The Mixed Blessing of Social Media Data The phenomenal growth in utilization rates of popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, offer academic researchers an absolute treasure trove of consumer-generated…

What is Big Data? Growing concern over how much data is available to researchers and the potential for what we can do with all of that data is arguably one of the hottest topics in research today. "Big Data," it is argued, will drive new…

The Case for Unique Identifiers The need for unambiguous identification of authorship goes beyond simply avoiding the problem of how many "John Smiths" there are in the world. Unique identification of authorship also facilitates accurate…

Digital lab notebooks have been available to record research for many years but their shortcomings have prevented them from being widely accepted. But that may be changing now. New developments are making digital lab books competitive or…

Money for quality. Encouraging research excellence by allocating funds to reward high performance sounds like a good idea. The goal is clear: increase the quality of research and ensure that good work is rewarded. However, performance-based…