Going to an academic conference is an exciting opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and exchange stimulating ideas. However, to make the most of a conference requires a lot of hard work before, during, and after the meeting itself. Marta Teperek provides a checklist of things to do at each of these stages.

Christina Boswell and Katherine Smith set out four different approaches to theorizing the relationship between knowledge and policy and consider what each of these suggests about approaches to incentivising and measuring research impact.

What’s the secret to a productive spell of writing? Chris Smith shares insights gleaned from interviews with a diverse group of academics, from which a number of common academic writing habits stood out. These range from the simple acts of scheduling and setting self-imposed deadlines, to the use of “free-writing” techniques which help authors write their way out of blocks.

Anna-Sigrid Keck and colleagues designed a structured doctoral program focused on transdisciplinary research and compared students’ publication patterns to students in traditional programmes. While rates of productivity were broadly similar, citation rates were found to be higher for transdisciplinary students, as were indicators of collaboration such as co-authorship.

How might universities develop a research agenda that is responsive to the needs of policymakers? After running a series of workshops on public policy innovation with policy practitioners from various levels of government in Australia, Tamas Wells and Emma Blomkamp identified three ways in which policy research might become more “user-centred”.

Data is being created faster than ever before. However, as Kate Metzler explains, limited access to this big data is creating a digital divide between large companies and the broader scholarly community. To compound this problem, there is also a big data analysis skills gap that further hinders the progress of social science.

The topic of refugees in america seems to be getting swept under the rug, however the issue is still very prominent and needs solving before getting out of hand. By using an algorithm based on demographics and census data new research tries to put an ease to these questions and offers real and modern day solutions to this debate. The one caveat is it requires those in positions of privilege to help.