Archive by date | October 2007

New diagnostics supplement from Nature Reviews Microbiology

Effective diagnostics are a crucial element of successful infectious disease management, yet their development and use, particularly in the developing world, remains a neglected area. To address this deficiency, Nature Reviews Microbiology is producing a series of user-friendly diagnostic evaluation guides as supplements to the journal.  Read more

Journey to Spain

As announced on Nautilus in July, Nature is a 2007 winner of the prestigious Principe de Asturias award established by His Royal Highness Heir to the throne of Spain. The Principe de Asturias award is the best-known cultural prize in the Spanish-speaking community. The awards honour individuals, groups or institutions whose creative work or research represents a significant contribution to universal culture in the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic fields. Nature shares the 2007 Award for Communication and Humanities with the journal Science.  Read more

Recommend research from China and Hong Kong

Are you interested in finding out more about research in Mainland China and Hong Kong? Take a look at Nature China. Every week, the editors of Nature China survey the scientific literature to identify the best recently published papers from mainland China and Hong Kong, and provide a summary of the results.  Read more

Global poverty and human development at nature.com

The Council of Science Editors has organized journals around the globe to participate in its 2007 Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development. Hundreds of journals are publishing articles related to the scientific and medical issues that surround this theme. The Nature journals are pleased to contribute the content highlighted on this page, all of which is free. We have also created a supporting archive comprising previously published content from the Nature Publishing Group that is relevant to this theme.  Read more

Naming the first scientist

“A few years ago I took part in a debate at the Royal Institution on ‘who was the first scientist?’ “, writes Brian Clegg ”https://network.nature.com/forums/sciencewriters/609?page=1#reply-1414″>in the science writers’ forum on Nature Network. Brian continues: “Lewis Wolpert championed Archimedes, I stood up for Roger Bacon ….and Frank James spoke for James Clerk Maxwell. Archimedes won, with Bacon a close second. The arguments were loosely that Archimedes was the first to use maths in science, Bacon the first to emphasise the importance of experimental verification, maths and the communication of results, and Maxwell because the word ‘scientist’ wasn’t invented until his time……………..I know it’s a very arbitrary point, but who out of all scientific history would you call the first, and why?”  … Read more

Nature Chemical Biology changes article formats

Nature Chemical Biology is updating the formats of its original research papers, as announced in an editorial in this month’s (November’s) issue (3, 679; 2007). Based on feedback from the community, the editors have decided to discontinue the publication of Letters to Nature Chemical Biology. From the January 2008 issue, the journal will publish original research contributions as Brief Communications or Articles. To accommodate this change, the guidelines to authors have been updated to provide two clearly defined formats for research papers in Nature Chemical Biology. Naturally, as the editorial concludes: “Independent of the classification of our papers or how policies are implemented at the journal, authors and readers can be confident that maintaining the high quality and broad interest of the content in Nature Chemical Biology remains our highest priority.”  … Read more

Reverse marketing strategies

Juan-Carlos Lopez, via Spoonful of Medicine (Nature Medicine‘s blog), was chatting to some scientists at a conference, when one of them told him that some journals take advantage of the announcement of the Nobel prize to send out an e-mail highlighting the papers by the laureates that they have had the privilege to publish. Juan-Carlos writes: “I don’t know about you but such a marketing strategy strikes me as somewhat cheeky…… if other publishing firms are currently entertaining a similar strategy, here’s an idea to turn it on its head — send e-mails highlighting the papers from the laureates that your journal has REJECTED and the name of the publication where they were ultimately published…….It’s a shame that confidentiality issues get in the way of such an idea because, if you were to send such an e-mail, people would surely be talking about your journal.”  … Read more