Blog post archive

Tuesday, 12 Mar 2024
Fake Research Is Threatening Our Democracy

What will happen to public debate and our democracy if we can no longer trust research? Fabricated ‘scientific publications’ could threaten the very foundations of our society. It isn’t ‘fake news’ that scares me, it’s fake research. By this, I don’t mean plagiarism and the failure to provide correct citations, ...

Wednesday, 21 Oct 2020
Open Access or Effective Research Communication?

Is there a risk that the ‘open science’ agenda obscures the need for effective research communication? In the context of ‘open access week’ and the necessary and justified focus on openness in science, whether of data or of publications, it is worth reflecting on the interplay between ‘open science’ agendas ...

Friday, 25 Oct 2019
Who Will Own the Knowledge Commons?

Today’s post concludes our blog series marking International Open Access Week. In this blog, David J. Allen reflects on where we are in the transition to an open research system and who decides where we go from here. The compelling idea behind the push for open access is to fully ...

Thursday, 24 Oct 2019
Open for Whom?

The theme of this year’s International Open Access Week is equity in open knowledge. This is an issue that’s of particularly importance for PRIO as a peace research institute. Today, we continue our blog series on open access and open science at PRIO with a blog by Lynn P. Nygaard, ...

Wednesday, 23 Oct 2019
Open Knowledge Beyond Replicability

For today’s blog in our series marking International Open Access Week, we asked Marta Bivand Erdal to reflect on some of the opportunities and challenges of the open science agenda for social scientists working with qualitative methods. Both quantitative and qualitative methods play an important role in the work our ...

Tuesday, 22 Oct 2019
Why Open Data?

In this second instalment of our blog series marking International Open Access Week, Håvard Strand talks about the importance of open data for the social sciences and for PRIO. Social science research is a collective effort, but with individual rewards through publications, fame and glory. An essential part of this ...

Monday, 21 Oct 2019
Opening Peace Research

This week, we’ll be marking International Open Access Week with a series of short blog posts on open access and open science at PRIO. Today, we kick off the series with a blog by Nils Petter Gleditsch. We asked Nils Petter – a long-standing cornerstone of the community here at ...

Monday, 21 Oct 2019
Welcome to Open Access Week at PRIO!

This week is International Open Access Week 2019. The aim of this global event is to raise awareness about open access and open science and to contribute to promoting and mainstreaming open research practices. To mark this year’s OA Week, we’ll be publishing a series of short blog posts exploring ...

Thursday, 20 Sep 2018
Free Access at a High Price

Plan S.: PRIO would far rather pay fees to ensure that all our publications in subscription journals are made available via open access than be forced to publish our best research in lower quality journals. The new European Plan S – an open access (OA) policy for research results – ...

Friday, 26 May 2017
“Fake Science” Has Arrived

How did we get into a situation where “the press is lying” and “research is rubbish”? Society is now experiencing a “storm of distrust” that is “powerful and unpredictable”, with growing resistance to established institutions, if we are to believe the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, published in January. This distrust ...

Monday, 27 Jun 2016
Open-Access Publishing and Academic Freedom

Open-access publishing will make research findings freely available. But what will happen when researchers have to pay to get their own results published? Researchers’ freedom of choice regarding publication channels may become severely restricted if this issue is not taken seriously. Two weeks ago, a working group appointed by the ...

Wednesday, 15 Jun 2016
Open Access – Our Academic Responsibility

The Norwegian government wants Norway to be a forerunner in the effort to ensure open access to published research. To this end, the government established a working group at the start of 2016, assigned with the task of compiling guidelines for open access to scientific papers. We, the working group, ...