scholarly journals What has Royal Society Open Science achieved in its first few years?

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy K. M. Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Young Female ◽  
New Venture ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Replication Studies ◽  
New Science ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Article Processing Charges

It has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as the first Editor-in-Chief of Royal Society Open Science for the past 6 years. I step down at the end of December 2021, having completed two 3-year terms, and am taking the opportunity here to reflect on some of the successes and challenges that the journal has experienced and the innovations that we have introduced. When I was first approached back in 2015, the breadth of the journal, covering the whole of science, resonated with my own interests: my research career has ranged across the entire landscape of chemistry, while my leadership roles have embraced all of science, technology and medicine. The open access ethos, the objective refereeing policy that rejects the idea of only publishing what is in fashion, and the opportunities offered by a new venture that could transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries also all appealed to me. Among our successful innovations are Registered Reports, Replication Studies and the new ‘Science, Society and Policy' section. The challenges have included the transition to paid article processing charges (APCs), whether to resist pressure to retract a controversial paper, and bullying of young female authors by established senior males in the same field. I explore all of these below, provide some statistics on the journal's performance, also cover some of the notable papers we have published, and provide some concluding thoughts.

Martin Folkes

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
New Science ◽  
Definition Of

In 1750, Martin Folkes became the only individual who was President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, and he contributed to efforts to unite both organizations. Although he failed, illness forcing him to resign both offices, this chapter outlines the book’s analysis of the ensuing disciplinary boundaries between the two organizations in the early Georgian era in the context of Folkes’s life and letters. While it is normally assumed that natural philosophy and antiquarianism are disciplines that were fast becoming disconnected in this period, this work will reconsider these assumptions. The Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries were nearly reunited for good reason. Both societies incorporated techniques and affinities from antiquarianism—natural history and landscape—and the ‘new science’—engineering principles, measurement, and empiricism. Using Folkes’s life and letters, this biography will examine the disciplinary boundaries between the humanities and sciences in early Georgian Britain and reassess the extent to which the separation of these ‘two cultures’ developed in this era. It will also consider to what extent Folkes continued the Newtonian programme in mathematics, optics, and astronomy on the Continent. In this manner, the work will refine its definition of Newtonianism and its scope in the early eighteenth century, elucidating and reclaiming the vibrant research programme that Folkes promoted in the period of English science least well understood between the age of Francis Bacon and the present.

‘Charting’ a Personal and Institutional Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 333-352
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
New Science

In 1750, Folkes became president of the Society of Antiquaries, in addition to that of the Royal Society and contributed to efforts to unite both organisations. Although he failed, illness forcing him to resign both offices, chapter nine analyses the ensuing disciplinary boundaries between the two organisations in the early Georgian era. While natural philosophy and antiquarianism were disciplines that we normally assume were fast becoming disconnected in this period, our work will reconsider these assumptions. The Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries were nearly reunited for good reason. Both societies incorporated techniques and affinities from antiquarianism—natural history and landscape—and the ‘new science’—engineering principles, measurement, and empiricism. We will conclude with Folkes’s final years, the circumstances of his memorial at Westminster Abbey, and an assessment of his life and letters, particularly with regard to his relationship with Voltaire.

Massive Open Access Publications

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus Pereira Lobo
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Substantial Reduction ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Science Culture ◽  
Open Access Journals ◽  
Article Processing Charges

A huge collaborative open science model is proposed. Many authors collaborating in a paper leads to a substantial reduction for the Article Processing Charges (APCs) in the Open Access Journals. This can significantly stimulate research within a healthier citizen and open science culture.

scholarly journals Address of the President Sir Robert Robinson, at the anniversary meeting, 1 December 1947

1947 ◽  
Vol 135 (878) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Living Cell ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
New Science ◽  
Scientific World ◽  
Intimate Association ◽  
Scientific Life

The names that have just been recounted include those of many outstanding personalities in the scientific world and it would not be fitting to attempt even brief appreciations of their manifold services on this occasion. An exception must, however, be made when we mourn such giants as two of the deceased Fellows. Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, O. M., was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1905; he delivered the Croonian Lecture in 1915, was Royal Medallist in 1918 and Copley Medallist in 1926. He was President of the Society from 1930 to 1935. Such are the bare facts, and though we are proud of his intimate association with the Royal Society, we do not now think of a Lecturer, a Medallist, or even of a President. Our memory dwells rather on the lovable qualities and magnanimous spirit of a devoted teacher and leader, and on the influence of his generous help to others as well as of his personal achievements during almost seventy years of scientific life. He was early imbued with the conviction that the chemistry of the living cell was his subject, that it was not only of transcendent importance, but also that it was ripe for development. He dedicated himself to the quest and embarked with enthusiasm on a pioneering voyage of discovery. The outcome of his courage and industry was the foundation of a new scientific discipline, if not of a new science. He was the father of modern schools of biochemistry and was the greatest biochemist of his generation.

"Plain and Vulgarly Express'd": Margaret Cavendish and the Discourse of the New Science

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Nate
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Woman Writer ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
New Science ◽  
Plain Style ◽  
Thomas Sprat

Although Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), did not belong to the scientific community which after 1660 formed itself around the Royal Society, several of the philosophical issues discussed there are reflected in her writings. Lengthy reflections on language and style which run through her philosophical worksprovide evidence that the linguistic and rhetorical debates of the early Royal Society also left their mark. The isolation which Cavendish faced as a woman writer obliged her to discuss problems of terminology and style even more intensively, thereby adhering to the rhetorical principle of perspicuity which Thomas Sprat demanded in his proposal for a scientific plain style. The influence of the New Science on Cavendish's work becomes obvious when her later writings are compared to her earlier ones where traces of a courtly and more elitist understanding of style can still be found. In this paper the development of Cavendish's stylistic attitudes is traced in several of her works, including her Utopian narrative The Blazing World (1666).

scholarly journals Many Labs 5: Testing Pre-Data-Collection Peer Review as an Intervention to Increase Replicability

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles R. Ebersole ◽  
Maya B. Mathur ◽  
Erica Baranski ◽  
Diane-Jo Bart-Plange ◽  
Nicholas R. Buttrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Median Number ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Original Study ◽  
Effect Sizes ◽  
Replication Studies ◽  
Expert Review ◽  
Science Collaboration

Replication studies in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If these studies use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data-collection peer review by experts may address shortcomings and increase replicability rates. We selected 10 replication studies from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P; Open Science Collaboration, 2015) for which the original authors had expressed concerns about the replication designs before data collection; only one of these studies had yielded a statistically significant effect ( p < .05). Commenters suggested that lack of adherence to expert review and low-powered tests were the reasons that most of these RP:P studies failed to replicate the original effects. We revised the replication protocols and received formal peer review prior to conducting new replication studies. We administered the RP:P and revised protocols in multiple laboratories (median number of laboratories per original study = 6.5, range = 3–9; median total sample = 1,279.5, range = 276–3,512) for high-powered tests of each original finding with both protocols. Overall, following the preregistered analysis plan, we found that the revised protocols produced effect sizes similar to those of the RP:P protocols (Δ r = .002 or .014, depending on analytic approach). The median effect size for the revised protocols ( r = .05) was similar to that of the RP:P protocols ( r = .04) and the original RP:P replications ( r = .11), and smaller than that of the original studies ( r = .37). Analysis of the cumulative evidence across the original studies and the corresponding three replication attempts provided very precise estimates of the 10 tested effects and indicated that their effect sizes (median r = .07, range = .00–.15) were 78% smaller, on average, than the original effect sizes (median r = .37, range = .19–.50).

scholarly journals Interpreting signals from astrophysical transient experiments

2013 ◽  
Vol 371 (1992) ◽  
pp. 20120498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul T. O’Brien ◽  
Stephen J. Smartt
Keyword(s):  
Gravitational Waves ◽  
Time Domain ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Electromagnetic Spectrum ◽  
New Science ◽  
Transient Experiments ◽  
Efficient Communication ◽  
The Universe ◽  
High Cadence

Time-domain astronomy has come of age with astronomers now able to monitor the sky at high cadence, both across the electromagnetic spectrum and using neutrinos and gravitational waves. The advent of new observing facilities permits new science, but the ever-increasing throughput of facilities demands efficient communication of coincident detections and better subsequent coordination among the scientific community so as to turn detections into scientific discoveries. To discuss the revolution occurring in our ability to monitor the Universe and the challenges it brings, on 25–26 April 2012, a group of scientists from observational and theoretical teams studying transients met with representatives of the major international transient observing facilities at the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, UK. This immediately followed the Royal Society Discussion Meeting ‘New windows on transients across the Universe’ held in London. Here, we present a summary of the Kavli meeting at which the participants discussed the science goals common to the transient astronomy community and analysed how to better meet the challenges ahead as ever more powerful observational facilities come on stream.

Architecture, Anatomy, and the New Science in Early Modern London

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
New Science ◽  
Early Modern London

Focuses on an important but overlooked building in late seventeenth-century London: the College of Physicians on Warwick Lane designed by the scientist and architect Robert Hooke in the 1670s. The building, which was commissioned in response to the previous college’s destruction in the Great Fire of London in 1666, was itself demolished in the nineteenth century. In this article, Matthew Walker argues that the conception and design of Hooke’s college had close links with the early Royal Society and its broader experimental philosophical program. This came about through the agency of Hooke—the society’s curator—as well as the prominence of the college’s physicians in the experimental philosophical group in its early years. By analyzing Hooke’s design for the college, and its prominent anatomy theater in particular, this article thus raises broader questions about architecture’s relationship with medicine and experimental science in early modern London.

scholarly journals A Student's Perspective

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristoffer Klevjer ◽  
Per Pippin Aspaas
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Master's Degree ◽  
Open Science ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Education Project ◽  
Replication Studies ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Master’S Degree

In this episode, we are exploring a student's perspective on open science – and specifically replication studies. Kristoffer Klevjer recently finished his Master’s degree in psychology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and has now taken on a PhD. But already as a master student, Klevjer was involved in replication studies. In his experience, replication studies can be benefitial to the student, the supervisor, and the scientific community at large. Furthermore, Klevjer argues that replications can be well suited for students at Bachelor level as well. In the interview, Klevjer refers to several publications and projects, including - The Collaborative Replications and Education Project - Kool, W., McGuire, J. T., Rosen, Z. B., & Botvinick, M. M. (2010). Decision making and the avoidance of cognitive demand. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139(4), 665–682. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020198 - Psychological Science Accelerator The replication Klevjer did for his Master's degree can be found here First published online March 9, 2020.

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