Coffee breaks are a ritualistic part of work life in Europe, a practice this opinion piece suggests would benefit scientists in North America.

Michael Eisen, eLife's Editor-in-Chief, reflects on lessons learned from a recent peer-review trial, and describes how eLife aims to make peer review more effective.

Mark Israel explores the ethics of self-plagiarism and asks, when is it right to reproduce social research?

Inspired by the University of Cambridge Data Champion programme, we have built a community of Data Champions to advocate for good research data management (RDM) practice within all university faculties at TU Delft. Currently, we have 47 active members and the number is increasing.

One of the major causes of the gender pay gap, according to experts, is the "motherhood penalty," where women are penalized in various ways in the job market after having children. One solution to the gap is emerging among researchers: non-transferable paternity leave for men.

Everything we have gained by opening content and data will be under threat if we allow the enclosure of scholarly infrastructures. We propose a set of principles by which Open Infrastructures to support the research community could be run and sustained.

Andy Stirling describes a new project aiming to help science and innovation serve global goals.

Former scientist, turned publisher, turned research program director, Milka Kostic is uniquely placed to look at publishing from a researcher and a publisher perspective. In this interview, she shares her thoughts on both.

Over the last few years, I have spent a lot of time thinking, speaking, and discussing about the reproducibility crisis in scientific research. An obvious but hard to answer question is: Why has reproducibility become such a major problem, in so many disciplines? And why now? 

We must apply the three Rs to plane travel: replace if possible, reduce to the essential, and refine to make it worthwhile.

With most of the OA conversation now dominated by the notion of a transition to OA, what does this mean for those native OA publishers, like PLOS, who are already OA, and have been for years?

It's Open Access week so this month we asked the chefs: What's next for OA? What lies beyond the APC as a funding model? Let us know your thoughts!

When we expand our pool of storytellers, we produce work that more fully reflects how science is done - and why it matters.

Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Publisher, Open Research, PLOS Note: the following perspective was published as part of Digital Science's annual survey and report, The State of Open Data 2019 , to coincide with global celebrations around Open Access Week. The biggest barrier to research data sharing and reuse seems to be a matter of trust, and in particular trust in what others may do with researchers' data if it is made openly available. The 2019 State of Open Data survey revealed that more than 2,000 respondents had concerns about misuse of their research data. Concerns about data misuse represent a multitude of issues; fears that errors could be found in their work, or that the data could be misinterpreted or research participant privacy be compromised. Researchers might also be concerned that their data will be reused for purposes they did not intend, such as commercial exploitation, or for misleading or inappropriate secondary analyses.1 The 2019 survey provides insights from one of the

Highwire's Byron Russell reports on this year's OASPA Conference, and future paths to sustainable open access business models.

The story of the first female spacewalk doubles as a metaphor for what it's like to be a woman full of ambition in 2019.

Science today is facing what seem to be unrelated crises, issues and problems with the public. We tend to see science in terms of the science of the past, and its great achievements, whereas the way science is done, evaluated and made accountable, no longer fits its historical image.

The efforts of young researchers to fight the perverse incentives that dominate science right now are all the more impressive because these scientists are at the most vulnerable point of their careers.

Around the globe, there are initiatives and organizations devoted to bring "Open Access" to the world, i.e., the public availability of scholarly research works, free of charge. However, the current debate seems to largely miss the point.

This article outlines the four principles that give shape to a new, less standardised approach to research assessment called "evaluative inquiry": employing versatile methods; shifting the contextual focus away from the individual; knowledge diplomacy; and favouring ongoing engagement ahead of open-and-shut reporting.

Theoretical physicists who say the multiverse exists set a dangerous precedent: science based on zero empirical evidence.

Opinion piece examining a study that found that the correlation between student evaluations and quality of learning is negative.

In this interview, Aileen Fyfe, professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews, shares an abridged history of journal publishing at scholarly societies and her thoughts on how scholarly publishing's past can influence its present.

Publishers, reviewers and other members of the scientific community must fight science's preference for positive results - for the benefit of all.

Robert Harington suggests that despite the critical role of scholarly societies in publishing and academia, the sad reality is it is the big corporate publishers who win.

The metaphor can have an especially negative impact on women and underrepresented groups, argues Wendy L. Hill.

Marking the launch of a new research on research institute, James Wilsdon reflects on the challenges of making good research and development policy. One surprising thread of continuity between Boris Johnson’s government and that of Theresa May, is its enthusiasm for research and innovation.

There are more university comparisons than ever before, but some argue there is little reliable or actionable information to be gleaned from them.

When reading a research paper, can you be certain that the institution the author claims to be affiliated with is actually the institution that was responsible for supporting the research?

We are in the middle of a climate breakdown, and all they can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth, says climate activist Greta Thunberg.