Monica Hoyos Flight is a freelance science communications consultant providing writing and editing services to researchers, research organisations and publishing companies. She has a PhD in neuroscience and extensive experience as an editor for Springer Nature journals and science communications manager at the University of Edinburgh. She is particularly interested in writing about the translation of research and emerging technologies into societally useful products and services.
Contributor: Monica Hoyos Flight
Interview with Prof. Francesco Imperi on new strategies to fight antimicrobial resistance
When bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to medicines: this is set to become one of the major health threats of the 21st century. Francesco Imperi, Associate Professor of Microbiology at Roma Tre University (Italy), is working on novel strategies to tackle this antimicrobial resistance (AMR), more specifically in multidrug resistant bacterial human ...
Technological vulnerabilities that threaten the European Union’s ‘Open Strategic Autonomy’ and the EU’s response
According to expert Dr Alice Pannier, 'Strategic Autonomy' is also referred to as 'sovereignty', but it's 'open' in order to not undermine the openness of the EU economy: "If the EU has technological sovereignty, it will be able to act autonomously on the international stage rather than have to rely on foreign suppliers and potentially ...
‘Predatory’ publications put pressure on the integrity of scientific literature
Over two million scientific papers are published every year worldwide. Faced with the pressure to 'publish or perish', researchers can be tempted by journals that charge low publication fees and publish articles of dubious quality. The scale of these 'predatory publication practices' and 'predatory publication journals' is global and can have far-reaching consequences, as such ...
An expert’s opinion: Interview with David Moher on predatory journals
Professor David Moher, Director of the Canadian Centre for Journalology, a centre that conducts research on publication practices, speaks about the, in his words, "perverse incentives in academia to publish", and about the impact of less trustworthy sources of scientific information on policy. How would you define a ‘predatory journal'? David Moher: In 2019, over ...
An expert’s opinion: Interview with Ivan Oransky on the perils of scientific publishing
Medical writer Ivan Oransky, co-founder of the blog Retraction Watch and Editor-in-Chief of the autism research news website Spectrum, speaks about the difficulties of assessing the quality of peer review and of retraction, the process of publication withdrawal of articles that display flawed or erroneous data. He offers advice for non-specialist readers of scientific literature. ...
Lara Clements interview: How has Covid-19 affected people’s trust in science?
Exclusive interview: Lara Clements on the latest Wellcome Global Monitor report, the world's largest study into how people think and feel about science.
An expert’s opinion: Interview with Elizabeth Lee on short-term forecasting and longer-term scenario modelling in the pandemic
European experts are working closely together with their American counterparts on calculating future scenarios for Covid-19. One of them is Elizabeth Lee, an epidemiologist specialised in infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has been participating in the US ‘COVID-19 Forecast Hub’ as well as the US-focused ‘COVID-19 Scenario Modeling ...
Covid-19: Keeping a close eye on the models
As many European countries start to relax Covid-19 restrictions and reopen to foreign visitors whilst still rolling out vaccination programmes, it is more important than ever to stay one step ahead of the virus by accurately monitoring cases and predicting outbreaks.
