Celebrate our 5th anniversary together

24.04.2024 • 🎂 SPECIAL ISSUE 🎂


Let’s celebrate

Avec la politiste Marion Paoletti et la sociologue Sophie Pochic, Fanny Gallot a organisé une controverse dans la revue Travail, genre et sociétés autour de l’excellence scientifique et des femmes. Résultat : sur cinq contributions, seule celle du politiste Maxime Forest (que nous avions interviewé pour notre analyse sur la discrimination positive) « envisage une compatibilité possible entre impératifs d’excellence et d’égalité des chances », observent les trois organisatrices. Les quatre autres textes « considèrent, à l’inverse, les tensions entre ces deux impératifs comme insurmontables et invitent plutôt au dépassement (voire à l’abandon) de la notion d’excellence au nom de l’égalité ».

Party hats and blowers. Raise your glasses, TheMetaNews celebrates its fifth anniversary! For five years — and one day to be precise — we have been delivering into your mailbox the latest novelties in academia, from publishing practices to research policies.

Previously in TheMetaNews. It all started in 2019 when Laurent, the journalist, met Eddie, the businessman. Together, they launched the project and sent the first issue of TheMetaNews to 627 readers. The journal has come a long way since. 

So far so good. Only a few months later, Lucile joined the team as a journalist and Noémie came along in 2022. In five years, we produced more than 400 issues and gathered more than 30 000 readers from all disciplines, who spend an average of 8’30 min per issue. Thank you for this wonderful feedback!

Special gift. Because science has no boundaries and because in France about four PhD students out of ten come from abroad, publishing in English has always been in our minds. So to celebrate our five years, here is a special issue in Shakespeare’s mother tongue with three of our papers translated!

Have a nice day, keep searching!

— Lucile & Noémie

Sommaire

→  INTERVIEW « You will not be the new Einstein »
 ANALYSIS Argentina’s research on the brink
→  ANALYSIS ChatGPT, your super secretary
ONE LAST THING We all started somewhere, aren’t we ?

TEMPS DE LECTURE : 5 ou 8 MINUTES

℗ Contenu réservé à nos abonné·es

INTERVIEW

« You will not be the new Einstein »


Joeri Tijdink, a researcher on integrity at the University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, and a psychiatrist, has studied mental health in academia, and especially among early career researchers.

Why write a self-help book for young researchers ?

« The world of research is a beautiful place, but full of obstacles, especially for researchers at the beginning of their careers such as doctoral students, young doctors, postdoctoral fellows… How to navigate through all this? (…) »

ANALYSIS

Argentina’s research on the brink


A few months after the election of Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, the country’s universities and research institutes are in crisis.

 Pampa Trump. “Science is not expensive, ignorance is”, read the signs held up by researchers in front of the Polo Cientifico [ed.: the ministry of research] on February 14, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over the past few months, protests have become a common sight in the city.

ANALYSIS

ChatGPT, your super secretary


The use of AI is spreading like wildfire in research, including for menial tasks that researchers sometimes willingly entrust to it.

 Hello Dave. You are all unanimous : your administrative burden has increased and even exploded. Thus blasting your diaries. To remedy this, some of you are using ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence to speed up the writing, not of scientific publications, but of all these documents in the various and varied formats requested on an almost daily basis.»

WE ALL STARTED SOMEWHERE 

One last thing


Now that you have enjoyed our latest top notch issue, please have a look at our very first newsletter. Leave us a comment by responding to this email !