As a new feature on the Impact blog, Managing Editor Sierra Williams presents a round up of popular stories from around the web on higher education, academic impact, and trends in scholarly communication.

The Science article Who’s Afraid of Peer Review? continued to be a hotly popular topic across the scholarly community this week. Science contributing correspondent John Bohannon submitted a clearly flawed paper to a number of publishers (many of which already labeled as “predatory” under Jeffrey Beal’s list) with article processing charges to see how many of them would publish the erroneous findings. Many open access advocates continue to take issue with how the reporting of the so-called sting operation implied the failure of peer review was correlated with ‘gold’ open access publishing as a whole.

Peter Suber writes “[Bohannan] makes it easy for readers to draw unwarranted conclusions about OA journals as a class” and that this will negatively effect the perception of OA journals as a whole. Curt Rice argues that “the Science article shows exactly the opposite of what they intend, namely that we need an even wider use of open access than what we currently have.” Science hosted a web-chat with the author to explore these issues further. Ernesto Priego’s piece here on the Impact blog calls for greater attention to the general issues surrounding peer review, especially in the humanities and writes “One hopes a positive aspect of [the Science article] is that it may help flush out the bad journals that do not follow strict peer review.”

On Thursday 10 October, the Wellcome Trust announced they will be devoting 1 % of their total research spend – as much as £4.5 million annually – on public engagement activities. In the Guardian’s Notes and Theories science blog Clare Matterson, Director of Medical Humanities and Engagement,  provides more on why the science funding body is looking to send a message to the research community that public engagement activities are an integral part of the research process.

Times Higher Education highlighted the academic project at Queen’s University Belfast, Compromise after Conflict, which explores the role of compromise in post-conflict societies. The Compromise after Conflict blog hosts discussion on the future of Northern Ireland. The online space aims to shape the debate in the period leading up to the inter-party talks on the peace process chaired by former US envoy Richard Haass. This week featured a popular piece written by Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness on consensus and political will in Northern Ireland. Principal investigator of the project, Professor John Brewer has also written extensively on the public value of social science.

On the Harvard Business Review blog, Associate Professor Gianpiero Petriglieri outlines why he has become a conscientious objector in the battle for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). He writes,

MOOCs can be used as a cost-cutting measure in already depleted academic institutions and become another weapon against battered faculty bodies. They may worsen rather than eliminate inequality by providing credentials empty of the meaning and connections that make credentials valuable…

More than a revolution…it is far more similar to colonialism, that is, disruption brought about by “the policy and practice of a power in extending control over weaker people or areas” and simultaneously increasing its cultural reach and control of resources.

Gianpiero Petriglieri, “Let them eat MOOCs”.

And finally, for a fun take on social media, don’t miss Buzzfeed’s The 29 Stages of a Twitterstorm by Tom Phillips which offers a satire on how Twitter debates and campaigns often work themselves into a whirlwind storm of confusion. It also brings to mind David Beer’s more rigorous piece on the politics of circulation.