What caught our eye last week

There are a fair number of links making their way into our inboxes on a daily basis and we pass them on as often as possible, but listing and linking to them all would create a monster of a post. Still, we do love to share — so, we’ve put together a small selection of some of the more interesting links we came across last week. Enjoy!

David Wojick (The Scholarly Kitchen) posted ‘Please use whole names on scholarly articles’ which looks at how referencing academic articles using the surname(s) and initials (or partial names) can lead to some confusion, particularly in China.

SciDev.Net’s Syful Islam looked at the budget cuts to research science and research alongside the hike in atomic energy allocation in Bangladesh.

Sir John Daniel and David Killion’s article in the Guardian ‘Are open educational resources  the key to global economic growth’ examines how using Open Educational Resources (OER) could cut educational costs and, eventually, spur growth. As a related resource, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Open Course Ware offers the possibility of freely accessing course material of one of the most prestigious universities in the world!

Finally Markus Goldstein (Development Impact) posted a blog that is fundamental to understanding  DFID’s approach to Impact Evaluation see Part I & Part II.

INASP

One Response to “What caught our eye last week

  • Thanks for the post – below some comments:

    – On ‘Please use whole names on scholarly articles’ – “ the number of scholarly articles published by Chinese researchers is approaching that of those published by American authors, the largest single country group”: this is an unconventional perspective on Chinese growth indeed!

    – On Bangladesh’s cuts to research – this is a very interesting article indeed, but allow me to be the devil’s advocate: : investing in nuclear energy can be considered investing in science (but of course, the temptation to assume that it is for defence reasons is strong!); I would have liked to see in it some estimates of the private sector investment in science and something about the quality of the science it is funded (not just the quantity!)

    – On ‘Are open educational resources the key to global economic growth’ – I think this is a very interesting perspective and goes directly inside the controversial issue whether higher education is pushing up growth (correlation does not mean causation!)

    Looking forward the next post!