Topic: open science

The Short Report, April 15, 2020: Regulators move fast to approve AI-powered x-rays for COVID-19; American lawmakers look askance at Huawei PPE donations; and more

The Fonds de recherche du Québec – santé (FRQS), the Quebec government’s health sciences research arm, will provide $2 million to help create the Centre de Recherche en Biologie Structurale (CRBS) at McGill University. The centre aims to advance understanding of the fundamental biological mechanisms of disease, which could help address medical challenges like targeting treatments to specific…

The Short Report, April 1, 2020: EU will integrate COVID-19 stimulus with green transition; researchers team up to share resources and materials in fight against COVID-19; and more

The European Union will adapt its economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic in support of the continent-wide Green Deal adopted in December. Europe wants to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 through a growth strategy that will “transform its economy and society to put it on a more sustainable path.” In a new statement, EU’s leaders…

Short Report, February 5, 2020: Most Canadian boards still don’t include women; merit-based grants offer big economic returns; McMaster researchers establish a new form of computing

A StatCan study of Canadian corporations in 2016/17 found that most of their boards didn’t include women: over 60% had no women members. The number of women on boards is growing, but very slowly, say experts. – BNN Bloomberg The University of British Columbia became the first Canadian post-secondary institution to join the Center for Open…

Federal research funders endorse plan to improve research assessment

Five major Canadian research funders have signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), a set of recommendations for improving the way the output of scientific research is evaluated. The signing comes at a time when the values of academia and society are increasingly at odds with academia’s traditional system of incentives and rewards.

The Short Report, November 27, 2019: African researchers denied entry; open science gets easier; Big Oil moves into the cloud

Canada refused visas to dozens of African researchers seeking to attend the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS) in Vancouver next month. The visas were commonly denied on suspicions that the participants would not leave Canada once the conference was over. The issue is recurring: last year, more than 100 attendees were denied visas to the…