Open access publishing has been proposed as one possible solution to the serials crisis—the rapidly growing subscription prices in scholarly journal publishing. However, open access publishing can present economic pitfalls as well, such as excessive article processing charges. We discuss the decision that an author faces when choosing to submit to an open access journal.

Microsoft Research hosted the 2016 WSDM Cup Challenge based on the Microsoft Academic Graph. The goal was to provide static rankings for the articles that make up the graph, with the rankings to be evaluated against those of human judges.

The interface between evolutionary biology and the biomedical sciences promises to advance understanding of the origins of genetic and infectious diseases in humans, potentially leading to improved medical diagnostics, therapies, and public health practices. The biomedical sciences also provide unparalleled examples for evolutionary biologists to explore. However, gaps persist between evolution and medicine, for historical reasons and because they are often perceived as having disparate goals.

Structural controllability has been proposed as an analytical framework for making predictions regarding the control of complex networks across myriad disciplines in the physical and life sciences (Liu et al., Nature:473(7346):167–173, 2011). Although the integration of control theory and network analysis is important, we argue that the application of the structural controllability framework to most if not all real-world networks leads to the conclusion that a single control input, applied to the power dominating set, is all that is needed for structural controllability.

Costly signalling theory has become a common explanation for honest communication when interests conflict. In this paper, we provide an alternative explanation for partially honest communication that does not require significant signal costs. We show that this alternative is at least as plausible as traditional costly signalling, and we suggest a number of experiments that might be used to distinguish the two theories.

Gender disparities appear to be decreasing in academia according to a number of metrics, such as grant funding, hiring, acceptance at scholarly journals, and productivity, and it might be tempting to think that gender inequity will soon be a problem of the past. However, a large-scale analysis based on over eight million papers across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities reveals a number of understated and persistent ways in which gender inequities remain.

Costly signalling theory is commonly invoked as an explanation for how honest communication can be stable when interests conflict. However, the signal costs predicted by costly signalling models often turn out to be unrealistically high. These models generally assume that signal cost is determinate. Here, we consider the case where signal cost is instead stochastic.

In many species, nongenetic phenotypic variation helps mitigate risk associated with an uncertain environment. In some cases, developmental cues can be used to match phenotype to environment-a strategy known as predictive plasticity. When environmental conditions are entirely unpredictable, generating random phenotypic diversity may improve the long-term success of a lineage-a strategy known as diversified bet hedging. When partially reliable information is available, a well-adapted developmental strategy may strike a balance between the two strategies.