2023 marks the halfway point between 2015 (the entry point of the Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs), and 2030 (the end point of the SDGs). As it stands currently, the world is off track to achieving the SDGs and action is necessary to accelerate their implementation.

#FuturePub headed to Berlin for our fourth and final event of the year, during Berlin Science Week and ahead of the inspiring Fallings Walls Science Summit 2023. We had a lovely venue -- the Hotel Palace Berlin -- located in the vibrant heart of the city between the Ku’damm and Zoological Garden, which helped set the tone for a thought-provoking evening.

Well, Falling Walls certainly lived up to expectations! It’s six years since I was originally slated to attend but had to hand presentation duties over to my cofounder due to the birth of my youngest daughter, Annabelle. I was fortunate to be able to attend in person this year, and today started with a wonderful panel session on the “Implications of AI for Science: Friend or Foe?”, chaired by Cat Allman who has recently joined Digital Science (yay!) and featuring a brilliant array of panellists. Here's my notes from the session.

#FuturePub returned to London for a special AI edition, and this one was on a whole new scale...180 people attended -- a new record -- and we had a much wider mix of attendees; government representatives, researchers, research administrators, healthcare professionals, publishers, finance & technology experts, and of course, start-up founders! Here's the lowdown on what went on...

In this guest post, Joyce Kao, co-founder of the Swiss-based Open Innovation in Life Sciences Association, takes us through what motivated her and her cofounders to form the association, how it helps early career researchers find out more about Open Science, and how it's led her to her latest initiative, the Digital Research Academy.

Last month saw the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2024 published to the usual fanfare of marketing (from highly ranked universities) and criticism (from disdainful academics and commentators). Few things get educators riled up and divided like university rankings, the definitive wedge issue of academia. But this year, the rankings have been published in the shadow of a different set of alternative voices from the BRICS countries; one that could change the face of university rankings globally.

Women have been historically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), both in education and in the careers that follow, and one of the things that we strive to do at TL;DR is to amplify amazing contributors from across the breadth of the community we work with. It’s fast approaching six months since the TL;DR site launched at the end of April, so we thought it was a great opportunity to look back and celebrate the amazing women who have been at the forefront of the conversation on TL;DR so far.

Suze, John and Danielle chat about the link between mental health and physical health, the challenges we must overcome to destigmatise mental health, the need for awareness days, and the initiatives that Digital Science have implemented to help both our internal and external communities.

In this blog we present findings from a bibliometric evaluation of scientific publications that include a contribution from the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the Global North and Global South, which have been indexed in Digital Science’s Dimensions database in the past five years (2018 to 2022). The study maps aspects of the landscape in this area exploring differences in pharmaceutical research practices from different perspectives including funding and collaboration, pharmaceutical research and its association with the SDGs, the impact of the cost of medicines developed by pharma and their accessibility in distinct geographic regions. The results show significant gaps between the two global areas, but also some ways where these gaps are now closing.

This article sets out what we mean by fragmentation in the context of research, and how we will explore the topic through a variety of lenses during the campaign.