By Michael Donaldson, Jenny Ryan and Tanya Samman. Canada’s Tri-Agency of federal research funders is set to implement a harmonized, mandatory open access (OA) policy requiring that all federally funded, peer-reviewed journal publications be made freely accessible within 12 months of publication. Research funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is subject to the policy, which takes effect on May 1st. More...

By Liz Koblyk. If you’re reading this blog, chances are excellent that you have invested years, blood, sweat and tears in graduate level education. And you may have concerns about “wasting” your education on unrelated jobs or those that seem beneath your level of training. On the other hand, if you’re also about to enter the job market as a new grad or in a new field, you’re quite likely looking at entry-level positions. More...

By Melonie Fullick. Recently, while looking for sources to include in a talk on “online presence” for graduate students, I read this blog post by Lee Skallerup Bessette wherein she discusses “academic conversations.” Lee describes what it’s like to search her own name in Google and come up with dozens of references and direct responses to her academic work, many of which she hadn’t seen before. She captures the odd sense of being present yet somehow absent from a discussion – “I’ve never been so thrilled to see myself being talked about like I wasn’t there.” More...

By Léo Charbonneau. Canadian employers have been warning for years that they are having trouble finding applicants with the skills required to fill certain jobs. Among the skills they say are in most severe shortage are those related to the STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. More...

By Léo Charbonneau. Ken Coates brought his reduce-enrolment agenda on the road, arguing in favour of the resolution that “too many Canadian kids are going to university” in a debate held in Ottawa April 29 by the MacDonald-Laurier Institute. Arguing against the resolution was Lloyd Axworthy, former president of the University of Winnipeg and a former federal cabinet minister. More...