News from Rippling Ideas

This month we launched our website, this newsletter, had some invigorating conversations and have begun formulating plans to attract funding. It’s been busy, to say the least!

Our goal is to foster a movement where every individual feels heard, empowered, and inspired to contribute. We’re building something lasting, a tribe that lifts each other up and strives to make a meaningful difference, together. To this end, we’re about actions over words.

Preprints & Open Science

Preprints in Motion

Latest activity from Rippling Ideas

• In defence of preprints

• How to get more involved with preprints and open science

Selected News Roundup

• Preregistration for student assignments

• Wellcome announces suite open research measures

• Preprints in comparative physiology a guide for the preprint curious  

  • Not sure I agree with “be extra critical“ in the end graphic but otherwise a nice overview

• The comet model

• Recommendations by the CoARA Working Group on Recognizing and Rewarding Peer Review

  • This was very interesting to be a part of and these are a good set of recommendations. However, when we’re changing incentives we need a much broader approach that encompasses a range of changes

• The future of scientific publishing must be bolder – and has to include the Global South

  • The lack of this inclusion is doing more damage than I think many in the OS space realise

Academic Culture

The Metascience Podcast

Currently in the pre-production phase, we’re developing a brand new podcast focussed exclusively on communicating metascience to wider audiences. This will be a seasonal show, featuring some of the biggest names in metascience. If we can secure the funding there will be a full documentary series on the COVID pandemic as a tangible example of the incredible impact metascience can have. If you’d like to be involved, or provide financial support, then get in touch!

Latest activity from Rippling Ideas

• Pressure, precarity and paucity; the existence of the postdoc

Selected News Roundup

• English universities are still enabling sexual misconduct

• Banning NDAs in universities is only the first step toward a better research culture

  • Transparency in dealing with abuse is vital. This is a good move in the right direction. NDAs are an extension of institutional abuse, silencing victims

• Narrative CVs are rewriting academic stories and identities

  • Personally I think narrative CVs are a positive step forwards but we do need research, scaffolding and training in place to ensure that these are implemented in an equitable manner

Trust in Research

Latest activity from Rippling Ideas

• AI and its role in peer review

Selected News Roundup

• Digital science relaunches scientometric researcher access to data program

• This pair of preprints investigated reproducibility across the Drosophila immunology field and found that most research was in fact reproducible.

  • There’s been a fair amount of discussion across social media about this

• Scientific publishing needs urgent reform to retain trust in research process

  • “Incentives for researchers can and should prioritise quality over quantity, and meaning over metrics. And publishers’ extortionate fees (fuelling profits of more than 30%) can and should be refused by those who pay them”. It’s particularly good to see another reference to SciELO as a leading example.

• Quantifying new threats to health and biomedical literature integrity from rapidly scaled publications and problematic research [Preprint]

• Science retracts arsenic life paper from 2010 for being wrong, but no evidence of fraud or misconduct

• An overview of the history of peer review (part 1 and 2)

  • This is a really great basic walkthrough of the history of peer review. Not all encompassing but a great starting point.

• Journals Operating Predatory Practices Are Systematically Eroding the Science Ethos: A Gate and Code Strategy to Minimise Their Operating Space and Restore Research Best Practice [Paper]

• Blog from Tony Alves summarising his takeaways from publishing conferences so far in 2025

• Have we already hit the peer review breaking point?

  • The current system hasn’t been sustainable for a while and the rise of AI is only making things worse. But where are the solutions? Reviewing every single output is not feasible, which is why we advocate for a broader range of trust indicators - article coming soon.

• Why are indexers unable to see that peer review can be more than a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

  • Written by eLife, who obviously want to see a move away from the binary decisions and impact factors. However, that shouldn’t detract from their argument. The question near the end “who controls the scientific literature? The answer, it seems to us, is not the scientific community“ is particularly apt. However, I’d argue that the scientific community do, in many ways, control the literature. It is scientists who perpetuate the issues and keep us from change. A major issue with many movements is this lack of support and effort in shifting the culture amongst researchers. Whilst we need experiments and infrastructure, these must occur alongside community action. Indeed, this latter aspect is the real challenging part.

Get involved

Join our tribe!

We’re actively seeking funders and clients, currently developing some proposals and projects. We’re also looking for collaborators and volunteers - we want you as part of our tribe. So please share this newsletter with those you know and recommend us as widely as possible.

What’s coming up?

We have so much content coming up, including a brand new podcast and the launch of our YouTube channel. Right now, we’re developing our virtual training course options and discussing some extremely exciting new projects. If you’d like to collaborate or work with us please do get in touch.

See you again next month!