PC's create magictricks

AI magic

Trouble with a Capital 'G'

What to do about G?

Big in semicon

Top 20 semiconductor suppliers

Smooth exits

I quit

Don't make it up

How not to interpret research

Manners

Nobel spat

Books

Most significant books?

China’s R&D rise

Squeezed R&D budgets in the EU, Japan and US are reducing the weight of advanced economies in science and technology research, patent applications and scientific publications and leaving China on track to be the world’s top R&D spender by around 2019, according to a new report from the Paris based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Annual growth in R&D spending across OECD countries was 1.6% over 2008-12, half the rate of 2001-08. China’s R&D spending meanwhile doubled from 2008 to 2012. However South Korea became the world’s most R&D intensive country in 2012, spending 4.36% of GDP on R&D. China and Korea are now the main destinations of scientific authors from the United States and experienced a net “brain gain” during 1996-2011.

No end of the peer review?

An article last month suggests that now the internet has made it easy to share an unsolicited opinion, traditional methods of academic review are beginning to show their age. It asserts that many believe that long-standing metrics of academic research (eg peer review, citation-counting, impact factor) are reaching breaking point. But we are not yet in a position to place complete trust in the alternatives, such as altmetrics, open science and post-publication review. Interestingly, at the same time, a researcher is taking legal action against a website over anonymous online comments about his work. Do we need better pre- and post- publication review mechanisms, better publications or just a good lawyer?