HEIDI's NEWSLETTER

Replication Research (R2): A new interdisciplinary journal for replication research. As researchers we stand on the shoulders of other researchers. That means, we build on the evidence and work others have generated. It is vital for researchers to be able to trust that what they build upon. We have seen many studies that show that this is not a given. Whether in medicine, in education sciences, or economics - pretty much all the fields struggle with reproducibility and replication to a degree...

How can we establish financially sustainable organisations and initiatives that are grounded in the values of Open Science? Since founding the Digital Research Academy, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can build organizations that are rooted in the values Open Science. An important aspect of this is ensuring their financial sustainability. As always this post is citable and FAIR thanks to Rogue Scholar My posts on Rogue Scholar We live in a capitalist world and as much as it annoys me...

Researchers with >30 published research articles per year are seen as academic heros. But are they? I call on you to stop celebrating researchers with many publications. With the beginning of a new year we like looking back at our achievements in the previous year. I do that as well and I am more than proud to report that we were able to teach more than 1000 people last year through the Digital Research Academy. At the same time, I am always wary of these simple key performance indicators...

Everyone talks about the importance of data sharing – but do scientists really put it into practice? Our study on authors' willingness to share data gave some alarming results, particularly in the medical field. Guest post by Maxi Schulz I met Maxi at a statistics conference and watched her talk. It was so inspiring that I asked her if she wanted to write a guest post for my newsletter. Here is the result. Deep learning (DL) models in medicine promise to support doctors in making better...

Does using machine learning solve our problem of p-hacking and HARKing or do we have the same problems as with statistical tests and models? As a statistician I have been trained early on in understanding statistical tests and with that the meaning, history and problems of the p-value. Every researcher who works with data has seen a p-value and most have even printed one in their own papers. Most researchers, including statisticians, struggle understanding the p-value. Not only do we struggle...

Can creativity and science go together? I am reading the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin and I can’t help but wonder: How does creativtiy relate to and fit into my work? Can people who care about evidence and scientific rigor make creativity part of their work? This post is citable: Seibold, H. (2025, May 22). Creativity in our work. https://doi.org/10.59350/xpb9d-t2t45 TL;DR In this post I share four take-aways I had about creativity in relation to our work 1: Innovation requires...

Fraud and Incompetence: The scales that lead to questionable research practices. HOW TO CITE Seibold, H. (2025, April 4). Fraud or Incompetence. Heidi Seibold. https://doi.org/10.59350/rphzw-axx30 See all citable posts on Rogue Scholar Last week I listened to a talk by Leo Held on the topic “Are questionable research practices ever OK?” at the German statisticians conference DAGStat. As part of the talk he described fraud as something we cannot ignore any longer as it happens too much, but...

What are other people doing and what can you do to secure funding for software projects? This post is citable: Heidi Seibold (2025) "How to Get Funding By Caring About Research Software (II)", https://doi.org/10.59350/akg14-18f97 In a previous post I wrote about: Recent developments on the status of software in research and funding. Today’s post is all about: Case studies and practical strategies for securing funding. Did I miss anything in this post? Let me know and I will happily add it!...

More and more funders are recognizing the vital role of software in research. How can you leverage your software skills to aquire funding? In this post I want to share: Recent developments on the status of software in research and funding. Stay tuned also for an upcoming post on: Case studies and practical strategies for securing funding. Did I miss anything in this post? I will use this information in future courses and any other info would be appreciated. Send missing info This will be one...