In recent decades, increasing participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has emerged as a globally shared policy objective in higher education. This policy objective is underpinned by a commitment to the economic framework of the knowledge economy and the belief that STEM education, knowledge and innovation are…

Society's progress and living standards depend on the exploitation of raw materials. For centuries, its exploitation had kept pace with humanity's demand. Lithium is a critical element, essential to the development of green technologies, to decarbonization process, and for our daily life. In Portugal, there are high-quality Lithium deposits, with…

In recent years, there has been a rhetorical shift from "deficit" to "dialogue" and "engagement" in UK policy and institutional discourse about science communication. Past efforts to reduce public scientific literacy deficits have been overshadowed by calls for dialogue between scientists, science communicators and…

Bioinformatics--the so-called shotgun marriage between biology and computer science--is an interdiscipline. Despite interdisciplinarity being seen as a virtue, for having the capacity to solve complex problems and foster innovation, it has the potential to place projects and people in anomalous categories. For example, valorised…

Background: Students' motivation for science declines over the early teenage years, and students often find school science difficult and irrelevant to their everyday lives. This paper asks whether creating opportunities to connect school science to authentic science can have positive effects on student motivation. Purpose: To understand how…

The aim of this study was to identify how and why doctoral students do interdisciplinary research. A mixed-methods approach utilising bibliometric analysis of the publications of 195 students identified those who had published interdisciplinary research. This objective measurement of the interdisciplinarity, applying the Rao-Stirling index to Web…

Women are strongly underrepresented at top positions in research, with some research suggesting the postdoctoral career stage is a critical stage for female researchers. Drawing on role congruity theory and social cognitive career theory, we tested the gender-differential impact of work values (extrinsic rewards-oriented work values and work-life…

This paper articulates a citation-based approach to science policy evaluation and employs that approach to investigate the impact of the United States' 2001 policy regarding the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. We evaluate the impact of the policy on the level of U.S. hESC research, the U.S. position at the knowledge…

What predicts adults' entrepreneurial intentions? Utilizing a cross-sectional sample of 496 German scientists, we investigated a path model for the effects of entrepreneurial personality (Big Five profile), control beliefs, and recalled early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence (early inventions, leadership, commercial activities) on two…

The environment for scientific research in public organisations is undergoing radical change, particularly with commercialisation pressures and blurring of the distinction between public and private research. The commercialisation pressures are reflected in government policy frameworks and institutional contexts for scientific work which are…

The interplay between agency and structure explains a scientist's readiness to disclose information about research efforts. In a survey of 628 Israeli researchers, personal strategies pursuing collegial appreciation were influenced by conflicting value guidelines at different time-space frameworks. A balanced impact of communality and universalism…