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AbstractThe philosophical literature on scientific explanation in neuroscience has been dominated by the idea of mechanisms. The mechanist philosophers often claim that neuroscience is in the business of finding mechanisms. This view has been challenged in numerous ways by showing that there are other successful and widespread explanatory strategies in neuroscience. However, the empirical evidence for all these claims was hitherto lacking. Empirical evidence about the pervasiveness and uses of various explanatory strategies in neuroscience is particularly needed because examples and case studies that are used to illustrate philosophical claims so far tend to be hand-picked. The risk of confirmation bias is therefore considerable: when looking for white swans, all one finds is that swans are white. The more systematic quantitative and qualitative bibliometric study of a large body of relevant literature that we present in this paper can put such claims into perspective. Using text mining tools, we identify the typical linguistic patterns used in the alleged mechanistic, dynamical, and topological explanations in the literature, their preponderance and how they change over time. Our findings show abundant use of mechanistic language, but also the presence of a significant neuroscience literature using topological and dynamical explanatory language, which grows over time and increasingly differentiates from each other and from mechanistic explanations.

Universities are occupied by management, a regime obsessed with 'accountability' through measurement, increased competition, efficiency, 'excellence', and misconceived economic salvation.Given the occupation's absurd side-effects, we ask ourselves how management has succeeded in taking over our precious universities. An alternative vision for the academic future consists of a public university, more akin to a socially engaged knowledge commons than to a corporation. We suggest some provocative measures to bring about such a university. However, as management seems impervious to cogent arguments, such changes can only happen if academics take action. Hence, we explore several strategies for a renewed university politics. ; Las universidades están siendo ocupadas por la perspectiva empresarial, en un régimen obsesionado con el "reconocimiento" mediante la cuantificación, la competitividad creciente, la eficiencia, la "excelencia" y una errónea idea de salvación económica. Dados los indeseables efectos colaterales de esta ocupación, nos preguntamos cómo ha conseguido esta perspectiva empresarial invadir nuestras preciadas universidades. Ofrecemos una visión alternativa del futuro académico a partir de la idea de universidad pública, más próxima a ser un bien común comprometido con el conocimiento de la sociedad que a una corporación. Sugerimos algunas medidas eficaces para generar ese tipo de universidad. Pero dado que la empresa parece inasequible a los argumentos citados, estos cambios sólo pueden darse si los académicos pasan a la acción. Por ello, exploramos algunas estrategias para renovar la vida política de las universidades.

Universities are occupied by management, a regime obsessed with 'accountability' through measurement, increased competition, efficiency, 'excellence', and misconceived economic salvation. Given the occupation's absurd side-effects, we ask ourselves how management has succeeded in taking over our precious universities. An alternative vision for the academic future consists of a public university, more akin to a socially engaged knowledge commons than to a corporation. We suggest some provocative measures to bring about such a university. However, as management seems impervious to cogent arguments, such changes can only happen if academics take action. Hence, we explore several strategies for a renewed university politics.

In our 1998 volume 'The Politics of Chemical Risk: Scenarios for a regulatory Future' we envisioned four ideal typical scenarios for the future of European chemicals policies. The scenarios focused on the nature of expertise (seen either as a universal or a localised phenomenon) and the organisation of the boundary between science and policy (as either diverging or converging). The four scenarios were titled International Experts, European Risk Consultation, European Coordination of Assessment, and Europe as a Translator. For all four scenarios, we hypothesized internal dynamics and articulated dilemmas related to the development of the sciences contributing to chemical assessment, the relation between the EU and member states and the role of the public. In this contribution, we look back on our four scenarios fifteen years later, to see which ones have materialized and to explore whether the dilemmas we saw have indeed surfaced. We conclude that the International Experts scenario by and large has materialized and explore some of the underlying tensions and dynamics in this development.

An important goal of environmental research is to inform policy and decision making. However, environmental experts working at the interface between science, policy and society face complex challenges, including how to identify sources of disagreement over environmental issues, communicate uncertainties and limitations of knowledge, and tackle controversial topics such as genetic modification and the use of biofuels. This book discusses the problems environmental experts encounter in the interaction between knowledge, society, and policy on both a practical and conceptual level. Key findings from social science research are illustrated with a range of case studies, from fisheries to fracking. The book offers guidance on how to tackle these challenges, equipping readers with tools to better understand the diversity of environmental knowledge and its role in complex environmental issues. Written by leading natural and social scientists, this text provides an essential resource for students, scientists and professionals working at the science-policy interface.

This research article examines overpromising in scientific discourse that may raise unrealistic expectations in order to gain trust and funding. Drawing on signaling theory, philosophy of promising, and science communication research, a conceptualization of overpromising is presented. This conceptualization facilitates the evaluation of promises in science and technology and highlights the importance of the knowledge context. Further research is needed to explore the broader dimensions and motivations for overpromising.

Abstract
Background
Triggered by a series of controversies and diversifying expectations of editorial practices, several innovative peer review procedures and supporting technologies have been proposed. However, adoption of these new initiatives seems slow. This raises questions about the wider conditions for peer review change and about the considerations that inform decisions to innovate. We set out to study the structure of commercial publishers' editorial process, to reveal how the benefits of peer review innovations are understood, and to describe the considerations that inform the implementation of innovations.

Methods
We carried out field visits to the editorial office of two large academic publishers housing the editorial staff of several hundreds of journals, to study their editorial process, and interviewed editors not affiliated with large publishers. Field notes were transcribed and analysed using coding software.

Results
At the publishers we analysed, the decision-making structure seems to show both clear patterns of hierarchy and layering of the different editorial practices. While information about new initiatives circulates widely, their implementation depends on assessment of stakeholder's wishes, impact on reputation, efficiency and implementation costs, with final decisions left to managers at the top of the internal hierarchy. Main tensions arise between commercial and substantial arguments. The editorial process is closely connected to commercial practices of creating business value, and the very specific terms in which business value is understood, such as reputation considerations and the urge to increase efficiency. Journals independent of large commercial publishers tend to have less hierarchically structured processes, report more flexibility to implement innovations, and to a greater extent decouple commercial and editorial perspectives.

Conclusion
Our study demonstrates that peer review innovations are partly to be understood in light of commercial considerations related to reputation, efficiency and implementations costs. These arguments extend beyond previously studied topics in publishing economics, including publishers' choice for business or publication models and reach into the very heart of the editorial and peer review process.

Abstract
Lists of endorsed and discouraged scholarly publications recently emerged as an important transition in Chinese journal evaluation. Among the targeted users of these lists are researchers, who are to avoid publishing in discouraged journals and focus efforts on endorsed journals. However, it is unclear how these lists affect researchers' valuations when choosing publication outlets. This explorative study investigates the reception of such journal lists in Chinese scientists' research practices. Our findings suggest that three logics interact in respondents' journal valuations: institutional evaluation regimes, differing epistemic cultures, and the influence of the commercial publishing industry. The reactive effects of both endorsed and discouraged journal lists appear to differ with the ranking status of universities, the seniority of scholars, and research fields. Apart from the new institutional evaluation regimes in this interplay, there appear to be more predominant factors than journal lists that inform publishing choices: quantitative indicators, publishers' branding, epistemic cultures, and editorial procedures and publishing models.

While attention to research integrity has been growing over the past decades, the processes of signalling and denouncing cases of research misconduct remain largely unstudied. In this article, we develop a theoretically and empirically informed under-standing of the causes and consequences of reporting research misconduct in terms of power relations. We study the reporting process based on a multinational survey at eight European universities (N = 1126). Using qualitative data that witnesses of research misconduct or of questionable research practices provided, we aim to exam-ine actors' rationales for reporting and not reporting misconduct, how they report it and the perceived consequences of reporting. In particular we study how research seniority, the temporality of work appointments, and gender could impact the likeli-hood of cases being reported and of reporting leading to constructive organisational changes. Our findings suggest that these aspects of power relations play a role in the reporting of research misconduct. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of research misconduct in an academic context. Specifically, we elucidate the pro-cesses that affect researchers' ability and willingness to report research misconduct, and the likelihood of universities taking action. Based on our findings, we outline specific propositions that future research can test as well as provide recommenda-tions for policy improvement. ; This work was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement number 665926 (PRINTEGER). ; publishedVersion

Are there connections between the structures of political systems and types of scientific advice to policymak - ing? This volume unites case studies from the Netherlands, France, the European Union and the USA that provide an overview of different institutional arrangements, focusing on issues such as the independence and balance of advice. Common to all is the question which forms of advice can increase the rationality of policymaking without loss of political legitimacy.

From the Contents:

Mark B. Brown: Federal Advisory Committees in the United States
Paul den Hoed and Anne-Greet Keizer: The Scientific Council for Government Policy
David Demortain: Designing Regulatory Tools for Pharmaceutical and Food Safety in the European Union
Laurent Geffroy, Odile Piriou and Bénédicte Zimmermann: Scientific Expertise in Policy-Making: The Case of Work Policy in France
Willem Halffman: The Dutch ''Planning Bureaus''