Omidyar Network Announces New Approach, Spins Off Initiatives

Philanthropy News Digest

October 24, 2018

To better address emerging issues in a society altered by shocks to its economic, political, and technological systems, Omidyar Network has announced significant changes to its focus areas, approach, and initiatives.

In a blog post, Omidyar Network managing partner Mike Kubzansky outlined three principal changes. First, ON will focus on a core set of pressing, difficult, and deeper issues that have emerged across four areas — reimagining capitalism; promoting the beneficial use of technology; building bridges in a pluralistic world; and fostering individual capabilities and empowerment. 

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A Data Sharing Renaissance: Music to My Ears!

Open Mike: The NIH Extramural Nexus
Carrie Wolinetz

October 11, 2018

When world famous cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, visited the NIH campus, he shared a story from the history of music, in which the peak of stringed instrument quality occurred in the late 17th century at a time of great collaboration and sharing of knowledge. When instrument makers began to compete, all of that changed: secrets of craftsmanship were held close and the quality of instruments plummeted. This decline lasted, according to Ma, until the 20th century, when again the free-flow of knowledge resumed. NIH Director Francis Collins noted, “There’s a lesson here about science.”

Data sharing is important. It is critical to continued progress in science, to maximize our investment in research, and to ensure the highest levels of transparency and rigor in science. But data sharing is a means to an end, not itself an end goal and, as such, needs to be done thoughtfully, in a way that fulfills the vision and mission of NIH and continues the advancement of treatments for disease and improvement of human health. NIH has long been on the forefront of making access to the results of our research accessible and has described our vision for expanding access to publications and data both in the 2015 NIH Plan for Increasing Access to Scientific Publications and Digital Scientific and in the 2018 Strategic Plan for Data Science.

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We Are All Research Subjects Now

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Sarah E. Igo

October 7, 2018

This spring, with some fanfare, Facebook and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) announced that they would team up for a novel research collaboration. The unusual partnership has been greeted with equal parts praise and criticism. What seems undeniable, however, is what the project represents: the first outlines of a 21st-century social-research complex shaped more by big data than conventional data sets, and by corporate rather than public backing. Given its evident importance, those leading the effort will need to resist a reflexive retreat to old frameworks for ethical inquiry even as they venture into new territory.

While many of the specifics are still being hammered out, the joint SSRC-Facebook Social Data Initiative marks the first time that the social-media giant has agreed to release large amounts of proprietary data to outside scholars. Under the umbrella of the initiative’s "Social Media and Democracy" program, the recipients will in the first instance be academics analyzing issues of immediate import: the impact of social media on elections and politics around the globe.

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How Academic Corruption Works

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Lawrence Lessig

October 7, 2018

In the spring of 2008, I was asked to testify before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation about network neutrality. I had testified before the same committee on the same subject six years before. But now the issue was central in a presidential campaign, and interest had become much more focused.

As I sat at the hearing table, waiting for my chance to speak, I received a message from Sen. John Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire: "You shouldn’t be shilling," the message scolded me, "for big internet companies." I was stunned as I realized that Sununu thought I was being paid to give testimony. And then I recognized that of course he thought I was being paid. Practically everyone in my field now gets paid to give public testimony. ("Practically," but not everyone, and certainly not me.) 

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How Much Does Publishing in Top Journals Boost Tenure Prospects? In Economics, a Lot

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Audrey Williams June

October 1, 2018

For academics on the tenure track, the pressure to publish at all costs and in the top journals in their field is immense. That’s because meeting that professional standard matters — a lot.

How much does it matter for academic economists? A new working paper by James J. Heckman, a Nobel laureate and economist, and Sidharth Moktan, a predoctoral fellow, provides a look. Both are at the University of Chicago.

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‘Journalologists’ Use Scientific Methods to Study Academic Publishing. Is Their Work Improving Science?

Science
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

September 19, 2018

They came to Chicago from across medicine and around the world, converging on a dingy downtown hotel to witness the birth of a new field. It was a chilly May week in 1989. Guests muttered about clogged bathtubs and taps that ran cold, while a bushy-bearded Drummond Rennie, a deputy editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), hurried the crowd away from morning bagels and coffee and into the meeting hall.

A British nephrologist who scaled mountain peaks in his spare time, Rennie had moved to a Chicago hospital from London in 1967. But while studying how the thin oxygen of high altitudes affects the kidneys, he became interested in the world of scientific publishing. Curious about how scientists report their work and how editors make their decisions, Rennie took a job at The New England Journal of Medicine in 1977, and later switched to JAMA.

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Development Impact Bond Launched to Improve Education in India

Philanthropy News Digest

September 14, 2018

The British Asian Trust, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, the UBS Optimus Foundation, and Tata Trusts, together with Comic Relief, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Mittal Foundation, and British Telecom, have launched a development impact bond in support of quality education in India.

The largest education development impact bond to date has raised $11 million in its first phase and, if successful, will support efforts to improve literacy and numeracy skills for more than three hundred thousand children. Beneficiaries of the bond were selected for their diverse and proven interventions and include Gyan Shala, which works with poor rural and urban slum children; the Kaivalya Education Foundation, a Piramal initiative that works to strengthen education and youth leadership; and the Society for All Round Development, which will work within the DIB mechanism to improve learning outcomes for thousands of children.

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