Nautilus

The world's population is ageing rapidly. The effects of this change in demographics are predicted to touch on many facets of human life. Not least, because the health of older people deteriorates with time. Nature's latest in its "collections" series draws together recent articles on the process of ageing, and the connections that exist between growing older and disease.
You can read the collection online, where it is free-access, or order a free print copy.
A collection of articles on the same subject, the Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology web focus on ageing, can be seen here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 28, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blogs invade The Scientist: vote for your favorite life science blog! ? Pimm - Partial immortalization

Attila Csordas of the blog Partial Immortalization draws attention (see above) to an article in The Scientist asking readers to nominate their favourite life-science blogs. To start the process, The Scientist asked seven science bloggers -- five who blog on the SEED platform and two independent science bloggers (Ed Silverman and Attila Csordas) to make some recommendations. These, as well as the many nominations received at The Scientist, will provide the curious scientific reader with plenty of online food for thought.
However, as Euan Adie points out at Nascent, The Scientist's article is incorrect to state that there is no guide to which science blogs to read (or indeed, where they are). As mentioned the other day on Nautilus in relation to books, Postgenomic is a free-access website which collects posts from hundreds of blogs and does interesting things with those data. Whether you're a reader, a blogger or a publisher, there are interesting and useful features on Postgenomic that I recommend trying out. Here, for example, are science blogs organised by subject and ordered by popularity. Another science-blog tracker and analyser is Chemical Blogspace.
Last year, Nature measured the "top" five science blogs indexed in Technorati (a search engine which measures the number of links to and from all blogs, not just scientific ones) and asked the bloggers concerned the reasons for their success. You can read their answers here. You can also read Nature's review of blogger Bora Zivkovic's collection of science writing on blogs,The Open Laboratory, here (Nature 447, 779; 2007).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 27, 2007
Categories: Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication in the Australian Journal of Science of Frank Macfarlane Burnet's clonal selection theory, an intellectual framework that revolutionized the field of immunology.
Nature Immunology celebrates the event in an editorial (Nature Immunology 8, 1009; 2007) and a historical Commentary by Philip Hodgkin, William Heath and Alan Baxter (Nature Immunology 8, 1019-1026; 2007). Accompanying this Commentary is the two-page manuscript from the Australian Journal of Science in which Frank Macfarlane Burnet presented clearly for the first time the ideas that underlie the modern science of immunology (reprinted with permission from the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science).
Nature Reviews Immunology celebrates the achievement by a Viewpoint article in which Melvin Cohn, N. Av Mitchison, William E. Paul, Arthur M. Silverstein, David W. Talmage and Martin Weigert, scientists working or who have worked in the field, provide their thoughts and opinions (Nature Reviews Immunology 7, 823-830; 2007).
From the Nature Immunology historical Commentary:

Rarely has a field as large and influential been gathered together and encapsulated in so spare a form. The modern reader can still appreciate the paper's brevity, clarity and masterly exposition of scientific method. It is worth rereading not only for its significant historical importance, but also because we see the individual creative scientist at work. Burnet's personal ambition to solve the problem of antibody specificity is clear, and he leaves plenty of clues for us to trace the evolution of the ideas that led to his solution and identify the colleagues who helped in its formulation. There is also mystery associated with the paper, such as why it is in such an obscure journal and what David Talmage's impact was on Burnet's ideas. Speculation on these issues has kept interest in the paper high over the decades.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 27, 2007
Categories: Publications, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

How geneticists can help reporters to get their story right : Article : Nature Reviews Genetics

This article, by Celeste M. Condit of the University of Georgia, Athens, addresses the disgruntlement that many geneticists experience when they read, see or hear coverage of genetics in the mass media. Dr Condit describes how geneticists themselves can play their part in improving that coverage by explaining the forces that shape science news. Her article provides some specific options for reducing hype, countering genetic determinism and preventing the use of genetics to reinforce discriminatory messages: slants that many reporters are inclined to give to their articles.

The full article is available in Nature Reviews Genetics 8, 815-820 (October 2007).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 26, 2007
Categories: Public and media, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charles S. Hendricksen of the University of Washinton writes in a comment to the post "A female road of science": It has been my personal experience that women are more inclined to engage in collaborative efforts. In my dissertation research on a Web environment for distributive collaborative research, I spent some time attempting to gather research that supported that view. I found no social science research that supported that view, but found much unsupported opinion in the business literature. Has anyone found good evidence?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 25, 2007
Categories: Careers | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those interested in following biotechnology publishing trends, there is a useful resource in the September issue of Nature Biotechnology: Trends in biotech literature 2006. Andrew Marshall and Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg write: "unsurprisingly, microRNAs dominate the list of highest cited papers, and the area is witnessing rapid growth. The number of papers in other fields, such as proteomics, nanotech and RNA interference, also continues to expand; 80% of the publications specifically reporting cancer stem cells were published in the past two years. China and India continue to increase their output of biotech papers; France fell behind Spain and Italy; Switzerland entered the top 15 for the first time." For futher details, see:
Number of biotechnology articles per region.
Historical trends in biotechnology fields.
Biotechnology journal impact.
Most cited institutions in pharmacology and toxicology.
Top cited papers by field.
(Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg is Editor of the Nature journals' special pharmacology projects; Andrew Marshall is Chief Editor of Nature Biotechnology.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 25, 2007
Categories: Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here is a link to an online slide show, Staying Current with Science Blogs & Wikis? , created by Patricia F. Anderson of the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries. You can comment on the slides if you have a slideshare account. The abstract for the slide show reads:

Leading journals and voices in science are speaking informally about new directions and developments in research through blogs and podcasts. Wikis are being used for research communities to develop consensus views on best practices in research methodologies as well as developing shared resources. There are some excellent examples available of how these are being used to increase communication, community, and productivity in science, research, and clinical communities.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 24, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Did you know that Postgenomic, NPG's website that collects posts from hundreds of science blogs and then does useful and interesting things with that data, also tracks books about science? I've made a bookmark to this page: Postgenomic - Books lists books by "popularity", but you can also sort by publication date or date added to Postgenomic (the date of the blog post about the book). Each book listed on the Postgenomic page comes with a set of keywords, which are also searchable, either within the books category or within scientific papers. (There are some handy tabs across the top of the Postgenomic page to allow easy switching between these different types of publication.)
At time of writing this post (a few days before it appears on Nautilus, as I'm away for a couple of days), the most blogged about books are about religion and climate -- but not both together. Use RSS to subscribe to Postgenomic (books, papers, blogs or any combination, by your own keywords) to track the trends for yourself, according to your own interests.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 21, 2007
Categories: Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Neuroscience presents a special focus on emotion and emotion disorders, published in the September 2007 issue and accessible online. Regulation of emotion is becoming better understood, but despite the societal costs of disorders like depression and anxiety, their causes remain unclear. Five review articles in this issue provide perspective on this literature.
New insights into BDNF function in depression and anxiety
Keri Martinowich, Husseini Manji & Bai Lu
Social learning of fear
Andreas Olsson & Elizabeth A Phelps
Long story short: the serotonin transporter in emotion regulation and social cognition
Turhan Canli & Klaus-Peter Lesch
Adult hippocampal neurogenesis in depression
Amar Sahay & Rene Hen
Targeting abnormal neural circuits in mood and anxiety disorders: from the laboratory to the clinic
Kerry J Ressler & Helen S Mayberg

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 21, 2007
Categories: Disciplines, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Clinical Practice (NCP), the medical publishing arm of Nature Publishing Group (NPG), has announced that NCP Cardiovascular Medicine will accept clinical and translational original research, starting this month (September 2007). The journal is consdiering submissions of original research papers in the areas of randomized, controlled trials; systematic reviews/meta-analyses; observational studies; epidemiological studies; and translational studies -- as well as timely and succinct analysis of recent advances. The journal's online submission site for original reserach papers is here; or you can email the journal for further information.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 20, 2007
Categories: Author services, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Q Dear Maxine,

When we want to submit our article online, can we choose the editor ourselves? Our paper is in the field of biomedical sciences.

A Dear Professor

Thank you for your kind message. No, it is not possible for you to choose your editor yourself when you submit a manuscript, but there is a space on the submission form for you to ask for a particular editor to see your manuscript when the journal receives it. Hence, even if the manuscript is not assigned to the editor you request, that editor will be alerted to it and will be able to read and comment on it.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 19, 2007
Categories: Policies Feedback | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Methods' September Editorial, A 'rough guide' to publication (Nature Methods 4, 675; 2007) describes the process of submitting or resubmitting a manuscript—some important steps and decisions along the way.

The path to publication is a well-beaten one for some scientists but seems more like a dark, unmarked road to others. It helps to know what to expect from peer review (see our May 2006 editorial), but a number of other procedural steps often cause disorientation as well. Here are some trail blazes and travel advice.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 19, 2007
Categories: Author services, Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

The European Science Foundation and the US Office of Research Intergrity have created a web page of resources on scientific conduct and misconduct: References & Background Reading : European Science Foundation. The page contains links to relevant articles in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Science and Research Policy, as well as information about books published on the topic. The list is part of the background for the World Conference of Science Integrity, being held this week (16-19 September 2007) at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal. From the Conference website:
The World Conference on Research Integrity is the first global forum convened to provide researchers, research administrators, research sponsors, journal editors, representatives from professional societies, policymakers, and others an opportunity to discuss strategies for harmonizing research misconduct policies and fostering responsible conduct in research.
The Nature journals' policies on ethics in publishing can be found at our authors' and reviewers' website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 18, 2007
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year, Nature Biotechnology ran an Editorial about the failure of a biological database:

Six weeks ago, the rights to one of biology's premier public databases were quietly sold to an informatics startup. The database in question, the Biomolecular Interaction Network Database (BIND), is arguably the most comprehensive freely accessible protein-protein interaction database available to the research community. Yet through a combination of bureaucratic delays, Canadian government fiscal nitpicking and a lack of community consensus, this important resource now finds itself on life support, its survival precariously linked to that of Unleashed Informatics, a private venture founded last April with little more than $1.0 million in seed funding from Sun Microsystems. BIND is a database of molecular associations that collates high-throughput data submissions and hand-curated information from the scientific literature……

One correspondent disagreed with the Editorial's assessment and wrote that in his opinion the enterprise had been a waste of taxpayers' money.

Rather than arguing for the importance of long-term database funding by granting agencies, BIND's saga in fact argues for greater caution and more demanding oversight when these agencies elect to fund a database's initial development.

Now, some months later, the journal is able to publish a response from one of BIND's creators, and from another correspondent in support of the database:

On March 20 this year, Thomson Scientific (Philadelphia) acquired the BIND database together with a stable of software and services through the purchase of Unleashed Informatics (Toronto). These products were originally created by my laboratory using public funds. They were the intellectual property of my former host institution, Mount Sinai Hospital, in accordance with its employment contracts and policies. Confidentiality constraints from the outset of the discussion with Thomson Scientific, which predated Busa's letter, prevented me from addressing Busa's comments at the time. I would now like to address several misapprehensions and inaccuracies in his comments..........BIND has always had the broadest scope of any interaction database (all organisms) as well as the deepest annotation (down to atomic three-dimensional structures). BIND curators extracted information from figures—a feat no text mining tool can do and 85% of hand-curated BIND records have information arising from figures. It is the breadth, depth and quality of BIND that led to its commercial acquisition. And this was pursued only after having exhausted all possible means for continued public support.......

Researchers may not mind paying for the luxury of specialized databases, but data registries that cater to a broad set of users should be broadly and freely accessible to the research community. Although the initial development of databases, such as BIND, requires caution and close oversight of budgets, an equally important aim should be to ensure that data repositories of particular utility to the research community remain sustainable and publicly accessible. Databases, such as BIND, should not be left to the private sector. Ensuring public accessibility to data essential for research progress is the responsibility of the central planner, not Adam Smith's invisible hand in the marketplace.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 18, 2007
Categories: Data availability | Permalink | Comments (0)

To mark a decade of significant progress in the increasingly important discipline of marine microbiology, the October issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology features a special focus on the topic.The issue contains a collection of articles that highlight the latest advances in marine microbiology and how they are leading to a new understanding of biodiversity, ecology and biogeochemistry. The topics covered range from recent advances in our understanding of marine ecology and metagenomics to the remote sensing of microorganisms and ecological modelling. This issue also features the marine viruses that are believed to shape microbial ocean communities, and addresses the question of microbial abundance in the extremely harsh conditions of the deep ocean biosphere.
From 13 September 2007, these articles are available free to download owing to the generous support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Agouron Institute. This special issue is also accompanied by a Web Focus that draws together relevant articles published in journals across the Nature Publishing Group.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 17, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature's erstwhile NatureJobs editor, Paul Smaglik, writes (Nature 449, 253; 2007) a dispatch from the wilderness:
Long-distance hiking is a lot like doing science. After leaving my post as editor of Naturejobs this spring, it took me about 1,200 kilometres, 20 thunderstorms and 12 rattlesnakes to really understand the similarities. While walking a portion of the 3,380-kilometre Appalachian Trail, which runs from Georgia to Maine, it seemed that there was always farther to go, with no promise of an immediate payback. Days could go by without even the reward of a scenic vista. Some days, the walking felt akin to the daily slog of accumulating data without the guarantee of a publication or a grant.
My wife and I experienced obstacles ranging from the mildly irritating (ticks and mosquitoes) to the potentially dangerous (wind, sleet and hail on exposed ridges). These obstacles have their professional analogues. Ticks are akin to professional parasites trying to take credit for your data. Mud could be compared to the fallout from controversial findings. And weather that can change from sunny to cataclysmic in an instant sums up the mercurial funding world in which scientists function.
There are positive analogies, too. The panorama of layers of blue and green mountain ridges, glimpsed from above the clouds, feels like a eureka moment in an experiment. And the occasional hiker's high of striding effortlessly over 30 kilometres of peaks and valleys felt like one of those rare lab days when everything clicks.
The experience gave my wife and I insights that will serve us off the trail — and that scientists may well appreciate. Both on the trail and in the lab, there are so many things that can go wrong every day that there's no point in blaming anyone: just accept the situation and get on with it.
My wife developed a hiking litmus test, which could also be applied to scientific careers. If we woke up in the morning eager to walk again, no matter how much we had been beaten up by the elements the previous day, we would continue. That feeling of excitement never subsided, no matter how cold, wet, sore and dirty we got. So too in science, if you no longer have that sensation of hope, curiosity and anticipation, it might be time to stop — or at least to look for another job.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 17, 2007
Categories: Careers | Permalink | Comments (0)

Funding woes plague US biomedical researchers. But calls for more funding ignore the structural problems that push universities to produce too many scientists, argues Brian C. Martinson in a Nature Commentary this week (Nature 449, 141-142; 2007). Instead, existing researchers should be given more time, space and freedom to ask questions in new ways, to take risks, and to innovate. Reducing the intensity of competition for NIH (National Institutes of Health) funds is one way of making this happen. Dr Martinson writes:

There are two main routes to contraction of the academic workforce today — through tenure failures, and with younger investigators shifting from academia into industry research. This is worrisome for university research in particular because history suggests that the most dramatic innovations come from the young. So is the only solution to force long-time NIH grant getters into retirement? Perhaps not. Universities have benefited handsomely from the efforts of senior faculty members in securing NIH grants during their careers, perhaps those same universities could now return the favour by taking full responsibility for paying these faculty salaries in their later years. This would serve the dual purpose of getting them off the NIH dole, and encouraging them to share their knowledge with their younger colleagues through more teaching.
This won't be easy. Given the levels of dependency on NIH money, it is akin to asking an addict to give up an easy fix. And not all universities will be in financial positions to employ this strategy, but it's difficult to imagine that richer institutions — some of whom acknowledge that their success lies in capturing an increasing share of the NIH pie— could not lead the way in this. Prospective students and their parents may also look favourably on senior faculty members spending more time teaching.

See here for the full Commentary article.
A related Editorial on the NIH grant-allocation process is discussed at Peer to Peer.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 14, 2007
Categories: Careers, Quality measures | Permalink | Comments (1)

A young Russian biologist taking samples to a collaborative institute in France has been accused of attempting to smuggle bioweapons by Russia’s federal security service, the FSB. He has been interrogated repeatedly by FSB agents and prevented from leaving the country. His job also now looks uncertain.
In an exclusive Nature news story (Nature 449, 122-123; 2007), the details of his predicament are revealed and experts explain why the accusations are absurd. The case detailed in Nature illustrates a worrying resurgence in Russian scientists being accused of wrong-doing. Read the full story here, which is free access for one week (13-20 September 2007).
The Nature journals' policies and advice to authors and referees on biosecurity and bioterrorism can be found on our free-access author and referees' website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 13, 2007
Categories: Biosecurity | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ricardo Vidal of the University of Algarve, Portugal, has made a badge which can be seen below and at his Nature Network blog: My Nature Network Blog Badge

Ricardo blogs both on Nature Network and at My Biotech Life. If, like Ricardo, you have a blog on the Network and a blog elsewhere, you can copy his badge and use it on your external blog so that your readers can click to your Network blog.
See here for more information about blogs on Nature Network. If you like the posts you read and would like to set up your own blog there, simply click on the "request a blog" button on the right of the page. Nature Network blogs are indexed in Technorati (a major blog search engine and ranking system) and are added to Postgenomic, Nature Publishing Group's science blog aggregator. Use the Network to spread your scientific words, as well as to join groups that share your interests and to make new contacts.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 12, 2007
Categories: Author benefits | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature 449, 13 (2007):
The Association of American Publishers* is taking part in an initiative to protest against what it calls government interference in the scholarly communication process.
Some groups and legislators are pushing for all publicly financed research to be made freely available to the public. Many traditional publishers object, and some have used aggressive tactics to fight the movement (see Nature 445, 347; 2007).
The initiative — called the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine — says that it wants to provide the public with more information about scholarly publishing. One of its principles is that "society is best served by sustainable business models and reasonable copyright protections". News of the group's formation did not go down well in the blogosphere, where a number of critics attacked it for implying that open-access publication harms peer review. (*Nature's US division, Nature America, is a member of the Association of American Publishers.)

Timo Hannay, Nature Publishing Group's web publishing director, writes on Nascent blog: "Although Nature America is a member of the AAP, we are not involved in PRISM and we have not been consulted about it. NPG has supported self-archiving in various ways (from submitting manuscripts to PubMed Central on behalf of our authors to establishing Nature Precedings), and our policies are already compliant with the proposed NIH mandate." The Nature journals' policies on archiving and preprint servers can be found at our author and reviewers' website.
Timo's further thoughts and opinions about PRISM, "open-access" publishing and the manners of some individuals involved, are provided in his excellent Nascent post, which I recommend you read if you have any interest in this topic. There is a comment thread at the Nascent posting, to which you are welcome to add, or you may comment here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 11, 2007
Categories: Access | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Geoscience, to launch in January 2008, now has a preliminary website. In its call for papers, the journal states that it is accepting submissions of manuscripts reporting significant new research in the Earth and planetary sciences, aimed at a broad interdisciplinary audience of geoscientists. Read the Guide to Authors and submit your papers via the journal's online submission system.
Also on the "pre launch" website are research highlights: short summaries of key research papers in the discipline, written by the journal's editors. You can expect to find several new research highlights per week between now and the journal's launch in January. The editors are also busy commissioning review articles and processing the many manuscripts that have already been submitted to the journal. Vist Nature Geoscience for information about how to subscribe and other news about this exciting new publication from the Nature journals.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 10, 2007
Categories: Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dr M. Nabeel Ghayur, of McMaster University Ontario, writes: I would like to add some points to Nature's News Feature "Human-subjects research: trial and error"(Nature 448, 530-532; 2007), on the important topic of clinical-trial review by regional versus central review boards. I feel that the main question is not about who conducts the review, but about it being performed thoroughly and diligently.
It is more than 40 years since the unanimous approval of the Declaration of Helsinki, yet we are still faced with many challenges in this area of research on human subjects. Episodes such as the fatal testing of gene therapy on Jesse Gelsinger in 1999 and the TeGenero fiasco in 2006 of severe side effects of a phase-I monoclonal antibody in six men, demonstrate that the need for stringent measures when it comes to clinical trials involving humans cannot be over-emphasized.
The need for stringent oversight is even more vital at a time of widespread outsourcing of trials from the West to developing countries, particularly in Africa and Asia. Many of these countries remain without concrete laws and legislation, sometimes without even functioning ethics committees in individual health-care institutions. It is imperative that trials are monitored to the best standards available worldwide.
We hear of cases such as that of Ru Huang of Johns Hopkins, accused of being engaged in unethical trials involving testing of drugs in India without formal consent (see Nature 412, 466; 2001). More recently, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer was sued by Government of Nigeria for $9 billion for allegedly carrying out trials in children without parental or official approval. These examples surely reflect the importance of strict ethics review of clinical trial proposals irrespective of the authority responsible for performing it.
However, as outlined in your News Feature, it does not make sense to have unnecessarily time-consuming bureaucracy, as delays can be equivalent to introduction of beneficial therapies. Informed consent forms should be kept as simple, short and meaningful as possible. Increasing the length of a form so as not to miss any information can make it harder for the patient to grasp, particularly a potential participant from a country where people are less well-educated and who will struggle to read and understand scientific and ethical jargon. There is a dire need to make the process of ethics review extensive, yet concise and effective, both for investigators and patients.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 07, 2007
Categories: Ethics, Policies | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's Nature (449, 8; 2007) features a News story about a plaigiarism scandal involving more than a dozen theoretical physicists at four universities in Turkey. Almost 70 papers by 15 authors have been removed from the popular preprint server arXiv, where many physicists post their work, by the server's moderators. They allege that the papers plagiarize the works of others or contain inappropriate levels of overlap with earlier articles. This is probably the largest single incident of its sort ever seen on the server, according to physicist Paul Ginsparg of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and founder of arXiv. "What these guys did was way over the line," he says. See here for the full version of the story (site licence or subscription required).
According to the Nature News story, Ginsparg says that it's not uncommon for scientists with a poor command of English to plagiarize introductions or background paragraphs from earlier work, often adding an appropriate citation. He thinks that although such practices are ethically questionable, it is inappropriate to be overly draconian. A recent analysis turned up numerous examples of plagiarism on the arXiv server (see Nature 444, 524–525; 2006).
The Nature journals' policies on plagiarism can be found on our free-access author and referees' website. The policy page contains links to various (free access) Editorials written in the Nature journals on the topic which, taken together, we hope provide a useful guide for authors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 06, 2007
Categories: Ethics, Policies | Permalink | Comments (0)

Larry Benson of the Chief Arid Regions Climate Project in Boulder, Colorado, writes in this week's Correspondence in Nature 449, 24 (6 September 2007):
Until the past few years, both Nature and Science confined their articles and letters to a rather small number of words. This was both good and bad; good in that the articles were short and to the point; bad in that it eliminated studies that were complex. I first thought that the Supplementary Information sections were a great idea. Here was a way to place at the readers' disposal important data (tables or figures) that were necessary background to the work, but not necessary to the reading and understanding of the paper.
However, some recent articles refute my thinking. One or two have contained tens of pages of this supplementary material, essential to the reading and understanding of the article. Ten pages of Supplementary Information are not unusual, and the average for Nature is about five pages.
I suggest either that you either publish hard-copy papers whole and integrated in a long form, or publish them whole and integrated on the web, as you now do with Methods sections.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 05, 2007
Categories: Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (14)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG)'s Chief Technology Officer, Howard Ratner, has posted an update on Nascent (NPG's web publishing blog) about Microsoft Word 2007 (DOC X) for authors writing for science, technology and medicine (STM) publications.
Howard hosted a meeting on 25 July 2007 at the NPG office in New York for staff from Microsoft, the American Institute of Physics, the American Geophysical Union, Science, Inera (producers of the eXtyles automatic editing tool), Aries (in this context, producers of manuscript tracking systems) and NPG. The publishing participants provided a high-level overview of the various stages involved in a typical journal's publication process, from the author writing the manuscript, through submission to publication, including a quick overview of the types of software systems and standards used to aid in these workflows. This was then followed up by presentations from Inera and Aries detailing the problems Word 2007 is causing for editing tools and manuscript tracking systems.
In his Nascent post, Howard details some of the outcomes of this fruitful meeting:
--Microsoft will establish a page on one of its websites with more advanced details on how to best use Word 2007 in a publishing environment. (For example, an image of an equation created when saving a Word 2007 file to Word 2003 carries semantic information that can be reused when reopening in Word 2007 file.)
--Microsoft will consider adding text to its help file with Word 2007 especially about its Math Markup Language Support.
--Microsoft will educate publishers by more frequent presentations at publisher events.
Howard also provides links to more information of use to authors, including this summary by Bruce Rosenblum of Inera, and this set of Connotea bookmarks on DOC X , to which you can add.
Nature is currently testing Word 2007 manuscripts in its editorial production system. If you are using Word 2007 and have a sample manuscript (created from scratch in Word 2007) that you can send us, please do so, as an attachment, to the authors' email address. We are particularly interested in equation-heavy manuscripts, as our experience is that equations and symbols (Greek letters and so on) provide the most stringent test.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 05, 2007
Categories: Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (2)

The latest in the Nature Collections series is on energy. The most pressing technological problem facing the world is uncoupling the provision of energy from the net production of carbon dioxide. This collection outlines the promises and pitfalls of new energy technologies. It looks at the potential of biofuels and nuclear power, explores new ways to lock away CO2, and considers renewables such as solar and wind power. The collection is freely available online, or you can request a free print copy here.
You can see the rest of the Nature Collections series here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 04, 2007
Categories: Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)