Revisiting the gig economy: a Labor Day post

Biosystems Analytics

Reposted from my Ronin Institute blog post

The Ronin Institute’s Research Scholars are drawn from many different career stages, levels of experience and backgrounds, and given that we don’t advocate a single model of a career in scholarship (in contrast to the traditional academic pipeline), it isn’t surprising that Research Scholars explore many different means to support their scholarship (we are still analyzing the results of the independent scholarship survey we did last year, but this much is clear). For many Research Scholars who are also freelancers, especially those in the sciences, one common means of support is being hired for short or long-term projects by academic institutions, private companies or non-profit organizations. This may be in in full-time or part-time capacity as an independent contractor or consultant. Ideally these projects utilise the scholars’ unique research background and skills and the experience and skills gained during consulting activities will…

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Scientific “ecosystem” paper now published in F1000 Research

Biosystems Analytics

I’ve previously blogged about our PeerJ Pre-print on moving away from the dominant metaphor of the scientific enterprise as “pipeline” leading to professorial positions in universities, towards a metaphor of diverse “ecosystem”. The paper has now been published in F1000 Research and has already garnered one peer review:

Lancaster AK, Thessen AE and Virapongse A. A new paradigm for the scientific enterprise: nurturing the ecosystem [version 1; referees: 1 approved]. F1000Research 2018, 7:803
(doi: 10.12688/f1000research.15078.1)

One the major points of the paper is that we need to move away from the currently closed system that emphasizes artificial scarcity (e.g. in journal spots), towards a system that emphasizes abundance, and we feel that publishing in journals that use post–publication and transparent peer review (like F1000 Research) helps us “walk-the-walk” as we build those new ecosystems.

Table 1 from the paper reinforces this point: illustrating the contrasting language between…

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