Academics have been accused of failing to make use of new technology to improve research because they are “selfish” and bogged down in the peer review system.
Speaking at a British Library debate, organised by Times Higher Education, academics and students agreed that researchers had not embraced new technology to share their data and findings.
Addressing the question “What is the future of research?”, Matthew Gamble, a PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Manchester, said that despite projects such as Galaxy Zoo, which shares academic data with the general public, the culture of the “selfish scientist” was holding back British research.
“Altruism is quickly beaten out of young academics in favour of retaining data and making sure you can produce as many publications as possible,” he said.
The “publish or perish culture” taught students that “if they don’t produce a paper there is no point pushing the data out there”, he claimed, adding that “data sharing is still seen as quite rebellious”.
Read full story, including commentary from Aleks Krotoski (of The Virtual Revolution fame)
I am clearly a bit of a rebel, as I’ve published my PhD under Creative Commons licence (sans images, which is what has stalled me on publishing it in the print press at all!)… but people are using my PhD already (particularly when referring to Keep Calm and Carry On, the history of which comes from my PhD), so at least if it’s under Creative Commons, maybe it will encourage more to NOT use without citation!
