scholarly journals Funding Science with Science: Cryptocurrency and Independent Academic Research Funding

Ledger ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Lehner ◽  
Dylan Hunzeker ◽  
John R. Ziegler
Keyword(s):  
Research Funding ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Research Fund ◽  
Research Investment ◽  
Asset Class ◽  
Compound Interest ◽  
Funding Stream

Scientific funding within the academy is an often complicated affair involving disparate and competing interests. Private universities, for instance, are vastly outpacing public institutions in garnering large, prestigious, science-related grants and external research investment. Inequities also extend to the types of research funded, with government, corporate, and even military interests privileging certain types of inquiry. This article proposes an innovative type of science research fund using cryptocurrencies, a fast-growing asset class. Although not a total funding solution, staking coins, specifically, can be strategically invested in to yield compound interest. These coins use masternode technologies to collateralize the network and speed transaction pace and may pay dividends to masternode holders, allowing institutions that purchase these types of central hubs to potentially engage in a lucrative form of dividend reinvestment. Using cryptocurrencies as a new funding stream may garner large amounts of capital and creation of nonprofit institutes to support the future of funding scientific research within educational institutions.

Return to Meaning

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
No Value ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Cluttered Environment ◽  
Student Fees ◽  
Social Uses

This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but a proliferation of meaningless research of no value to society and modest value to its authors—apart from securing employment and promotion. The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the limelight even briefly. Older, but more impressive contributions are easily neglected as the premium is to write and publish, not read and learn. The result is a widespread cynicism among academics on the value of academic research, sometimes including their own. Publishing comes to be seen as a game of hits and misses, devoid of intrinsic meaning and value and of no wider social uses whatsoever. This is what the book views as the rise of nonsense in academic research, which represents a serious social problem. It undermines the very point of social science. This problem is far from ‘academic’. It affects many areas of social and political life entailing extensive waste of resources and inflated student fees as well as costs to taxpayers. The book’s second part offers a range of proposals aimed at restoring meaning at the heart of social science research, and drawing social science back, address the major problems and issues that face our societies.

Interdiscursivity and Promotional Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Genre Analysis of About Us Texts on Chinese University Websites

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-416
Author(s):  
Tao Xiong ◽  
Qiuna Li
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
International Exchange ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
University Websites ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Chinese University ◽  
The University ◽  
Promotional Discourse

Abstract The debate on the marketization of discourse in higher education has sparked and sustained interest among researchers in discourse and education studies across a diversity of contexts. While most research in this line has focused on marketized discourses such as advertisements, little attention has been paid to promotional discourse in public institutions such as the About us texts on Chinese university websites. The goal of the present study is twofold: first, to describe the generic features of the university About us texts in China; and second, to analyze how promotional discourse is interdiscursively incorporated in the discourse by referring to the broader socio-political context. Findings have indicated five main moves: giving an overview, stressing historical status, displaying strengths, pledging political and ideological allegiance, and communicating goals and visions. Move 3, displaying strengths, has the greatest amount of information and can be further divided into six sub-moves which presents information on campus facilities, faculty team, talent cultivation, disciplinary fields construction, academic research, and international exchange. The main linguistic and rhetorical strategies used in these moves are analyzed and discussed.

scholarly journals Users and Social Science Research: Policy, Problems and Possibilities

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Rappert
Keyword(s):  
Research Policy ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
User Involvement ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Policy Problems

Recent times have seen a significant reorientation in public funding for academic research across many countries. Public bodies in the UK have been at the forefront of such activities, typically justified in terms of a need to meet the challenges of international competitiveness and improve quality of life. One set of mechanisms advanced for further achieving these goals is the incorporation of users’ needs into various aspects of the research process. This paper examines some of the consequences of greater user involvement in the UK Economic and Social Research Council by drawing on both empirical evidence and more speculative argumentation. In doing so it poses some of the dilemmas for conceptualizing proper user involvement.

scholarly journals Discrepancies between Canadian cancer research funding and site-specific cancer burden: a spotlight on ten disease sites

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. Coronado ◽  
C. Finley ◽  
K. Badovinac ◽  
J. Han ◽  
J. Niu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cancer Research ◽  
Research Funding ◽  
Information Management System ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Cancer Burden ◽  
Specific Research ◽  
Research Survey ◽  
Research Investment ◽  
Incidence And Mortality ◽  
Specific Cancer

BackgroundCancer research is essential in evaluating the safety and effectiveness of emerging cancer treatments, which in turn can lead to ground-breaking advancements in cancer care. Given limited research funding, allocating resources in alignment with societal burden is essential. However, evidence shows that such alignment does not typically occur. The objective of the present study was to provide an updated overview of site-specific cancer research investment in Canada and to explore potential discrepancies between the site-specific burden and the level of research investment.MethodsThe 10 cancer sites with the highest mortality in 2015—which included brain, female breast, colorectal, leukemia, lung, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, ovary, pancreas, prostate, and uterus—were selected for the analysis. Information about site-specific research investment and cancer burden (raw incidence and mortality) was obtained from the Canadian Cancer Research Survey and Statistics Canada’s cansim (the Canadian Socio-Economic Information Management System) respectively. The ratio of site-specific research investment to site-specific burden was used as an indicator of overfunding (ratio > 1) or underfunding (ratio < 1).ResultsThe 3 cancer sites with the highest research investments were leukemia, prostate, and breast, which together represented 51.3% of 2015 cancer research funding. Conversely, the 3 cancer sites with the lowest investments were uterus, pancreas, and ovary, which together represented 7.8% of 2015 research funding. Relative to site-specific cancer burden, the lung, uterus, and colorectal sites were consistently the most underfunded.ConclusionsObserved discrepancies between cancer burden and research investment indicate that some cancer sites (such as lung, colorectal, and uterus) seem to be underfunded when site-specific incidence and mortality are taken into consideration.

scholarly journals Limits of exercising the rights to leasing out property by public institutions of higher education

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Mykola Moroz
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
Higher Educational Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Higher Educational ◽  
The Right

Problem setting. Leasing out property that is involved in educational, academic, training and production, scientific activities by the public institutions of higher education often leads to violation of the rights of other participants in educational activities. They are sure to be a result of violating the limits, established by the current legislation, of exercising the rights to leasing out property by the public institutions of higher educational. Analysis of recent researches and publications. The issues of state property lease have been studied by many scholars. Basic research in this area has been conducted by I. Spasibo-Fatieieva, O. Lipetsker, Ye.Kazarenko, V. Steshenko, M. Pronina, S. Puhinsky, T. Potapenkova, Yu.Basin, D. levenson, N. Khashchivska, N. Milovska and other scientists. Target of research. The aim of the paper is a comprehensive study and analysis of the limits of exercising the rights by the public institutions of higher education to leasing out their own property. To achieve this goal the following tasks should be solved: 1) to define the limits of exercising the rights by the public institutions of higher education to leasing out their own property; 2) to determine the legal consequences of concluding lease agreements by the public higher educational institutions in violation of current legislation. Article’s main body. The article conducts a general study and analysis of the right of the public institutions of higher education to lease property. The author emphasizes that public higher educational institutions have the right to lease out only real estate and other individually identified property. The legal consequences of concluding lease agreements by public higher educational institutions in violation of the current legislation have been studied. Conclusions and prospects for the development. Summarizing the results of the study we can formulate the following conclusions. The public institutions of higher education have the right to lease out real estate and other individually determined property in the manner prescribed by law and subject to statutory restrictions (without the right of redemption and sublease, when it does not worsen the social and living conditions of persons studying or working in the educational institution). While leasing the property, the public higher educational institution realizes primarily their own property interests, at the same time, indirectly realizing the property interests of the state. If the lease agreement of real estate and other individually determined property of higher educational institutions is recognized as invalid, it may be recognized as invalid only for the future.

scholarly journals Erasing the Social from Social Science: The Intellectual Costs of Boundary-Work and the Canadian Institute of Health Research

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katelin E. Albert
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Research Funding ◽  
Boundary Work ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Canadian Institute ◽  
The Social

In 2009, Canadian social science research funding underwent a transition. Social science health-research was shifted from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), an agency previously dominated by natural and medical science. This paper examines the role of health-research funding structures in legitimizing and/or delimiting what counts as ‘good’ social science health research. Engaging Gieryn’s (1983) notion of ‘boundary-work’ and interviews with qualitative social science graduate students, it investigates how applicants developed proposals for CIHR. Findings show that despite claiming to be interdisciplinary, the practical mechanisms through which CIHR funding is distributed reinforce rigid boundaries of what counts as legitimate health research. These boundaries are reinforced by applicants who felt pressure to prioritize what they perceived was what funders wanted (accommodating natural-science research culture), resulting in erased, elided, and disguised social science theories and methods common for ‘good social science.’

scholarly journals Southeast Asia and the South Pacific Region: current problems of development – 2019

2020 ◽  
pp. 494-514
Author(s):  
E.M. Astafieva ◽  
◽  
N.P. Maletin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
South Pacific ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
The South ◽  
Russian Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Oriental Studies ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The paper provides an overview of the reports presented at the conference "Southeast Asia and the South Pacific region: current problems of development", which was held in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences on December 18, 2019. In the annual inter-institute conference of Orientalists organized by the Center for Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania studies academics, as well as applicants and post-graduates from various academic, research and educational institutions, participated.

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