Current research assessment reform movements advocate for recognizing the full range of academic contributions, including outputs beyond traditional publications. This article examines how technological activities and products (TAPs) are evaluated within Argentina’s CONICET research career system. Drawing on 421 peer review reports in applied fields (veterinary science, civil engineering, and computer science), we analyze the place of TAPs in evaluation discourse and the challenges they pose. Combining lexicometric and qualitative analysis, this research shows that TAPs are rarely central to evaluations, often overshadowed by publications and other conventional outputs. Where TAPs are addressed, reviewers express difficulties due to insufficient documentation, inconsistencies across sources, and uncertainty about originality or relevance. These issues reflect both procedural shortcomings and a lack of shared criteria. Our findings show that the goal of valuing diverse contributions remains difficult to implement in practice: TAPs represent a category where consensus is weak, and expectations are unclear. Reform efforts must distinguish between technical limitations in evaluation design and deeper disagreements over what constitutes academic merit—especially in applied research contexts. We argue that the evaluation of TAPs constitutes a distinct object of study, analytically separate from social impact, and deserving of specific attention within broader debates on responsible research assessment.

Curated 

| November 6, 2025

How are national systems for assessing publicly funded research evolving? What purposes do they serve and how are they designed to fulfil these? This working paper surveys the landscape of national research assessment and funding systems across thirteen countries from 2010 to 2024, and makes three contributions to our understanding of these systems. First, we advance a new typology to categorize and compare important characteristics of these systems, providing insights into their similarities and differences, and a basis for mutual learning. Second, we identify and compare important shifts over time across the thirteen systems through the framework of three dynamic and interacting research performance paradigms. These point to a gradual shift away from narrow conceptions of research ‘excellence’ towards more holistic criteria of value, qualities and impacts across several systems – though not all. Finally, we consider potential trajectories over the next decade: including how a variety of assessment systems might respond to and incorporate responsible research assessment (RRA) movements for reform. By mapping the landscape of research assessment systems across countries and identifying dynamics of change, this paper offers insights for policymakers, research funders and institutional leaders looking to navigate this terrain at a time of shifting expectations.

Curated 

| November 5, 2025

Nature journal recently announced that all their reviews will be henceforth open. This is a good first step that will hopefully extend to other journals in Springer Nature as well as other major publishers. It will go a long way in improving trust in Science. They will also allow reviewers to choose to be anonymous. Blind peer review is one of the pillars of the publication system and the choice of reviewers needs to be respected.

However, there have been a lot of reported cases where reviewers abuse this anonymity to ask for citations to their own articles, sometimes not even related to the paper being reviewed. Increasingly, a lot of reviews are also done by AI, leading to low quality feedback.

To mitigate these issues, one can make the reviews Psuedo-Anonymous, i.e. the reviews should be traceable. Research integrity teams can then verify the bad ‘actors’. It will also act as a deterrent for people providing shoddy, lazy or unfair reviews.

Additionally, it will help provide useful analytics for both editors as well as readers and help them take more informed decisions.

Curated 

| October 22, 2025

This study examines the effect of article processing charge (APC) waivers on the participation of Ukrainian researchers in fully Gold Open Access (Gold OA) journals published by the five largest academic publishers - Elsevier, SAGE, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley - during the period 2019-2024. These publishers were selected because, in response to the full-scale war launched against Ukraine in 2022, all five introduced emergency 100% APC-waiver policies for Ukrainian authors. Using bibliometric data from the Web of Science Core Collection, the study analyses publication trends in Ukrainian-authored articles in fully Gold OA journals of these publishers before and after 2022. The results show a marked post-2022 increase in Ukraine's Gold OA output, particularly in journals published by Springer Nature and Elsevier. Disciplinary and publisher-specific patterns are evident, with especially strong growth in the medical and applied sciences. The findings underscore the potential of targeted support measures during times of crisis, while also illustrating the inherent limitations of APC-based publishing models in fostering equitable scholarly communication.

Curated 

| October 13, 2025

Modern biomedical research is becoming increasingly industrialized, with standardized practices playing a central role in its evolution. Since the 1990s, reporting guidelines have introduced structured templates for scientific writing, aimed at ensuring quality and consistency in publications. These guidelines, such as PRISMA, were rapidly adopted across diverse biomedical domains and are now widely used by researchers around the world. However, their impact extends far beyond the formal standardization of writing. Because they are tailored to specific types or genres of research, reporting guidelines exert a deeper influence on scientific practice. Interviews with authors of systematic reviews who used PRISMA reveal a varied and complex landscape of usage. Rather than applying the guideline solely for reporting purposes, researchers integrate it into multiple stages of their workflow, including study design, data analysis, and peer review. In doing so, they transform PRISMA into a practical and versatile tool that supports the entire research process. Yet, its use is not uniform. Instead, researchers assign different roles to the guideline depending on individual preferences and contextual factors which, together, are not yet fully systematized or understood. This raises important questions about what exactly is being standardized through reporting guidelines. Moreover, PRISMA’s social implications and the range of tasks it influences suggest that it shapes systematic reviewing as a new profession or a distinct set of tasks within the broader biomedical field.

Curated 

| October 9, 2025

Peer review has long been regarded as a cornerstone of scholarly communication, ensuring high quality and credibility of published research. Although academic journals trace their origins back three centuries, the procedures for evaluating submissions, particularly peer review, have undergone continuous evolvement. Peer review’s formal institutionalization in the mid-20th century represents a significant, yet natural, phase in this ongoing transformation of scholarly communication. By the early 21st century, there emerged an opinion that the conventional model of peer review faces systematic challenges, including inefficiency, bias, and institutional inertia. The study aims to synthesize the evolution, practices, and outcomes of both conventional and innovative peer review models in scholarly publishing. Through a mixed-methods approach combining interpretative literature review and process modeling (Business Process Model and Notation –BPMN), it identifies four frameworks: pre-publication peer review, registered reports, modular publishing, and the Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) model. While the PRC model, which integrates preprints with post-publication review, demonstrates advantages in transparency and accessibility, no single approach emerges as universally ideal. The choice of model depends on disciplinary context, resource availability, and institutional priorities. The analysis underscores the need for adaptable platforms that enable hybrid workflows, balancing rigor with inclusivity. Future research must address empirical gaps in evaluating these innovations, particularly their long-term impact on equity and epistemic norms.

Curated 

| September 23, 2025

Since its beginnings in the 1940s, automated reasoning by computers has become a tool of ever growing importance in scientific research. So far, the rules underlying automated reasoning have mainly been formulated by humans, in the form of program source code. Rules derived from large amounts of data, via machine learning techniques, are a complementary approach currently under intense development. The question of why we should trust these systems, and the results obtained with their help, has been discussed by early practitioners of computational science, but was later forgotten. The present work focuses on independent reviewing, an important source of trust in science, and identifies the characteristics of automated reasoning systems that affect their reviewability. It also discusses possible steps towards increasing reviewability and trustworthiness via a combination of technical and social measures.

Curated 

| September 9, 2025

Currently, much health and medical research is wasted due to inappropriate study design or analysis. Study designs could be improved using an expert review from a qualified statistician. The ethical review process is an ideal stage for this input; however, we do not know how many ethics committees in Australia have access to a qualified statistician. To answer this question, we approached all human research ethics committees in Australia.

Sixty percent of committees had access to a qualified statistician, either as a full committee member or as a non-member who could be consulted when needed, but this dropped to 35% after accounting for statistical qualifications. Many committees rely on “highly numerate” researchers in place of qualified statisticians, as they viewed research experience and advanced statistical training as equivalent. Committees without access to statisticians tended to locate responsibility for study design with other parties, including researchers, trial sponsors, and institutions. Some committee chairs viewed formal statistical input as essential to the work of the committee; however, there was also a common belief that statistical review was only applicable to some study designs, and that “simple” or “small” studies did not need review. We encountered a surprising variance in practice and attitudes towards the use of statisticians on research ethics committees. The current high number of research studies receiving approval without statistical review risks approving studies that will in the best-case waste resources and in the worst-case cause harms due to flawed evidence.

Curated 

| September 9, 2025

Preprinting has become an increasingly important component of the scholarly communication system, facilitating rapid open dissemination of scientific knowledge. This study investigates the adoption of preprinting over time, focusing on how it varies across scientific disciplines and geographical regions. We analyzed bibliometric data on 4M preprints and 105M peer-reviewed outputs in the period 1991-2023. Peer-reviewed outputs were linked to preprints using data from Dimensions, OpenAlex, and Crossref, resulting in 2.2M peer-reviewed outputs linked to a preprint. Our findings indicate a strong growth in preprinting, with a nearly threefold increase in the number of preprints published between 2017 and 2022. The adoption of preprinting is highest in the physical and mathematical sciences, particularly among researchers in the Americas and Europe. In recent years, preprinting has also increased notably in the information and computing sciences and the life and medical sciences, driven primarily by researchers in North America and Western and Northern Europe. Preprinting remains relatively uncommon in the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences. Asia demonstrates low preprint adoption, with Eastern Asia showing a modest increase in recent years. Preprint adoption in specific disciplines varies significantly across regions, showing that preprint adoption is shaped by the interplay between disciplines and regions.

Curated 

| September 2, 2025

This study investigates the effect of article processing charge (APC) waivers on the participation of Ukrainian researchers in fully Gold Open Access journals published by the five largest academic publishers during the period 2019-2024. In response to the full-scale war launched against Ukraine in 2022, many publishers implemented extraordinary APC waiver policies to support affected authors. Using bibliometric data from the Web of Science Core Collection, this study examines trends in Ukrainian-authored publications in fully Gold OA journals before and after 2022, comparing them with those in neighbouring countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania). The results reveal a substantial post-2022 increase in Ukraine’s Gold OA output, particularly in journals by Springer Nature and Elsevier. While this growth appears to correlate with the introduction of APC-waivers, additional factors, such as international collaborations, emergency grant support, and individual publishing strategies, also contributed. Disciplinary differences and publisher-specific patterns are observed, with notable increases in medical and applied sciences. The study highlights the potential of targeted support initiatives during crises but also points to the limitations of APC-based models in achieving equitable scholarly communication.

Curated 

| August 8, 2025