Scientific papers with shorter titles might get more citations, study suggests

A study in the journal Royal Society Open Science suggests that articles with shorter titles may be cited more often that those with longer ones, based on 140,000 papers published between 2007 and 2013. Read more about this study in ScienceInsider.

Simple tips for writing a proposal

You've probably seen many of these before, but it never hurts to be reminded! CJA Bradshaw's Twenty tips for writing a research proposal.

Think you're good at communicating science to non-scientists?

You could be one of five North American finalists battling for a chance to give a 10-minute "science slam" (think poetry slam, but for science) in Brussels, and then visit a research lab of your choice within the European Research Area. All you have to do to get started is send a 3-minute video or do a 3-minute Skype presentation. More information here.

#IAmaScientistBecause

Scientists take to Twitter to share why they chose their careers.

NSF announces public access policy plans

On March 18, 2015, the National Science Foundation announced its plan to provide greater public access to the results of its funded research, "Today's Data, Tomorrow's Discoveries". This will be officially announced in April 2015 and is slated to go into effect in January 2016.

Much of the plan is a re-commitment to data management and the availability of funds to support publication and presentation of data to the public, but the new component is the publications policy: Within a year of publication, either the version of record or the final accepted manuscript in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, and papers in juried conference proceedings, must be deposited into a publicly-accessible database.

This move is not without precedent among Federal sponsors as the NIH has had such a policy in place for years.

NSF by the numbers

From the National Science Foundation's FY 2016 Budget Request to Congress brochure.

NIH increases salary cap as of 1/11/15

The Executive Level II salary level, at $181,500 for FY2014, is increasing to $183,300 effective 1/11/15. Note that this amount is based on a 12-month salary; for faculty members, if your academic base salary is at or exceeds $137,475, you must use this capped rate when calculating salary requests on NIH grant applications.

See the full notice here: NOT-OD-15-049.