News & Comment

Licypriya Kangujam is a 10-year-old climate change activist from India. She also founded the Child Movement to raise the voices of the children of the world in the fight against climate change. In conversation with Nature Human Behaviour, she talks in her own words about her motivation to become an activist and her wishes for the future.

Applying behavioural science can support system-level change for climate protection. Behavioural scientists should provide reliable large-scale data that help in understanding public perceptions and behaviours. Governments should secure infrastructure for data collection and the implementation of evidence.

When sharing research data for verification and reuse, behavioural researchers should protect participants’ privacy, particularly when studying sensitive topics. Because personally identifying data remain present in many open psychology datasets, we urge researchers to mend privacy via checks of re-identification risk before sharing data. We offer guidance for sharing responsibly.

In a recent editorial, we announced the adoption of new ethics guidance for research about human groups. In this follow-up editorial, we provide background and examples to clarify why we developed this guidance and how we will be using it.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), part of the Biden administration, recently announced a major new policy framework which will require all US federally funded research to be made freely available immediately upon publication, at the latest by January 2026. Dr Alondra Nelson, head of the OSTP, talks to Nature Human Behaviour about the background to and implications of this widely discussed decision.

The low representation of academics with disabilities is a longstanding problem on which progress has been slow. Drawing on my research on disability-related barriers and my experiences of disability, I make six practical suggestions for how academic staff and people with disabilities can help make academia more disability inclusive.

Drawing on her personal experience as an autistic scientist–practitioner, Eloise Stark explores how we can empower neurodivergent populations in academia.

Mental health, neuroscience and neuroethics researchers must engage local African communities to enable discourses on cultural understandings of mental illness. To ensure that these engagements are both ethical and innovative, they must be facilitated with cultural competence and humility, because serious consideration of different contextual and local factors is critical.

Marginalized scholars are often excluded from key scientific conferences owing to visa and travel restrictions, which increases inequity among academics.

New ethics guidance addresses potential harms for human population groups who do not participate in research but may be harmed by its publication.

Data has tremendous potential to build resilience in government. To realize this potential, we need a new, human-centred, distinctly public sector approach to data science and AI, in which these technologies do not just automate or turbocharge what humans can already do well, but rather do things that people cannot.

When academics support refugee scholars, everyone benefits. Scholars who are refugees face complex challenges, including bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic and academic barriers. Ahmad Al Ajlan discusses key steps that academic communities can take to support and integrate their refugee colleagues.

For years, researchers have interrogated scientists’ own research practices. A computational research stream, often termed ‘science of science’, studies the signatures these practices leave in big data. As the field matures, it is looking for ways to use its data-driven insights to make a tangible mark in science policy.

Gender inequality in the workplace is a global problem. Segenet Kelemu describes how she has used her role as CEO of a research centre to create a more equitable workplace for all.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) already exist in several countries, with many more on the way. But although CBDCs can promote financial inclusivity by offering convenience and low transaction costs, their adoption must not lead to the loss of privacy and erosion of civil liberties.

Failure to consider the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion in biomedical and human behaviour research harms patients, trainees and scientists. On the basis of experience and evidence, we make actionable, specific recommendations on how equity, diversity and inclusion can be considered at each step of a research project.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has wreaked death and destruction in the country, with impacts that reverberate worldwide. This Focus highlights the voices of Ukrainian scientists — at home and abroad — and provides insights into the many effects of the war.