Illustration: Bodara

14

Preprints reach their target readers this many months earlier than scientific articles that are not made available in this form. Preprints are also cited five times more often, as a study of the last 30 years of the preprint server arXiv has now shown. This study, too, is naturally available as a preprint on arXiv.

B. Xie et al.: Is preprint the future of science? A thirty year journey of online preprint services. Arxiv (2021)

85

The number of poor countries that will not have a mass immunisation programme against SARS-CoV-2 until 2023. They will not manage to vaccinate the majority (60 to 70 percent) of their adult population before that date. This is the prognosis of the Economist Intelligence Unit, based on delivery contracts and other indicators.

More than 85 poor countries will not have widespread access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023. The Economist Intelligence Unit (2021)

84%

This is the proportion of targets missed by governments aiming to increase their research and development spending in relation to GDP. They undercut their targets by at least 40 percent; some by even 100 percent. These statistics are cited in an article in the specialist journal ‘Science and Public Policy’. Its author believes that his findings call into question the whole point of setting spending goals in the first place.

A. Carvalho: Goals-based R&D policy: high popularity, low effectiveness – What is the likelihood of the UK reaching its target of spending 2.4% of GDP on R&D by 2027? Higher Education Policy Institute (2021)

180

The number of scientific articles that have been published by an author called Camille Noûs since 2020, according to the specialist journal Science. This fictitious author was created by RogueESR, a French research advocacy group, as a statement against individualism in science.

C. O’Grady: Who is Camille Noûs, the fictitious French researcher with nearly 200 papers? Science (2021)

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