Nautilus

This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

John Wilbanks writes about the future of knowledge: "We are seeing the transformation of knowledge from something that is primarily conveyed in paper formats into something else: a computable graph, in which the knowledge is written in formats that computers can understand and interconnect, based on the same technologies that underlie the internet and web. Paper technology simply contains expressions of ideas, but the very technology of paper makes integration of ideas very difficult, if not impossible."

Librarian Frank Norman dissects a recent editorial in The Lancet. There are several confusing lines of argument in the editorial, such as "the [library] user has no mind, only a search box; no thought, only keywords". Frank suggests that the writer is meaning to compare "the “good old days” when a library user would come along and spend 30 mins or more explaining what they needed and why and the librarian would spend a couple of hours delving into paper and online sources to ferret out something useful. There could be a few iterations of this depending on the users’ evaluation of the initial results. Now we don’t even see the user – they can just use whatever search box is their preference and we never know how well or poorly they do it, or how well or poorly their needs are satisfied."

In the context of increased recognition of blogs by US political conventions, Anna Kushnir writes: "scientific conferences still remain largely closed to bloggers and the public. There are many reasons for this, including the presentation of sensitive and unpublished data as well as the high registration costs for most conferences. However, would there be an audience for blogger coverage of scientific conferences, if the opportunity was presented? Is that something that the scientific and general communities would benefit from? If so, why is it not happening?" A discussion follows on the practicalities and philosophy of "liveblogging" scientific conferences (with linked examples). Tomorrow (Saturday 30 August) is Nature Network's Science Blogging 2008 conference. If you can't attend the conference (registration is full), and/or are interested in observing liveblogging at first hand, see this dedicated FriendFeed group for up-to-the-second updates.

A recent Nature editorial called for the protection of regional and minority languages in France and elsewhere. A cautionary response on Nature’s Correspondence page, claiming that schools in a third of Spain teach only in minority languages, is itself prompting many replies, some which are being aired at the Nature Network opinion forum asking for readers' views on the role and effects of minority languages in science education, and about related science education policies.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 29, 2008
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Raf Aerts of the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, writes in Nature Correspondence (454, 575; 2008):

Litera scripta manet: 'written words will endure'. But not, it seems, in the case of the e-mail addresses of corresponding authors in the scientific literature.
To investigate the survival rate of author e-mail addresses, I sent an e-mail to the first one hundred corresponding authors of peer-reviewed papers whose addresses were returned in a Google Scholar search for 2007 and 2003. Roughly one out of five messages was undeliverable in 2008 (from 2007: 17%; 2003: 25%), indicating that those e-mail addresses were no longer valid.
E-mail addresses of scientists, particularly those without tenure, are volatile. Researchers leave behind a trail of obsolete e-mail addresses, phone numbers and fax numbers in the printed literature.
Unique digital author identifiers, as proposed in Correspondence (Nature 453, 979; 2008), could be linked to up-to-date e-mail addresses and other contact information. This would increase the traceability of authors, facilitate scientific networking, and even speed up the peer-review process.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 29, 2008
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Pluripotent cells offer great promise for the future of regenerative medicine. However, cells with pluripotent potential are difficult or impossible to isolate from patients, which makes methods for experimentally induced pluripotency in readily available somatic cells invaluable. Accompanying the September issue of Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology, and free to access online, is a poster by Christopher Lengner and Rudolf Jaenisch, which compares and contrasts the properties of pluripotent embryonic stem cells with those of laboratory-generated pluripotent cells.
In the same issue of the journal is a related Essay, The promise of human induced pluripotent stem cells for research and therapy, by Shin-ichi Nishikawa, Robert A. Goldstein and Concepcion R. Nierras (Nature Reviews Molec. Cell Bio. 9, 725-729; 2008) The abstract:

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are human somatic cells that have been reprogrammed to a pluripotent state. There are several hurdles to be overcome before iPS cells can be considered as a potential patient-specific cell therapy, and it will be crucial to characterize the developmental potential of human iPS cell lines. As a research tool, iPS-cell technology provides opportunities to study normal development and to understand reprogramming. iPS cells can have an immediate impact as models for human diseases, including cancer.

See also the Nature Reviews collection of articles on stem cells, which is free to access online for six months.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 28, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Performing research in one language and having to write manuscripts in another—nearly always English—is not an easy task, according to Sonia M.R. Vasconcelos et al. in the latest issue of EMBO Reports (9, 700-702; 2008).Yet, they write, "Publishing in high-quality international journals is part of today's scientific zeitgeist and a challenge for researchers from developed and developing countries alike. However, competition to attract an editor's attention and to convince reviewers might be tougher for scientists from non-English speaking (NES) countries. As various authors have pointed out, the proficiency of the English language among a country's scientists could influence its scientific output (Man et al, 2004; Victora & Moreira, 2006; Meneghini & Packer, 2007; Vasconcelos et al, 2007). A recent econometric study, for example, stated that English proficiency is a significant factor for the performance of European science (Bauwens et al, 2007).
Some NES authors argue that they "don't compete on a level playing field when it comes to international science" and that "language and cultural barriers may be partly to blame" (Anon, 2002). However, it is not clear how much linguistic competence affects the visibility of research in NES countries. In particular, it is difficult to assess the link between a researcher's writing competence and established indicators of research output such as the number of publications and citations. Most countries do not maintain databases with comprehensive information about a researcher's academic profile and publication record, or they do not make this information publicly accessible."
Brazil, however, is an exception, and the EMBO Reports article presents some of the available statistics about communication skills from that country. One of the authors' conclusions is that governments and their research councils should invest more in training researchers to be fully competent in the English language.
Nature journals provide writing guidance at the author and reviewers' website in an article that provides links to various services and resources.
See here for a discussion at Nature Network about regional and minority languages in science communication.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 27, 2008
Categories: Communication, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) will launch a new primary research journal, Nature Climate Change, in October 2009.
Climate change is one of the key issues of the twenty-first century. Nature Climate Change will bring together scientific observation and models with work reporting on our understanding of how human society affects climate change, and vice versa. The journal's coverage will extend into socio-economic research as well as the natural sciences, with the aim of putting the research it publishes into a wider scientific, economic and political context.
Like its sister titles, Nature Climate Change will seek to publish the best research from around the world and will have a strong online component. The journal will provide in-depth coverage of all aspects of the Earth’s changing climate, including studies of the impacts of climate change as well as climate change itself.
Publishing Director David Swinbanks said that the journal “will for the first time extend the reach of a Nature-branded journal into the social as well as natural sciences and provide authoritative, much needed, information on climate change to a broad public audience as well as to the many research communities studying climate change and its impact".
Nature Climate Change will be the newest journal in physical-sciences titles launched by NPG over the past five years. Nature Geoscience, which launched in January 2008, covers the entire spectrum of the Earth Sciences, and will continue to include research on understanding the complex scientific mechanisms behind a planet’s changing climate.
The Nature physical-science journals, like their sister titles in life sciences and medicine, provide a home for high quality research and commentary, many in fast-growing fields such as climate change and nanotechnology.
NPG is currently recruiting for a Chief Editor for Nature Climate Change and will announce further information about the journal before the end of the year.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 26, 2008
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Ashleigh Griffin of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh reviews (Nature 454, 827; 2008) the book Women in Science, Engineering and Technology: Three Decades of UK Initiatives by Alison Phipps (Trentham Books: 2008. 184 pp. $16.99, £25.50). The review is reproduced here:

The lack of women, especially senior women, in science departments is familiar. Less widely appreciated is the effort that has gone into addressing this under-representation. Women in Science, Engineering and Technology presents a history of around 150 initiatives to encourage women's participation in science, engineering, construction and technology in the United Kingdom during the past three decades. Alison Phipps, director of gender studies at the University of Sussex, UK, has compiled a valuable resource for activists, policy-makers and educational practitioners, also providing social and political context and analysis.
To a woman working in science, rather than one working for women in science, the book is much more than a reference manual. It puts our experience in context — within the global economy and the women's movement. Phipps makes a compelling case that achieving fundamental change depends on understanding this context and she urges closer communication between educators, academics and social scientists.

Continue reading "Encouraging women to participate in science" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 25, 2008
Categories: Careers | Permalink | Comments (1)

This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Eva Amsen, in a long and interesting post about scientists and web 2.0 technologies, compares some reference management software packages, noticing that some make it easy to cite papers whereas others make it easy to share them online. "Writing papers in a fast an easy way is what scientists want", she writes, "and if that happens to come with tagging and showing their collection of papers to the whole world, they’ll do that too. Once that happens, the concept of sharing will become more mainstream, and opening lab notebooks and data sharing can follow."

Mixing business and pleasure doesn’t have to be a bad thing, writes Brendan Maher. "I often hear of scientists putting their vacation time to good use, learning about new areas of research or just getting out into the field. How do you best use your time off from the regular grind? Share your stories. Or write about your greatest wish for the perfect sabbatical. The more outlandish, the better."

Returning to the post-holiday work environment, Sarah Kemmitt announces an event on 24 September at 6 p.m. local time: ‘Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social NotWorking?’, as part of the British Library's quarterly café scientifique format event exploring varied topical issues in science. Timo Hannay, Publishing Director of Nature.com, will introduce the subject followed by a discussion with the audience. This provocative title aims to stimulate discussion on the following questions:
Is Web 2.0 all about attitudes or technologies?
What can Web 2.0 do for your research?
As a scientist, are there good reasons for getting involved beyond social ‘notworking’?
Web 3.0: another buzzword or a semantic revolution for science on the web?
The event is free but registration is required, which can be done via the Nature Network events listing.

Henry Gee provides advice about how to appeal against a journal's negative decision about your manuscript. "There is a view out there that Nature doesn’t consider appeals. This is quite wrong. Nature editors are quite willing to admit that they are only human, and therefore fallible, and that the same is true for referees. Whether your appeal will succeed is a moot point, but it costs nothing to be polite, and reasoned, logical argument counts for a great deal. After all, we are scientists." Close attention to the comments thread is advised before clicking on the link to the example "journal" in the post.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 22, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

This Editorial appears in Nature 454, 917-918; 21 August 2008:
The academic community in Austria often seems to be a closed, elite set, especially in the sphere of medicine. The power and influence wielded by a professor are hard to understand from the outside, and the rigid hierarchy of the academic system has been hard to dismantle from the inside, despite reformers' best efforts.
The upper echelons of that community also seem to know how to close ranks. Witness an example now threatening to emerge from the Medical University of Innsbruck, where there are worrying signs that investigations into a scandal of unprecedented dimensions in this small country may be thwarted.
According to a report from the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, a urologist at the university, Hannes Strasser, has conducted a high-profile clinical trial so inappropriately that it must be considered entirely invalid (see page 922). Moreover, that trial represents just a fraction of the total number of patients who paid handsomely for the stem-cell treatment for urinary incontinence without knowing it was experimental.
Strasser's department chair, Georg Bartsch, insists that he has no connection with, and no responsibility for, the scandal — despite having 'honorary authorship' on all the relevant papers, a practice that contravenes the university's code of practice. And Strasser himself has written an open letter to university authorities denying any wrongdoing. (See also his Correspondence to Nature, 453, 1177; 2008.)

Continue reading "Research misconduct in Austria" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 21, 2008
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Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (15, 767; 2008) announces a new section of the journal for articles that serve primarily as resources and also lead to novel molecular insights. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology focuses on the underpinnings of biological processes at the molecular level. However, in this era of large-scale, high-throughput experimentation, an increasing number of submissions to the journal describe mammoth data sets and the tools that facilitate their analysis. The new Resource section is for analyses of new data sets that lead to novel and arresting conclusions, as described in the journal's Guide to Authors. Resources are broad in scope and, in an era of burgeoning and ever-expanding technological advances, the approaches and findings that characterize this section will undoubtedly change over time. There are two examples of Resource articles in the journal's August issue:

Fission yeast SWI/SNF and RSC complexes show compositional and functional differences from budding yeast pp873 - 880
Brendon J Monahan, Judit Villén, Samuel Marguerat, Jurg Bahler, Steven P Gygi and Fred Winston
The Schizosaccharomyces pombe SWI/SNF family of ATP-dependent chromatin-remodeling complexes is now comprehensively analyzed, through composition, phenotypic and microarray analyses, thus broadly setting the stage for S. pombe as a new model organism for examining the SWI/SNF family remodelers. The S. pombe complexes are more akin to the metazoan SWI/SNF remodelers and have specific roles in repression of iron-transport genes.

A comprehensive library of histone mutants identifies nucleosomal residues required for H3K4 methylation pp881 - 888 Shima Nakanishi, Brian W Sanderson, Kym M Delventhal, William D Bradford, Karen Staehling-Hampton and Ali Shilatifard
A comprehensive library encompassing alanine scanning mutations across yeast histones is presented as a Resource that will facilitate screening of chromatin processes. The utility of the library is indicated by screening in cis and in trans for residues that affect histone H3K4 trimethylation, a modification that is associated with actively transcribed genes and known to be mediated by the Set1-COMPASS complex.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 21, 2008
Categories: Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Philip Strange of the School of Pharmacy, University of Reading, UK, writes in Nature's Correspondence (Nature 454, 397; 2008):

In his Correspondence 'Fewer academics could be the answer to insufficient grants' (Nature 453, 978; 2008), Andrew Doig suggests that the endemic problem of the rejection of high-quality grant proposals could be solved by cutting the number of academic staff. This proposal could create a new problem.
The number of academic staff is generally related to the number of undergraduates. Cutting the number of academics would reduce the number of trained students produced, which would have a negative effect on the nation's health and wealth.
In this increasingly technological age, we need all the trained scientists we can muster to combat issues such as global warming. The way to prevent the rejection of high-quality grant proposals and to support research is to put a bit more money into the system.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 20, 2008
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Although the Euroscience Open Forum is a meeting to be proud of, its organizers should aim even higher, according to a recent Editorial in Nature (454, 552; 2008). The text of the Editorial:

When a small group of academics founded the organization 'Euroscience' in 1997, few would have imagined it could acquire the clout and funds to drive a regular biennial meeting, now attracting 5,000 attendees, in a major European city. The grass-roots society risked being dismissed as a small band of Euro-wonks, although some organizations (including this journal) welcomed its arrival. But last week's third Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) in Barcelona, Spain, showed that Euroscience's sheer determination in the face of such perceptions has again paid off. Anyone attending the meeting will have been struck by the energy on display, the high attendance of young people, and the active engagement with the media.
Nature was involved in the meeting in several ways, and cannot claim detachment. Nevertheless, informal canvassing of opinions of other participants reinforced the notion that this ESOF meeting was both lively and — to judge by the European movers and shakers present — important. The attendance of participants from the United States and elsewhere outside Europe was also a good sign.
It is still an open question just how influential this forum might become, rather than simply acting as a showcase.

Continue reading "Europe's science forum" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 19, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the latest article in Nature's Horizons series, which are visions of the scientific future, Nobel laureate Paul Nurse explores the agenda for treating organisms, at any level, as information machines (Nature 454, 424-426; 2008). It's his belief that one great challenge for biology is to isolate, in particular within cells, the modules by which information of many types - whether genetic or environmental in ultimate origin - is coded, propagated and interpreted, and how cells are organized so as to process such information. To read this article and the other Horizons, visit the Horizons web focus.
Horizons articles present experts' visions of the foreseeable future of a research theme. The articles are commissioned by Nature's editors, and usually published without peer review, given Nature's intention of capturing a respected individual perspective. The articles are intended to anticipate the future, but also to influence it.
Previously published Horizons:
A systematic look at an old problem
Thomas B. L. Kirkwood
Chemistry for everyone
Peter Murray-Rust
Building better batteries
M. Armand & J.-M. Tarascon
Evolution of anatomy and gene control
Georgy Koentges
Wiring up quantum systems
R. J. Schoelkopf & S. M. Girvin

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 18, 2008
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This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Craig Rowell introduces the Thousand Thoughts project at the Nature Network collaboration forum. The goal is to use social network links to build upon each other’s research and enhance the "webbing" of scientific knowledge. Check the forum for active questions, for answers, and to add your own.

Ruth Wilson of the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology notes that blogging, "e-portfolios" and so on are becoming increasingly important to women building careers, communicating science or wanting to network. She writes that she has built a couple of basic pages about blogging, with a list of some women science bloggers (including those attending the Science Blogging conference on 30 August). If you blog, or want to find others that do, or want to discover what's about, visit the Nature Network Science Blogging forum. And while on the subject of women in science, here is a post by Martin Fenner about trends in the numbers of female first authors of journal articles.

In the most recent take on publishing models, Richard Grant at his Nature Network blog The Scientist writes "let’s pretend that all libraries simultaneously said “We’re not going to subscribe to any journals anymore. You should all charge the authors” — what would happen? Would it work? If not why not? Who would be upset? Would Nature still have News & Views and Futures (which, after all, are the main reasons I read it)?". The inevitable lively discussion follows, including a referral by Bob O'Hara to this earlier posting and discussion and one by Martin Fenner to his earlier posting about excessive "calls for papers".

Ai Lin Chun, one of the Nature Nanotechnology editors, introduces Wen Jiang (now Dr Wen Jiang!) and Betty Kim (the soon to be Dr Dr Betty Kim!), authors of papers in the March 2008 issue of Nature Nanotechnology. She learned that Wen has recently defended his PhD and is now on to the next stage of his career in nanotechnology while Betty, who is a physician and a pianist, will also be finishing up her PhD in the next few months. Ai Lin was curious to find out how their graduate experiences in nanotechnology are shaping their careers and what they envision will happen in the field, and so the two authors have kindly shared their thoughts at the Nature Nanotechnology: Asia Pacific and Beyond forum.

Finally, if you are a scientist based near Berlin, you are welcome to attend the next Nature Network Berlin dinner, on 4 September.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 15, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week saw the 2008 SciFoo, the annual ‘unconference’ organized by Nature, Tim O’Reilly and Google. Topics ranged from the Large Hadron Collider to the neuroscience of the brain–machine interface and a new social contract for science. For a collection of blog and other internet articles about the conference, please see here. "Editors' choice" articles can be found here. And for those whose interest extends even further, a collection of photos can be accessed here. Background information about SciFoo 2008 can be found at this Nature Network group.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 14, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

In its August Editorial, Nature Genetics (40, 929; 2008) looks forward to the second Genomics of Common Diseases conference, to be held from 6 to 9 September 2008, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In a review of last year's meeting, Enrico Petretto and colleagues (Nat. Genet. 39, 1299–1301; 2007) emphasized that recent successes in complex disease genetics rest upon rapid technological advances and the excellent communication and collaboration forged in the genome sequencing community and the SNP Consortium. They also stressed the importance of studying gene networks rather than single genes in the pathogenesis of disease. Finally, they noted that an evolutionary as well as a physiological perspective is required to understand the startlingly diverse genetic architectures of common diseases.
The Editorial asks what can be expected from this year's meeting? "Over the past year, many new sequencing tools have been added for strategically resequencing candidate genes for rare and common variants alike. Bioinformatic tools have been launched for sequence assembly and comparison. Statisticians have developed methods for marker imputation and for rigorous association studies with structural variants." Various other topics will be discussed at the conference as outlined in the Editorial, whch concludes: "In the era of personal genomics, with next-generation sequencing of thousands of human genomes just beginning, the focus of common disease genetics is already shifting from identification of loci and risks. We anticipate an intensification of functional genomics, investigation of the consequences of variation on gene expression and the effect of variation on the functioning of pathways and systems."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 14, 2008
Categories: Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scientists Without Borders is a new web portal that helps connect scientists and coordinate scientific efforts to address the challenges of the developing world. Joanne Kotz in the August issue of Nature Chemical Biology (4, 447; 2008) describes how the New York Academy of Sciences and 24 partners have worked to coordinate scientific efforts in the developing world and to provide resources where and when they are most needed.
How do you connect the world's scientists? Evelyn Strauss, now executive director of the project, spent many months developing the plan. She discovered that organizations are continually 'reinventing the wheel', trying to repeat earlier initiatives and running into the same stumbling blocks. In other cases, Strauss heard, "three organizations could be in the same place at the same time trying to do the same thing." The enormity of the communication gap, Strauss says, is obvious to everyone who works in the developing world.
Strauss and her colleagues have created an online resource that will serve as a virtual network to connect scientists. Profiles can be created for individuals, projects and organizations that describe, for example, what they do or want to do, the resources they need, the resources they can offer and what regions of the world they work in. People can also include details about their scientific expertise and their willingness to travel. For projects, a lasting record will be created through descriptions of what has been accomplished, what the next steps are and what the challenges to these next steps are likely to be. At the time of the website launch in May this year, there were already almost 400 individuals, 140 organizations and 80 projects with profiles. Despite the many potential challenges (Nature 453, 564; 2008), there is hope that this portal will succeed.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 13, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Precedings has recently had a makeover, incuding a Flash-based viewer for presentations (see it in action here); the addition of pages allowing one to view only manuscripts, posters or presentations; and a list of recently updated documents (documents with new revisions posted on Precedings or with newly-added links to later published versions) on the homepage. The homepage itself features two new collections of documents: the Allen Brain Atlas Reports and the Second Nature lecture series.
Hilary Spencer provides some more details on the Flash-based viewer for browsing presentation slides. The viewer can be embedded in the author’s homepage, blogs or other webpages, which we hope will help facilitate viewing, sharing and discussion. It has a full-screen mode, which can be activated using the button in the top right. The same button will also exit full screen mode, or one can press the “ESC” key. The two buttons below the full screen button control the zoom level (for when you can’t read a piece of text or want a better view of an image). Clicking and dragging (or “grabbing”) will pan the image.Embedding the slideshow in your own webpage or blog is easy. Just copy the HTML code for the embed (found to the right of the viewer) into your page. Let us know what you think!

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 12, 2008
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From 11 August, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will adopt a new system for delivering less-than-stellar news to companies trying to bring new drugs to market, in a move intended to stop investors from over-interpreting its decisions (Nature 454, 265; 2008). The agency has ended its two categories of rejections: 'approvable' letters, if the drug needs more information or specific changes to win approval; and 'not approvable' letters, for applications with more major problems. In their place, a company whose drug is being rejected will receive a 'complete response' letter outlining an application's deficiencies and what can be done to address them.
According to the agency, the change is intended to be a more consistent and neutral way of delivering the news that a drug application is not up to standard.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 11, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am on holiday, so instead of the usual weekly round-up, I am highlighting a particular Nature Network forum of interest. The regular Nature Network round-up will return on Friday 15 August.

At the Nature Precedings forum, Hilary Spencer features a YouTube video interview with Timo Hannay. There is a link to the video at the Nature Network forum post. Hilary writes: "In a 10 minute interview, Timo Hannay, Publishing Director of Nature.com, discusses some of Nature Publishing Group’s online projects including Nature Precedings and Nature Network. He discusses content licensing on Nature Precedings and Molecular Systems Biology, which both use Creative Commons licenses.....Timo also speaks briefly about business models used by online ventures, including the “freenium” model and advertiser-supported models." Timo has posted further thoughts (since the video interview was filmed but before it was aired) about open-access publishing models at Nascent blog, a post which features a stimulating online discussion.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 08, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG)'s Nature Asia-Pacific’s English website has been redesigned to incorporate two new websites that feature some of the best published research from the Asia-Pacific region. Newly added to the site are NPG Nature Asia-Materials and Nature India. In addition, a new section called Nature - Hot Topic has been added, featuring one 'hot' paper selected from Nature each week. There are also regular news updates of NPG's activities and regional websites.
The focus of www.natureasia.com has until now been on NPG's local language websites in Japanese, Chinese and Korean, but, with the recent launch of several custom-publishing projects in English along with Nature China and Nature India, the publishing and editorial teams are now able to feature research highlights covering a wide spectrum of research from across the region. These highlights are updated every week.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 07, 2008
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A recent Nature News story highlights efforts to create a free digital library of mathematics (Nature 454, 263; 2008). From the Nature report:

All the mathematical literature ever published runs to more han 50 million pages, with around 75,000 articles added each year. Over the past decade there have been several attempts to make this prodigious body of work accessible in a single digital archive, but so far none has succeeded.
A group of mathematicians intends to change this. They have started small, with a handful of digitization projects in Poland, Russia, Serbia and the Czech Republic. In a few years they hope to unite these repositories with their western European counterparts in an archive to be hosted by the European Union, according to the organizer, Petr Sojka, an informatics scientist at Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic. Eventually this pan-European archive could be expanded globally, he says.
To make such an archive easier to search, researchers have found ways to guess the subject of a paper on the basis of the frequency of symbols in it. But there will be many more-practical challenges, such as finding the funds to scan millions of old papers and striking deals with publishers who hold rights to them.
It may already be too late to build a single free mathematical archive, according to John Ewing, head of the American Mathematical Society, which maintains a list of more than 1,500 journals whose archives have already been digitized. “A few years ago, this model had the potential to change the mathematics journal literature in profound ways,” he says. But most publishers have rushed to scan their own archives in order to lock them up and sell them to libraries.
“While the effort to digitize the smaller collections is admirable, and it's certainly worthwhile, it's unlikely to effect a larger change,” says Ewing.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 06, 2008
Categories: Access, Communication, Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

This month, microbiologists gather at ISME12, the12th meeting of the International Society for Microbial Ecology, in Carins, Australia to deliberate advances in microbial ecology that could benefit the planet. What are the key challenges for this blossoming field? Nature Reviews Microbiology asks this question in its August Editorial (6, 566; 2008).
The Editorial describes the deliberations last year of a group of microbiologists, which crystallized the main questions that face microbial ecologists and how to ensure that the microbiology field continues to meet the important demands that have been placed on it by the need to understand the ecology of two pressing global problems: climate change and disease. The group published a report, Uncharted Microbial World, in February which highlights important gaps in knowledge, including a lack of knowledge of the phages, the most populous group of microorganisms. In the words of the Nature Reviews Microbiology Editorial, "Microbial ecologists have an important part to play in investigations into both public and planetary health. This eloquently written report should provide food for thought for all those with an interest in this important field, and for those lucky enough to be attending ISME12, enjoy the meeting!"

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 05, 2008
Categories: Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature News (454, 150; 2008): A former Texas official is suing the state's education agency, saying that its policies passively endorse creationism.
In a complaint filed with a district court on 1 July, Christina Comer, a former director of state science education, alleged that officials tacitly condone the teaching of creationism through a policy of neutrality. Comer oversaw Texas's science curriculum until last November, when she was forced to resign for circulating a notice of a talk entitled “Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse”. In her termination notice, Comer was told that the education agency endeavoured to “remain neutral” on the issue of creationism.
Comer's complaint argues that board neutrality violates the separation of church and state. She is also seeking reinstatement to her former position.
There are many online comments to this brief news item, perhaps typified by this one: "Many have been waiting for Chris to challenge this arcane move towards theocracy. Texas science education needs those like her whose efforts will keep our state and our country competitive in the twenty-first century. Dr. Timothy Henry Former Director of Judging Texas Science & Engineering Fair."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 04, 2008
Categories: Communication, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am on holiday, so instead of the usual weekly round-up, I am highlighting a Nature Network forum discussion of interest. The regular Nature Network round-up will return on Friday 15 August.

What’s both radical and incremental? Aimless and goal-oriented? Process and product? Innovation, which is the subject of a monthly series of Nature Commentaries. Specialists from business, economics, law, policy and research are contributing to the series in an attempt to define innovation, explore how it arises, and how it can be managed, encouraged and facilitated. The commentaries reveal that the idea of a single innovator or inventor is fading, and probe how innovation is increasingly the product of an entire ecology which includes both basic and applied research but also the venture-capital system and external motivating forces coming together in the right mix. Each of these Commentaries is being discussed at the Nature Network Opinion forum, so please join the conversation there about the Rochester Institute of Technology's plan to foster innovation through academic-industrial partnerships. Do you think such partnerships will work? Future installments will be featured as they are published, so keep an eye on the Nature Network forum.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 01, 2008
Categories: Education, Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)