Academic peer review is seriously undertheorized because peer review studies focus on discovering and confirming phenomena, such as biases, and are much less concerned with explaining, predicting, or controlling phenomena on a theoretical basis. 

The goal of open access is to allow more people to read and use research outputs. An observed association between highly cited research outputs and open access has been claimed as evidence of increased usage of the research, but this remains controversial.

Gender differences in research funding exist but bias evidence is elusive and findings are contradictory. Contrary to some previous research, a new study found no evidence that male or female PIs received significantly different scores.

Editormetrics analyses the role of editors of academic journals and their impact on the scientific publication system - but open, structured and machine-readable data remains rare.

Editormetrics analyse the role of editors of academic journals and their impact on the scientific publication system. However, such analyses would best rely on open, structured and machine-readable data on editors and editorial boards, whose availability still remains rare.

For the first time, the scientific community acted collectively and across disciplinary or national boundaries as a political actor for the sake of a better science policy for Europe.