lacks either a medic’s “bedside manner” or a university leader’s political skills. At Southampton, he was known as Mick Arthur. But he arrived at Leeds as Michael, his mother having insisted that Mick didn’t fit his status. He cheerfully confirms this, seemingly unaware of what a psychologist could make of it.
Though there was talk of financial crisis two years ago, shortly after UCL took out loans to start work on the new campus, Arthur tells me with pride that the university is now on a sound financial footing, with borrowing as a percentage of turnover below the Russell Group average, and zero academic staff redundancies during his tenure.
At the end of the next academic year, Arthur is due to retire. But some UCL staff predict – and hope – that he will be gone some months before then.
Publicație : The Guardian
Plymouth spends £375K on v-c office project while cutting jobs
University acknowledges that drop in student recruitment has brought ‘financial challenges’
The University of Plymouth’s leadership has been criticised for spending £375,000 on refurbishing buildings that house the vice-chancellor’s office while planning to cut up to 150 jobs, as a fall in student numbers brings “financial challenges”.
Plymouth, the scene of dramatic governance failures during the tenure of its former vice-chancellor Wendy Purcell, advertised a tender for “the external and internal refurbishment of numbers 17 and 18 Portland Villas”.
The addresses listed in the £375,000 tender, published in May, house the office of the vice-chancellor, Judith Petts, and the university’s human resources department.
Last month, Professor Petts told staff that the university was launching a “voluntary leaving” scheme – but that if insufficient numbers of staff came forward, compulsory redundancies might follow, with between 100 and 150 jobs at risk.
Professor Petts took over at Plymouth in February 2016, following the turbulent denouement to her predecessor’s tenure, which first erupted when Professor Purcell was suspended in 2014. She later returned to work before stepping down from a role as president at the end of 2015. During the turmoil, it emerged that the university spent £95,000 on seven handcrafted chairs to be used at graduation ceremonies.
One source said of the present situation that staff morale is “at an all-time low” and it “feels as if we are repeating history”.
The university bills the refurbishment as part of a much wider plan to renovate a number of buildings, including a major project to regenerate the area of the city around the railway station, which it says will be central to the institution’s future development and civic mission.
But it is among a number of universities seeing its student numbers squeezed. The number of new students accepting places at Plymouth stood at 7,560 in 2010, at 5,540 in 2014 and 4,520 in 2018, according to Ucas figures.
A Plymouth spokesman said that the university, “along with many other universities, is planning to reduce its staff costs as the whole sector faces significant financial challenges. In this context and working with our trade unions the university has launched a voluntary leaving scheme to enable it to manage staff costs, as well as support future investment in the estate, IT and the planned growth of health, medicine and engineering.
“We of course recognise that this is an unsettling time for colleagues and we are committed to working closely with staff and our unions.”
Publicație : The Times
Knowledge diplomacy: can academics help heal the world’s rifts?
‘Science diplomacy’ is seen as a crucial way to build international trust, but the idea is undergoing a radical rethink
In a world where diplomatic ties seem to be fraying everywhere – between China and the US, mainland Europe and the UK, North Korea and pretty much everyone – can academics help patch things up?
This is the question posed by the concept of “science diplomacy”, now often called “knowledge diplomacy” so that the humanities and social sciences are not left out.
Different definitions of science diplomacy abound. But the core idea is that working together on research projects can build trust and networks between countries, improving their overall
“Working together on scientific projects would be a very sincere vote of trust in the relationship,” explained Carolin Kaltofen, a research associate at UCL and an expert on the idea. Opening up your research labs to other states – and potentially giving away your “competitive advantage” – is a modern trust-building exercise perhaps akin to offering a king’s daughter in marriage to cement a medieval alliance, she said.
For example, after Mu’ammer Gaddafi agreed to give up Libya’s programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction in 2003, the first bilateral treaty that the country agreed with the US was scientific.
The concept of science diplomacy shot to prominence about 10 years ago, with a series of books, reports and centres launched to explore its potential – although in reality it has been practised for much longer, with US-USSR space mission cooperation, for example, sometimes credited as helping to take some of the heat out of the Cold War. High-profile endorsements followed from Hillary Clinton, who was then US secretary of state, and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Since then, science diplomacy has “accelerated” in importance in foreign ministries, according to Paul Berkman, director of the Science Diplomacy Center at Tufts University, who edited the first book on the concept in 2009. “It feels like a renaissance,” he enthused.
He makes grand claims for its potential: “I think it is possible for science diplomacy to restore the dialogue in the Middle East, or the South China Sea.” With Russian colleagues, Professor Berkman has since 2010 helped broker talks between Nato and Russia about security in the Arctic. Academics can act as neutral facilitators, he argued, and universities need to take on this role more fully.
But the concept of science diplomacy is currently being radically rethought.
Ten years ago, science diplomacy was often conceived as a form of “soft power”: a way of getting your way as a country through positive influence and attraction – perhaps by offering scholarships to junior researchers from other countries so they build up a relationship with your own universities – rather than the traditional “hard power” of, say, military might. Science diplomacy “is one of our most effective ways of influencing and assisting other nations”, Ms Clinton said in 2009.
Crudely put, academics and universities could be deployed in lieu of tanks, fighter jets or economic sanctions. A preferable form of power for sure – and often mingled with more altruistic motives – but a form of power nonetheless.
Yet last month at its annual Going Global conference in Berlin, the British Council released a report written by Jane Knight, an expert in international higher education at the University of Toronto, which argued for a very different approach.
Knowledge diplomacy should emphatically not be about “self serving” or “me first” soft power, she told delegates. Instead, universities should try to build collaborative, genuinely “win-win” relationships, she argued. Knowledge diplomacy is becoming “less and less to do with soft power”, concurred Jo Beall, the British Council’s director for education and society, during a plenary discussion at Going Global.
Professor Knight’s report, Knowledge Diplomacy in Action, praises initiatives such as the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund, which since 2006 has poured more than A$100 million (£55 million) into research projects in areas of importance to both countries, including agriculture, food and water security, and marine sciences.
The point is that it is supposed to be a partnership of equals: both governments fund the research, and priorities are decided by four different agencies, two in each country. National interest is still at play in knowledge diplomacy – “it would be naive to deny this”, the report says – but collaborations should be driven by “cooperation, collaboration, negotiation and compromise” instead of “self-interest, increased influence and relative dominance”.
But, in reality, how free are scholars and universities to rise above the power politics of the nation states that still host and – on the whole – fund them?
It’s a question made particularly acute by the US’ recent crackdown on perceived Chinese exploitation of publicly funded research and intellectual property theft. Last month, Emory University fired two Chinese-American biomedics for not fully disclosing their funding sources and links with Chinese research institutions, part of a broader series of investigations initiated by the National Institutes of Health.
Nina Fedoroff, a molecular plant biologist who served as science and technology adviser to both Ms Clinton and her predecessor as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is credited with coining the term “science diplomacy”.
But even she was scathing about the impact that collaborating with China has had on US research and technology prowess. “The whole generation of Chinese educated at US universities is the first line of technology theft,” she said, echoing a growing consensus forming in Washington. Graduating from US universities into US companies, Chinese students have then taken technology back to China, she alleged.
In her field of research, she said, Chinese researchers are now doing groundbreaking work. This is “good for science, but a problem for our country”, Professor Fedoroff argued, because it meant that US scientific pre-eminence “may not continue”, just as it waned for countries such as Germany.
Initiating science diplomacy is still a “no-brainer” – “should we never be kind, because we might be exploited?” she asked rhetorically – but it has its risks. “When you reach out to help someone, that person can bite your hand...that’s basically what China has done,” she claimed.
And although it has caught on as a concept, it is still held back by “science-phobic” attitudes in foreign ministries, she said. “It’s very difficult to get diplomats to get over their mistrust of science,” Professor Fedoroff recalled, which is often “just a scary magic” to them.
Whether universities have to keep one eye on their governments’ foreign policy depends on the country, pointed out Simon Marginson, director of the UK’s Centre for Global Higher Education. “Universities in the European/American tradition have much freedom to operate outside national interest, and individual academics and research groups more so as they operate under the radar at any time,” he said.
US universities have more “formal freedoms” from the state than their European counterparts, “although oddly, in practice, they are more likely to conform to national security or foreign policy perspectives”, he observed. “Win-win knowledge diplomacy is very possible,” argued Professor Marginson, so long as it was not “trumped” by the “new Cold War” between China and the US.
UCL’s Dr Kaltofen said that in practice, though, it is very difficult to do science diplomacy without power dynamics encroaching. This “doesn’t mean to dismiss the concept itself”, she said, but it means that it is far from a “silver bullet” as sometimes presented.
Rich countries can pick and choose who they partner with, while poorer ones cannot, she pointed out, which risks “increasing uneven power relationships”. Some research partnerships between the US and countries in central and north Africa have ended up overburdening the poorer countries’ limited scientific infrastructure, she said.
A better match for science diplomacy might be post-Brexit Britain and the European Union, Dr Kaltofen suggested, as their research capabilities are fairly equal, and links already established. “It would be a good channel to maintain relations,” she said.
To even get off the ground, science diplomacy is reliant on some form of higher-level political agreement in the first place; North Korean and US universities cannot simply strike up a research partnership without their governments’ say-so, she pointed out.
And politics can easily scupper nascent links – Mr Trump’s 2017 “travel ban” aimed at six majority-Muslim countries “made it very clear how quickly these research ties can end”, she cautioned: “That shows the limits of science diplomacy.”
Still, sometimes knowledge diplomacy can help build bridges to even the most isolated states. The German Academic Exchange Service (Daad), for example, offers stipends for students and researchers coming from North Korea to Germany, and vice versa, despite ongoing EU sanctions against the country in response to its nuclear weapons programme.
Daad was asked to visit North Korea “just to have an idea where we can start operations”, explained its general secretary Dorothea Rüland, at Going Global. “Sometimes it’s easier for people coming from research and higher education to keep contacts going than someone from the foreign office in Germany,” she said.
Sometimes science diplomacy is directed from above: the German foreign ministry suggested German universities create a centre for peace and conflict studies in Colombia to assist the peace process there. “We had to call German universities and see if universities were interested,” Dr Rüland told delegates.
But, to be “very frank”, she added, “projects are much easier if they are bottom-up”.
Publicație : The Times
Plan U: funders urged to mandate immediate preprint publication
Shifting towards open access journals will only achieve so much when review and editing processes take so long, scientists say
Forget Plan S, what about “Plan U”? Scientists have argued that research funders should go one step further than Europe’s open access initiative by mandating that all papers that they finance should be made immediately available on preprint servers.
Writing in Plos Biology on 4 June, three open access advocates say that funders’ move to require research that they support to be made freely available at the point of publication goes only so far towards opening up scientific exchange when journal review and editing processes take so long.
Richard Sever and John Inglis, co-founders of the preprint server BioRxiv, and Mike Eisen, editor in chief of open access publishing platform eLife, make the case for Plan U – for “universal” – under which funders would require academics to post their work on preprint servers first, before peer review.
Speaking to Times Higher Education, Dr Sever said that Plan U offered a “simpler” solution to transitioning to full open access.
Despite continuing efforts from coordinators in Europe, US funders remain reluctant to sign up to Plan S, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation being the only exception. The restriction on academics’ choice of where to publish, and the bar on embargo periods prior to free access, have been seen as key obstacles.
However, Dr Sever argued that preprints “have now entered the mainstream in biology”, and were being mandated by funders such as the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health. Few journals now considered a preprint “prior publication” and would accept papers that have been made available this way, he said.
“Funders could literally mandate this tomorrow,” Dr Sever added, “unlike the alternative solutions proposed, which all require significant structural changes likely to take years.” Plan U could be implemented alongside Plan S, he said.
Previous research by Steve Quake, professor of bioengineering at Stanford University – cited by Dr Sever and his co-authors – estimates that the aggregate time saved through publication via preprints could increase the pace of science fivefold over 10 years, by allowing researchers to start building on peers’ results immediately.
The revised Plan S guidance, however, has rejected calls to mandate use of preprints. “We welcome the sharing of preprints but we strongly agree with comments by respondents that the process of peer review is a significant addition of value to scholarly publication,” say Coalition S, the architects of the open access initiative.
Publicație : The Times
Frédérique Vidal : « Il faut réfléchir à de nouvelles voies d’entrée dans les grandes écoles »
Le gouvernement lance une mission qui doit émettre des propositions pour améliorer la « diversité sociale » dans les établissements les plus prestigieux, aujourd’hui tous soumis à un concours.
Après les annonces d’Emmanuel Macron sur la suppression de l’ENA et l’ouverture de la haute fonction publique, la ministre de l’enseignement supérieur, Frédérique Vidal, détaille au Monde le chantier ouvert pour améliorer la diversité sociale dans les grandes écoles, présenté mardi 4 juin devant la Conférence des grandes écoles.
Dans la continuité des annonces du président de la République et du grand débat national, il est temps d’avoir, dans nos grandes écoles, une représentation plus ressemblante de notre société, dans sa diversité géographique et sociale. L’enseignement supérieur compte 38 % de boursiers, mais ils sont seulement 19 % à l’Ecole normale supérieure (Paris) et 11 % à Polytechnique, qui ne réunissait que 2 % d’enfants d’ouvriers et d’employés dans sa dernière promotion.
J’envoie aujourd’hui une lettre de mission aux directeurs de l’Ecole polytechnique, des Ecoles normales supérieures (Paris, Saclay, Lyon) mais aussi de HEC, de l’Essec et de l’ESCP Europe, qui sont partants pour s’engager sur le sujet. J’attends leurs premières propositions à la mi-juillet. Notre ambition est forte, cela ne pourra être seulement cosmétique. Nous fixerons un calendrier et des objectifs chiffrés.
Le point commun entre ces deux missions, c’est l’objectif de diversité sociale et particulièrement de la haute fonction publique, dont certaines grandes écoles, comme Polytechnique, sont le vivier. Mais l’ENA est dans le périmètre du ministère de la fonction publique. Nous nous occupons là de l’ensemble des grandes écoles, y compris les écoles d’ingénieurs et les écoles de commerce les plus prestigieuses.
Trois aspects devront être examinés : la diversification des voies d’accès, le contenu des formations et la vie étudiante, ainsi que l’égal accès aux fonctions et aux emplois à la sortie. S’il faut en passer par la voie législative, on le fera.
Publicație : Le Monde
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