Between fast science and fake news: preprint servers are political

Preprints servers have become a vital medium for the rapid sharing of scientific findings. This has been made clear by the speed with which researchers have developed new knowledge about the Covid-19 pandemic. However, this speed and openness has also contributed to the ability of low quality preprints to derail public debate and feed conspiracy theories. Maximilian Heimstädt argues that as preprints begin to play a more central role in the communication of research, it is up to policy makers, journalists and civil society to better understand the knowledge they offer

To address the rise of predatory publishing in the social sciences, journals need to experiment with open peer review.

Predatory journals are here, but our attention to them is unevenly distributed. Most studies on predatory publishing have looked at the phenomenon in the natural and life sciences. In this post, Maximilian Heimstädt and Leonhard Dobusch analyse the harmful potential of predatory journals for social science and specifically management research. Identifying key threats posed by predatory publishing, they argue that open peer review could stand to mitigate some of these challenges and foster a more constructive form of knowledge production

A step-by-step guide for using Wikipedia for research communication

The Wikipedia community has become a source of information for a broad and global public. Paul Börsting and Maximilian Heimstädt argue that contributing to the encyclopedia as a scholar can be a powerful way of achieving a strong societal impact of their own expertise. Furthermore they provide a guide on how to write your first contributions

A timeline analysis of Open Data development in the UK

In this paper, we conceptualize Open Data ecosystems by analysing the major stakeholders in the UK. The conceptualization is based on a review of popular Open Data definitions and business ecosystem theories, which we applied to empirical data using a timeline analysis. Our work is informed by a combination of discourse analysis and in-depth interviews, undertaken during the summer of 2013. Drawing on the UK as a best practice example, we identify a set of structural business ecosystem properties: circular flow of resources, sustainability, demand that encourages supply, and dependence developing between suppliers, intermediaries, and users. However, significant gaps and shortcomings are found to remain. Most prominently, demand is not yet fully encouraging supply and actors have yet to experience fully mutual interdependence

Perspektiven von Open Educational Resources (OER) für die (sozio-)ökonomische Bildung an Schulen in NRW und in Deutschland

Die (sozio-)ökonomische Bildung an Schulen steht vor zwei großen Herausforderungen: Zum einen verstärkt die zunehmende Digitalisierung der Lernpraxis bestehende urheberrechtliche Probleme. Zum anderen gerät das Kontroversitätsgebot der Lehre durch eine wachsende Menge an minderwertigen und tendenziösen, aber kostenfreien Onlinematerialien zunehmend unter Druck. Open Educational Resources - Bildungsmaterialien unter freier Lizenz (z.B. Creative Commons) - sind ein Weg, diesen Herausforderungen zu begegnen. Zentraler Vorschlag dieser Studie ist es daher, die Erstellung von OER-Schulbüchern in Nordrhein-Westfalen systematisch zu fördern. Nach einer Ist-Analyse des digitalen Lernens und der offenen Bildung in NRW entwirft die Studie (aufbauend auf Interviews mit allen relevanten Stakeholdergruppen) sechs Handlungsszenarien. Beispielhafte Vorschläge sind die öffentliche Ausschreibung von Pilot-OER-Büchern, die landesübergreifende Förderung von OER-Buch-'Rohlingen͚' oder die Kopplung der Zulassung von Schulbüchern an eine OER-Klausel.The (socio-)economic education in Germany faces two great challenges: The growing impact of digitalization on the practice of education intensifies existing copyright-related problems and uncertainties. Further, the growing stock of free but biased and sub-standard teaching material online puts pressure on the educational principle of controversy (Kontroversitätsgebot). Open Educational Ressources - educational material under free licenses (e.g. Creative Commons) - are a way to address these challenges. The central recommendation of this study is to system- atically support and fund the creation of OER-textbooks in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Based on an analysis of the status quo of open education in NRW and drawing on interviews with all relevant stakeholder groups, this study develops six scenarios to foster the creation of OER textbooks. These scenarios include a public call for tenders on selected OER textbooks, a state-spanning effort to create basis versions of OER-textbooks, or a commitment to OER a pre-condition for the state-led approval of a new textbook

Two PABPC1-binding sites in GW182 proteins promote miRNA-mediated gene silencing

Previous studies have suggested that the mechanism of miRNA-mediated silencing may differ between human and Drosophila cells. Here, a direct comparison demonstrates that the mechanism is conserved and the GW182–PABP interaction is required for silencing in vivo

Uma Forma Pragmática de Abrir a Pesquisa e a Educação em Gestão: Ludicidade, Ambiguidade e Desterritorialização

The open science movement has reached management research and education. Around the world, management scholars discuss, probe, and evaluate ways to make their work practices less ‘closed’ and more ‘open.’ However, how exactly such new work practices change management knowledge and teaching depends, to a large extent, on practitioners’ philosophical interpretation of ‘openness.’ Today, openness in management research and education is mainly interpreted as a feature of the input to or output from knowledge work. These interpretations conceive of research and education as relatively stable entities which can be opened at some clearly defined points. Our study aims to unsettle this conception and propose a new and more radical interpretation of openness. We propose to reconsider openness via the processual approach of American Pragmatism and thereby in a sense that dispenses with requiring the predisposition of research and education as stable entities. Via this interpretation of openness, management research and education can be transformed into a co-productive democratic movement which can bring about knowledge commons interwoven with true managerial and societal problems. To offer a first description of openness as a process that can transform management research and education, we analyze ethnographic material from two types of pragmatist experiments, which the first author facilitated between 2016 and 2021. We identify three key dimensions in the process of opening research and education: playfulness, ambiguity, and deterritorialization. Our study advances debates on the question of how management research can be more immediately helpful to management practitioners and students’ concerns.O movimento da ciência aberta alcançou a pesquisa e a educação em gestão. Em todo o mundo, os acadêmicos de gestão discutem, pesquisam e avaliam formas de tornar as suas práticas de trabalho menos “fechadas” e mais “abertas”. Entretanto, de que forma, exatamente, essas novas práticas de trabalho mudam o conhecimento e o ensino em gestão depende, em grande medida, da interpretação filosófica que os profissionais fazem de 'abertura'. Atualmente, a abertura na pesquisa e na educação em gestão é interpretada principalmente como uma característica da entrada ou saída do trabalho de conhecimento. Essas interpretações concebem a pesquisa e a educação como entidades relativamente estáveis, que podem ser abertas em alguns pontos claramente definidos. O nosso estudo tem por objetivo superar essa concepção e propor uma interpretação nova e mais radical de abertura. Propomos reconsiderar a abertura por meio da abordagem processual do Pragmatismo americano e, assim, em um sentido que dispense a exigência da predisposição da pesquisa e da educação como entidades estáveis. Por meio desta interpretação de abertura, a pesquisa e a educação em gestão podem ser transformadas em um movimento democrático coprodutivo, que pode trazer conhecimentos comuns entrelaçados com os verdadeiros problemas societais e de gestão. Para oferecer uma primeira descrição da abertura como um processo que pode transformar a pesquisa e a educação em gestão, analisamos o material etnográfico a partir de dois tipos de experimentos pragmáticos, facilitados pelo primeiro autor entre 2016 e 2021. Identificamos três dimensões-chave no processo de abertura da pesquisa e da educação: ludicidade, ambiguidade e desterritorialização.  O nosso estudo avança os debates sobre a questão de como a pesquisa em gestão pode ser mais imediatamente útil para abordar as preocupações dos profissionais e estudantes de gestão

An Antiviral Defense Role of AGO2 in Plants

Background: Argonaute (AGO) proteins bind to small-interfering (si)RNAs and micro (mi)RNAs to target RNA silencing against viruses, transgenes and in regulation of mRNAs. Plants encode multiple AGO proteins but, in Arabidopsis, only AGO1 is known to have an antiviral role. Methodology/Principal Findings: To uncover the roles of specific AGOs in limiting virus accumulation we inoculated turnip crinkle virus (TCV) to Arabidopsis plants that were mutant for each of the ten AGO genes. The viral symptoms on most of the plants were the same as on wild type plants although the ago2 mutants were markedly hyper-susceptible to this virus. ago2 plants were also hyper-susceptible to cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), confirming that the antiviral role of AGO2 is not specific to a single virus. For both viruses, this phenotype was associated with transient increase in virus accumulation. In wild type plants the AGO2 protein was induced by TCV and CMV infection. Conclusions/Significance: Based on these results we propose that there are multiple layers to RNA-mediated defense and counter-defense in the interactions between plants and their viruses. AGO1 represents a first layer. With some viruses, including TCV and CMV, this layer is overcome by viral suppressors of silencing that can target AGO1 and a second layer involving AGO2 limits virus accumulation. The second layer is activated when the first layer is suppressed because AGO2 is repressed by AGO1 via miR403. The activation of the second layer is therefore a direct consequence of the loss of the firs