The week on Nature Network: Friday 22 August
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.
