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Royal Society investigates the decline in their awards to female scientists. Last week, the UK's national science academy, the Royal Society, announced its latest round of University Research Fello...ws (URFs). And they are almost all fellows - in the male sense of the word. Out of 43 new posts, only two of them are women. These positions are for early-career, post-doctoral researchers. But, at the top of the tree, fewer than one in ten science professors are women, and one of the top UK scientific accolades - a Royal Society Fellowship - is held by only one in twenty. To their credit, The Royal Society were "horrified" by this latest round, and their president, Sir Paul Nurse, immediately called for a full investigation into how this happened, saying "this sends out a bad message to young female scientists".Our reporter Tracey Logan asks why Royal Society grants are so important to young scientists, and whether this year's number of female recipients is a sign of gender bias on the awarding committees, or just a statistical blip in a fair process? And Adam Rutherford meets Professor Julia Higgins to hear the latest just after participating in a diversity working group meeting at the Royal Society in London. Getting science out from behind paywalls.You pay for science research via your taxes, but you may not get to see the results unless you pay again to read the journals that publish them. With two major UK science publishers, the Royal Society publishing and Nature, announcing one apiece of their journals are going fully open access -broadly, free for anyone to read online - we're discussing the way science makes it from the lab to the public, via the ever controversial system of publishing and peer review. Adam is joined by Fiona Godlee, Editor of the British Medical Journal; Lesley Anson, Chief Editor of Nature Communications; and Chris Lintott, Professor of Astrophysics and Citizen Science Lead at the University of Oxford.
Royal Society investigates the decline in their awards to female scientists. Last week, the UK's national science academy, the Royal Society, announced its latest round of University Research Fello...ws (URFs). And they are almost all fellows - in the male sense of the word. Out of 43 new posts, only two of them are women. These positions are for early-career, post-doctoral researchers. But, at the top of the tree, fewer than one in ten science professors are women, and one of the top UK scientific accolades - a Royal Society Fellowship - is held by only one in twenty. To their credit, The Royal Society were "horrified" by this latest round, and their president, Sir Paul Nurse, immediately called for a full investigation into how this happened, saying "this sends out a bad message to young female scientists".Our reporter Tracey Logan asks why Royal Society grants are so important to young scientists, and whether this year's number of female recipients is a sign of gender bias on the awarding committees, or just a statistical blip in a fair process? And Adam Rutherford meets Professor Julia Higgins to hear the latest just after participating in a diversity working group meeting at the Royal Society in London. Getting science out from behind paywalls.You pay for science research via your taxes, but you may not get to see the results unless you pay again to read the journals that publish them. With two major UK science publishers, the Royal Society publishing and Nature, announcing one apiece of their journals are going fully open access -broadly, free for anyone to read online - we're discussing the way science makes it from the lab to the public, via the ever controversial system of publishing and peer review. Adam is joined by Fiona Godlee, Editor of the British Medical Journal; Lesley Anson, Chief Editor of Nature Communications; and Chris Lintott, Professor of Astrophysics and Citizen Science Lead at the University of Oxford.
| Series: | Inside science |
|---|---|
| First transmission date: | 2014-10-02 |
| Original broadcast channel: | BBC Radio 4 |
| Published: | 2014 |
| Rights Statement: | Rights owned or controlled by The Open University |
| Restrictions on use: | This material can be used in accordance with The Open University conditions of use. A link to the conditions can be found at the bottom of all OU Digital Archive web pages. |
| Duration: | 00:30:00 |
| Note: | Radio 4 version |
| + Show more... | |
| Producer: | Fiona, Roberts |
| Presenter: | Adam Rutherford |
| Contributors: | Adam Rutherford; Tracey Logan; Julia Higgins; Fiona Godlee; Lesley Anson; Chris Lintott |
| Publisher: | BBC Open University |
| Production number: | AUDA858B |
| Available to public: | no |
