nature

by

On high AALERT: can art help research into nature?

The visual, performing and literary arts play an important and evolving role in shaping experiences and appreciations of landscapes as well as providing critical and cultural understanding of them.

In recent years, the significance of the arts in landscape and environmental research has been increasingly emphasised, with arts and humanities components now a common, if not required, element in research proposals, such as activities delivered through the Valuing Nature research programme. Similarly, many and diverse landscape management projects with arts-based elements are funded by public money.

Event details >

Continue reading →

by

What reproducibility crisis? Open research may have the answers

By Dr Robert Darby, research data manager 

One of the pillars of all empirical research is that the findings of experiments should not just be one-offs. Anyone with the ability to do so should be able to pick up a research paper, follow the same methods, and come up with the same result.

Yet a recent survey by Nature found that more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments. Not only that, but more than half have failed to reproduce even their own experiments. Analyses have reported reproducibility rates for published studies of just 10% and 40%.

News of the so-called ‘reproducibility crisis’ has even reached the BBC, so something must be going on.

So is there really a reproducibility crisis? And if so, what can you do about it?

Open Science may provide answers – and the University of Reading is hosting a free conference on the topic of Open Research this March.

Continue reading →