Nautilus

Here is the text of an Editorial in the 30 April issue of Nature (458, 1078; 2009 - free to access online):
The Nature journals encourage authors to treat their data and their collaborators with the respect that their communities demand. High-profile journals have a duty to reinforce the trends towards greater transparency and to help scientists to fulfil their responsibilities as researchers and authors. We are therefore introducing small but important changes in our policies to reflect these goals.
In a previous Editorial (Nature 450, 1; 2007), we asked for feedback about whether we should require senior or corresponding authors to sign a statement that they had taken some specific 'integrity insurance' steps before the manuscript was submitted. Some applauded this idea, but most were not in favour. (Some of the feedback can be seen here.) Major doubts were expressed about the ability of corresponding authors to take on such responsibility given the diversity of collaborations. The belief was also expressed that such signed statements would too often be worthless box-ticking exercises. Although we regretfully accept these realities, we believe that we should go further in spelling out the responsibilities of co-authors, and in requiring an implicit acceptance of them.
Accordingly, we have modified the Nature journal policy on authorship, which is detailed on our website. For papers submitted by collaborations, we now delineate the responsibilities of the senior members of each collaboration group on the paper. Before submitting the paper, at least one senior member from each collaborating group must take responsibility for their group's contribution. Three major responsibilities are covered: preservation of the original data on which the paper is based, verification that the figures and conclusions accurately reflect the data collected and that manipulations to images are in accordance with Nature journal guidelines, and minimization of obstacles to sharing materials, data and algorithms through appropriate planning.
Corresponding authors have multiple responsibilities, but we now make it clearer that the author list should include all appropriate researchers and no others, and that the order has been agreed to by all authors. They are expected to have notified all authors when the manuscript was submitted, they are the point of contact with the editor and they must communicate any matters that arise after publication to their co-authors.
Another change is that we have strengthened our policy for statements of authors' contributions. This policy was first introduced nearly 10 years ago (Nature 399, 393; 1999) to make the credit due to individual co-authors more explicit. Since then, authors of Nature papers have had the opportunity to include in their papers a statement that details each author's role in the published work. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of authors who choose to include this has risen dramatically.
This acceptance, and discussions with authors who have chosen not to include such a statement, has led us to change our policy. Rather than 'strongly encouraging' such statements, we now require them for publication of original research papers in Nature and the Nature research journals. The detail provided can vary tremendously and authors are left to structure them as they see fit. We insist only that no author be left out.
To ensure that authors are familiar with these changes, we will shortly require the corresponding author to confirm that he or she has read the Nature journal policies on author responsibilities and is submitting the manuscript in accordance with those policies.

Nature journals' authorship policies.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 30, 2009
Categories: Authorship, Ethics, Policies | Permalink | Comments (2)

From the Editorial in this month's (May) Nature Chemistry (1, 93; 2009):
What are the aims of scientific conferences? Do they exist to provide a forum in which researchers can discuss their most recent results with their peers, make announcements of startling new discoveries, and help educate the younger members of the community who are fortunate enough to be there? Before the rise of the internet, these motives were almost certainly some of the more powerful ones. Scientific discourse by letter is obviously very slow; telephones are useful up to a point, but chemistry is a very visual subject — it was surely the case that convening large numbers of researchers in one location greased the wheels of collaboration and discovery. But is this still the case today? At larger mainstream conferences, the time devoted to scholarly discussion — at least in the official sessions — is somewhat limited at best.
After discussing various pros and cons, the Editorial concludes that it "seems clear that conferences are — in one form or another — an important part of science, but they need to adapt so that they better align with developments in information technology and our desire for a cleaner planet."

Nature Chemistry journal website
Nature Chemistry guide to authors
About Nature Chemistry
All the Nature journals
About the relationship between journals in the Nature family.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 30, 2009
Categories: Communication, Conferences, Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

James Lovelock fears that humanity faces widespread death and mass migration as Earth's systems become further unbalanced by climate change. Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia reviews Lovelock's new book, as well as a biography of Lovelock and his ideas, in Nature (458, 970-971; 2009). From the review:
"Lovelock's vision of sudden and imminent collapse is apocalyptic, but for our long-term future and that of the planet it might be preferable to some of the alternatives. Suppose, for instance, that our profligate ways and expanding population are sustained for the rest of this century, but at a huge cost — the complete loss of all the natural ecosystems of the world. Most of us, living in cities and insulated from the natural environment, would barely notice until it was too late to do anything about it. This is what many politicians, economists and industrialists seem to want — their mantra of unceasing economic growth implies that we should take for ourselves all Gaia's resources and squeeze from them the maximum short-term gain, leaving nothing for the future."

James Lovelock sounds a final warning for planet Earth and enthuses about his upcoming space trip in a free NatureVideo interview with Oliver Morton, Nature's chief News and Features editor.

Books reviewed:
The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning
by James Lovelock
Allen Lane/Basic Books: 2009. 192 pp./ 288 pp. £20/$25
By at Amazon: US site; UK site.
He Knew He Was Right: The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock and Gaia
by John Gribbin & Mary Gribbin
Allen Lane/Princeton University Press: 2009. 256 pp/272 pp. £20/$24.95
Buy at Amazon: US site; UK site.

Many other NatureVideos can be accessed via the journal's video archive.
See also the Nature video channel at YouTube.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 29, 2009
Categories: Communication, NPG special content, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a Correspondence in the current issue of Nature (458; 967, 2009), Raf Aerts of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven writes:

Your Commentaries on 'How to survive the recession' devote much discussion to the effects of the global recession on science (Nature 457, 957–963; 2009). However, the financial squeeze may also be affecting the publication output of research institutions in a more subtle way. It could be boosting the traditional reader-pays publication model for scientific journals at the expense of the author-pays, or open-access, model.
Open-access journals ask authors to pay for processing their manuscripts (which involves organizing a form of quality control, formatting and distribution) so that the final product becomes freely available, and free to use if properly attributed. This model is widely believed to increase the visibility, dissemination and, eventually, the citation and impact of research findings.
However, few peer-reviewed open-access journals have so far had a high impact factor in their field, except for a small number such as those published by the Public Library of Science and BioMed Central. They are therefore struggling to emerge and to attract the most prestigious research findings.
This situation could deteriorate further if open-access journals are forced to move to (partial) site licensing in order to cover their production costs — a shift recently undertaken by the Journal of Visualized Experiments, for example as authors become increasingly reluctant or unable to pay in the current financial climate.

(This is an slightly shortened version of the Correspondence. The full version is available online at Nature's website.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 28, 2009
Categories: Access, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (2)

Four decades after the first Moon landings (Apollo 11 on 16 July 1969), the original space-racers have been joined by China, India, South Korea, even Nigeria. Why do we still need manned missions? Does human space exploration need countries to cooperate, or does it benefit from the oxygen of international conflict and mistrust? Join a lively debate on the Moon and beyond at London’s premier new arts venue – Kings Place - on 11 May 2009.
Hosted by Nick Campbell (Managing Editor, Nature) and chaired by Christine McGourty (Science Correspondent, BBC News), come and hear Kevin Fong, Oliver Morton and Martin Sweeting debate these stimulating questions.
Racing to the Moon is the first of two Words on Monday events organized by Nature to be held at Kings Place over the summer season.
More details of the programme and speakers are attached (Word document).
Alternatively, see the Kings Place website for details and booking information.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 27, 2009
Categories: Partners, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 and communicators.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Should industry be allowed to compete with academics for research funding? Branwen Hide draws attention to a suggestion along these lines made by the chairman of one of the UK research councils at the councils' 'future visions' meeting. A discussion follows on modes of research funding, including data sharing and mandates about access to the literature, which might provide some impediments to applications from industry, and collaborative networks between academia and industry, which provide one alternative.

Direct interactions between scientists and the public are discussed by Katherine Haxton and others at Katherine's blog (Endless Possibilities v 2.0). "Is there something about being a scientist that means we are obliged to deal with public misconceptions of science? Should we be rising up and defeating all examples of bad science or pseudoscience in the media, on tv or in the newspapers?", she asks. Take a look at her post and some of the responses for whether, why and how scientists should undertake these and other "outreach" activities. An opportunity is provided on the same blog, where you can find out about the May version of the Scientiae blog carnival, and contribute. If you aren't sure what a blog carnival is, see Bob O'Hara's post for an example: Scientia Pro Publica.

A librarian's perspective on access to the literature is provided by Frank Norman, who provides an instructive account of the complications that can happen for site-licence holders (in this case, academic institutions) and their users (scientists and other staff) when large, previously separate publishers merge operations.

For "early-career researchers" based in the UK, here's an opportunity: "perspectives, "a poster session with a difference, is a chance for you to discuss your research with a non-specialist audience". Nigel Eady provides more details of an interactive training day to about poster design and communication skills. The application deadline is 8 May. Posters can be presented at the British Science Festival in September, and there are prizes for those judged to be the best.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Corie Lok notes that the Cambridge Science Festival starts tomorrow, Saturday 25 April. Corie writes that "the festival is geared primarily towards members of the general public, especially kids and families to spark young people’s interest in science. However, this year, they made the events listing sortable by age range, so here’s my pick of the more interesting adult-oriented events." See her post for the highlights, from this Sunday's talk on Darwin, artificial intelligence and creativity to a discussion of the science of baseball on 3 May, as well as for a link to the full programme. Moving from the United States to Canada, Eva Amsen notes that ScienceBarCamp Toronto begins on 9 May. Let Eva know at her post if you are interested in attending or contributing.

Further science-related blog reading and online discussion can be enjoyed at:
Planet Nature
Nature.com's science blogs index and tracker
Nature Network's many blogs and forums

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 24, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you seen the Natureevents directory for 2009? The Natureevents Directory is published once a year by Nature Publishing Group and covers a complete range of scientific events, conferences and courses around the world. The digital edition of the Natureevents Directory 2009 is free to download.

Related links:
The Natureevents website, a regularly updated events database.
Nature conferences website, all the conferences organised by Nature Publishing Group and its partners.
Nature Network Source Event forum, for scientists attending the Source Event careers fair this year. In 2009, the Source Event science career fair will expand into mainland Europe and will be held in Berlin, in addition to the established London event. The Source Event, London takes place on 25 September 2009, followed by The Source Event, Berlin on 4 December.
Nature Network careers advice forum for scientists.
Nature Network Naturejobs forum: making science work.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 23, 2009
Categories: Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Dick, the subject of this month's Q&A at Nature Reports Stem Cells (April 2009), identified the first cancer stem cell, in leukaemia. The widely used xenotransplantation assay that he developed can confirm the identity of prospective haematopoietic stem cells by demonstrating their ability to re-establish a human blood system in the mouse. He is a professor at the University of Toronto and its affiliated Princess Margaret Hospital and Director of the Program in Cancer Stem Cells at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. Monya Baker, Editor of Nature Reports Stem Cells investigates his call for more controversy.
Q: What's the best advice you've ever received as a scientist?
A: Everyone in science has to have an ego. You have to think: Here's a question that nobody knows an answer to, and I think I can come up with a way to answer that question. Of course you always want to answer the questions that nobody has answered before, but if an experiment is worth doing, it's worth doing even if there are a number of people also trying to get the answer. If someone else gets there first, it just means that you can go on faster to the next question.
Read more at Nature Reports Stem Cells.
Nature Reports Stem Cells home page.
The Niche, the blog of Nature Reports Stem Cells.
About Nature Reports Stem Cells.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 22, 2009
Categories: Authorship, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

The April Editorial in Nature Physics (5, 237; 2009) looks at the effects of ten years of the web: its fundamental impact on activities such as browsing library content, buying textbooks, or arranging conference travel. Although he way in which most physicists actually do research day to day seems less affected, this is bound to change, predicts Michael Nielsen in his Commentary on page 238 of the same issue of Nature Physics, as information becomes less static and more active.
An example of online collaboration is the Polymath1 project, an experiment in 'massively collaborative mathematics' initiated by Fields medallist Tim Gowers, of the University of Cambridge, UK. From the Nature Physics Editorial: "In late January and early February this year, Gowers wrote several posts on his blog in which he explained a specific mathematical problem, its background and the procedures by which he hoped it could be solved "by means of a large collaboration in which no single person has to work all that hard". In the weeks that followed, a lively discussion developed in the comment section of the blog, with more than a dozen people making substantial scientific contributions. Nielsen set up a wiki to collate the insights gained and related material. On 10 March, Gowers announced: "Problem solved (probably)". "

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 21, 2009
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Frank Gannon says goodbye as senior editor at EMBO reports in the journal's April issue (10, 293; 2009). I shall certainly miss his monthly editorials, which I always looked forward to reading and often mentioned on this blog. On the occasion of his goodbye, he looks back at his contribution:

"EMBO reports has not only garnered a reputation for reporting good science, but also paved the way with a novel Science & Society section. It has been a joy to help mould this section into something that our readers appreciate. A related major task—and a great pleasure—has been writing monthly editorials. When I had finished the first editorial, I experienced a moment of panic as I was faced with the challenge of finding a topic for the next month and beyond. More than one hundred editorials later, that concern has long gone. There are so many topics to write about that are relevant to scientists and that are not often addressed in other journals. Some of my favourites include language barriers for non-English speaking scientists (March, 2008), The downsides of mobility (March, 2007), the fate of scientists who reach retirement age (March, 2004), bullying (October, 2008), Family matters (November, 2005), and role models and mentors (December, 2006). Then there are all of the societal topics that address how science is catering to, and is directed by, politics and business, such as the 'Faustian' bargain of private interests and university research (March, 2003), or the role of government in directing science (December, 2003). My editorial, An NIH/NSF for Europe ( June, 2002), was one of the first serious calls for a European Research Council, which has now become a reality. And, of course, it is always fun to take a sidelong look at the scientific community and comment on how we behave. My favourites on this theme are Conformists (October, 2007) and Meeting standards ( January, 2006). It was similarly amusing to write a tongue-in-cheek rejection letter to Charles Darwin ( January, 2009) while a crowded world of communication was eulogizing him for his two-hundreth birthday."
And there is news of the new order:
"Howy Jacobs has agreed to become the new Senior Editor of EMBO reports. I have known Howy for many years, both as a great scientist and communicator, and I have had many thought-provoking and enjoyable discussions with him. I have no doubt that the journal is in good hands for the years to come. I am certain that with Howy's guidance, EMBO reports will increase even further in value and stature as an important source of information for the scientific community—and our broader readership—communicating both insightful scientific research, and commenting on and reporting the ongoing debates about how science and society shape one other in the twenty-first century."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 20, 2009
Categories: Communication, Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 and communicators.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

T. Ryan Gregory highlights an astounding study concluding that the cost of the grant application and peer-review process in the Canadian Natural Science and Engineering Council outweighs the cost of the research itself. Cath Ennis comments: "It’s not just a simple financial analysis, but also an account of the problems inherent in science, including the leaky pipeline; problems attracting students into research; low salaries and poor job security; the problems faced by scientists (especially women) who want to have a family; scientific fraud; short sightedness; political interference; overreliance on grant dollars as a sign of research productivity and excellence; lack of emphasis on good teaching; the paperwork and time costs of preparing and reviewing grants; university funding cutbacks; patents; lack of innovation."

A new blogger at Nature Network is Jim Hendler, one of the inventors of the Word Wide Web, or in his own words, "the first blogger representing this new field of Web science. Like the Web itself, where social, scientific, and engineering sites are linked together without respect for disciplinary and methodological boundaries, the scientists studying the Web needed to be significantly more deeply intertwined." A blog well worth following.

Although many people agree that we need author identifiers for scientists, details of how this should be implemented are not clear. Martin Fenner has listed some of the issues, and asks readers of his blog to take a few minutes and answer the questions for yourself in this poll. The invitation is extended to readers here.

Katherine Haxton invites science bloggers to contribute to May's Scientiae carnival, with a "snapshot" theme. For more details and how to contribute, see her Nature Network blog post. Or are scientists too dull for this kind of thing? See what Lee Turnpenny has to say on that topic.

Elizabeth Moritz decides to read Darwin's great work The Origin of Species -- sparked by Gregory Petsko's assertion in EMBO Reports that not many contemporary biologists have done so. After reading Professor Petsko's and Nature Network users' advice and opinions about whch edition to read, you may decide that music is more your scene than reading. Never fear, Matt Brown brings news of two concerts in this summer's Proms (Royal Albert Hall, London) with a Darwin theme, from outer space through to bird and insect life. See Matt's post for the dates and booking information.

Further science-related blog reading and online discussion can be enjoyed at:
Planet Nature
Nature.com's science blogs index and tracker
Nature Network's many blogs and forums
Nature Publishing Group news at Nature Network
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 17, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hear the experts speak about the Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid, tools and resources -- including the National Cancer Institute-Nature Pathway Interaction Database -- at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Denver on Monday 20 April 2009. The Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid session starts at 10:30 a.m. and will be followed by demonstrations of tools. Two Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) sessions will be held on Tuesday afternoon. All the sessions will be targeted at bench researchers. Further details are available here.
Recently added pathways to the Pathway Interaction Database include polo-like kinase signaling events in the cell cycle and E-cadherin signaling in the nascent adherens junction. For further updates, news, primers and all things related to biomolecular interactions and cellular processes assembled into human signalling pathways, sign up for the e-alerts to this free resource.

About the Pathway Interaction Database.
User guide to the Pathway Interaction Database.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 16, 2009
Categories: Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

This month's issue of Nature Cell Biology presents the first in a new series of short autobiographical essays by leading scientists entitled "Turning Points". The articles offer a historical perspective of the career of the author and feature a first-hand recounting of a pivotal event that shaped his or her scientific future. Events may be as diverse as the unexpected generosity of a colleague, a move to a new destination or even arguments with peers that triggered a shift in research direction or led to the development of a new concept. The editors hope that the series will highlight some of the stories that are part of the folklore of cell biology — tales often recounted at the bar or beach during conferences, but which seldom find an audience in a more formal context. As such, it is hoped that these accounts will be inspirational to scientists early in their careers. The series launches (Nature Cell Biology 11, 364; 2009) with an account from Gottfried Schatz on how he was inspired to embark on a career devoted to studying mitochondria by an unusual answer to a postcard.
The authors will be drawn from fields that are represented within Nature Cell Biology. If there is a particular cell, molecular or developmental biologist whom you would like to see featured in this series, please send your suggestion to cellbio@nature.com

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 15, 2009
Categories: NPG special content | Permalink | Comments (1)

Via press release:
InnoCentive, Inc., the global open innovation marketplace, and Nature Publishing Group (NPG) have announced a partnership to facilitate greater scientific collaboration and open innovation.
The two companies will collaborate to stimulate the involvement of scientists worldwide in solving global scientific challenges, via an online marketplace for problems and their solutions. The concept of “open innovation” addresses the research challenges that organizations face, by using external expertise to solve problems and drive development of new products and technologies. Global challenges such as the development of better protection against malaria, finding ways to shorten the clinical trials process and the design of environmentally friendly, sustainable product packaging, to name a few, require broad and diverse expertise.
InnoCentive’s open innovation web site provides a platform for organizations, companies and government agencies (known as ‘Seekers’) to post innovation ‘Challenges’ for the public (known as ‘Solvers’) to solve for financial reward. NPG and InnoCentive intend to jointly produce an online platform for open innovation challenges in the coming months, to facilitate the participation of NPG’s large expert audience.
“Nature has for nearly 150 years been at the forefront of bringing significant advances in science to the attention of the research community and the public, and strives to be an integral part of the scientific community, aiding collaboration and the spread of knowledge. For large global challenges like infectious diseases and climate change, it makes sense to cast the net as wide as possible to find experts who can solve a problem,” said Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director, Nature Publishing Group. “Through this partnership with InnoCentive, Nature Publishing Group hopes to explore how we can help increase the chance of solving these global problems. We look forward to working with InnoCentive to promote the expertise of scientists and bring benefits to the wider community.”
NPG press release announcing the partnership.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 14, 2009
Categories: Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

The rise of 'omics' methods and data-driven research presents new possibilities for discovery but also stimulates disagreement over how science should be conducted and even how it should be defined. Is the ability of these methods to amass extraordinary amounts of data altering the nature of scientific inquiry? These are the issues dicussed in the April Editorial of Nature Methods (6, 237; 2009).
"Methodological developments are now making it possible to obtain massive amounts of 'omics' data on a variety of biological constituents. These immense datasets allow biologists to generate useful predictions (for example, gene-finding and function or protein structure and function) using machine learning and statistics that do not take into account the underlying mechanisms that dictate design and function—considerations that would form the basis of a traditional hypothesis.
Now that the bias against data-driven investigation has weakened, the desire to simplify 'omics' data reuse has led to the establishment of minimal information requirements for different types of primary data. The hope is that this will allow new analyses and predictions using aggregated data from disparate experiments."
The Editorial goes on to ask whether the generation of parts lists and correlations in the absence of functional models is, in fact, science? "Based on the often accepted definition of the scientific method, the answer would be a qualified no. But the rise of methodologies that generate massive amounts of data does not dictate that biology should be data-driven. In a return to hypothesis-driven research, systems biologists are attempting to use the same 'omics' methods to generate data for use in quantitative biological models. Hypotheses are needed before data collection because model-driven quantitative analyses require rich dynamic data collected under defined conditions and stimuli.
Correlations in large datasets may be able to provide some useful answers, but not all of them: 'omics' data can provide information on the size and composition of biological entities and thus determine the boundaries of the problem at hand. Biologists can then proceed to investigate function using classical hypothesis-driven experiments. It is still unclear whether even this marriage of the two methods will deliver a complete understanding of biology, but it arguably has a better chance than either method on its own."

Comment on this Editorial at Nature Methods' Methagora blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 13, 2009
Categories: Communication, Data availability, Disciplines, Format | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 and communicators.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Barry Hudson has been listening to the opinions of a range of scientific editors and writers at a recent panel discussion hosted by the Columbia Biological Society and Columbia Science Review. The panel discussed the bleak prospects for traditional science journalism as a career move; some of its members were apprehensive about the role of blogs and the internet in replacing the traditional medium, though others championed the role of blogs and other online forums as a way to bridge the broader reporting of science to those unlikely to want to read the original paper but curious for more detailed, accessible information. Even though endangered, there are plenty of media journalists keen to ask scientists about their latest research. Caryn Shechtman passes on some advice to help you promote your research and career. And Chris Taylor weighs in with a manifesto to tame the blogosphere. Good luck, Chris!

Scientia pro publica is the latest science blog carnival: Bob O'Hara has all the details, including a link to the automatic submission form, should you care to enter a piece of your own writing.

Gabriela Litre announces a conference on the human dimensions of global change. The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (United Nations University) will take place in Bonn from 26 to 30 April 2009. Gabriela draws attention to the round table “Catastrophe Sells”, about the media coverage of environmental news, on Tuesday 28 April, moderated by Deutsche Welle’s Irene Quaile with panelists Walter Ammann (Davos Forum), Ortwin Renn (Director of DialogiK), and Richard Klein, of the Stockholm Resilience Center. James Painter of BBC World will also participate, as well as Stefan Krug, spokesperson for Greenpace Germany. See Gabriela's post for more information.

Do you remember "reprint request cards"? Wouter Achten has a nice example for those too young to remember the practice.

Fast communication and publication brings a new dimension to the age-old problem of being scooped, as might have been the case for a poster Brian Derby and his group presented at a recent meeting. One option to consider is the preprint server, which provides a verified "time stamp". Hilary Spencer of Nature Precedings provides some clarification of "paranoia, preprints and press embargos" from the Nature Publishing Group perspective.

Further science-related blog reading and online discussion can be enjoyed at:
Planet Nature
Nature.com's science blogs index and tracker
Nature Network's many blogs and forums
Nature Publishing Group news at Nature Network
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 10, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

Those scientists interested in the idea of starting a blog but who are unsure how to start, or even understandably nervous about the prospect, might like to read an excellent article at Real Climate blog, "advice for a young climate blogger", which equally well applies to old bloggers in any field of science - your voice is needed. The article begins:

"Congratulations! You have taken the first step towards attempting to communicate your expertise and thoughts to the wider world, which remains poorly served by its traditional sources of information when it comes to complex societally relevant issues like climate change. Your aim to clarify the science (or policy options or ethical considerations or simply to explain your views) is a noble endeavor and we wish you luck and wide readership. But do be aware that you are dipping your blog into sometimes treacherous waters. Bad things can happen to good bloggers. So in a spirit of blog-camaraderie, and in light of our own experiences and observations, we offer some advice that may be of some help in navigating the political climate relatively unscathed."

Be honest to yourself and your readers about the parameters of your blog and your mission.
Know there are people who will misrepresent you for their own agendas, particularly in areas that have a clear ethical dimension, such as environmental or medical related research.
Be aware that the impact you might have is different from the impact you think you should have.
Don't expect the world to be fair.
Don't let completely unfounded critiques bother you.
Don't defame people.
Correct mistakes.
Avoid using language that can deliberately be misquoted. This is hard, particularly as the nature of blog posts is that of a brief, possibly out of context, quotation - accompanied by a pithy remark.
Realize that although you speak for yourself, you will be perceived as writing for your field, or even the entire scientific community.
If you get caught in a blogstorm, it will pass.

Advice for a young climate blogger.

Advice to bloggers and other online contributers from Nature Network.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 09, 2009
Categories: Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

In its April Editorial, Nature Genetics (41, 383; 2009) addresses the issue of contributor attribution in PubMed, the index provided by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) and used by many researchers to navigate tens of millions of biomedical publications dating back to 1948.
Nature Genetics, in common with many other journals, regularly receives queries from authors about how to format their manuscripts so that authors are correctly credited. As stated in the Editorial, "The short answer is that authors must be listed in the paper's byline (the author list under the title) or identified elsewhere in the paper as authors to appear as authors in PubMed. PubMed curators can also identify and index consortium collaborators identified as such within the paper. If contributors are listed as consortium members, but not identified as authors, they will appear in PubMed only as collaborators."
But the questions don't stop there. Journals are increasingly being asked about how authors can ensure "equal authorship" is represented in PubMed or why the email address for the corresponding author does not always appear in PubMed, for example. Journals provide this type of information as XML tags ('metadata'), but what happens to it when it reaches its destination?
Authors need to be able to provide documentation of their roles in their consortium papers to funders for grants and to committees for career advancement. So that journals can provide this information consistently, unique author-controlled identifiers will need to be universally adopted and linked in publisher metadata. Nature Genetics suggests that instead of being controlled by any organization, "even one as central to everyday research as NLM's invaluable indexing service", there needs to be "agreed conventions that allow authors and third-party indices to offer distributed solutions for different applications. All of these solutions would be fed by the metadata provided by authors with their word processors and by publishers with their tagging schemas."
The Editorial continues: "Our recommendation is that PubMed should leave the publisher-supplied metadata as it is supplied if it has ambitions to provide the more detailed author affiliations that authors frequently ask us about. Authors, please think whether you would welcome the wider adoption of existing technical conventions that allow universal and distributed appreciation of your growing reputation, or whether you would rather continue to muddle along trying to extract a reputation from the slowly-evolving customs of a national central library. Whatever solution we end up with, we should keep clear the distinctions between research data collection, analysis and writing."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 08, 2009
Categories: Authorship | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's a summmary of posts from nature.com staff blogs over the past month or so that might be of interest to scientists as authors, communicators and peer reviewers:

The Great Beyond: journals should routinely check for plagiarism.

The Sceptical Chymist: why Xueming Yang became a chemist.

Nascent : how to organise an unconference.

The Great Beyond: temper tantrum by a medical journal.

Methagora: Nature Methods' most downloaded papers for February.

In the Field: A set of reports from the American Physical Society meeting.

The Seven Stones: Reason and the Internet.

The Great Beyond: tough times for medical charity research funders.

Indigenus: seeking readers’ suggestions for Nature India.

Nascent : Walls come tumbling down.

The Sceptical Chymist: how science is “communicated” to the media.

The Great Beyond: How many scientists are affected by research council's controversial new funding policy?

Methagora: call for entries to photomicrography competition

Blogs.nature.com is an index and tracking website for all scientific blogs including, but not limited to, Nature Publishing Group staff blogs.

Previous nature.com blogs round-ups.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 07, 2009
Categories: nature.com blogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Structural and Molecular Biology provides some insight about Nature Publishing Group's press office in its April Editorial (Nature Structural and Molecular Biology 16, 345; 2009), in particular how it assists authors to help make the general public more aware of the breakthroughs and insights provided by basic science research.
The Editorial describes the splash made by the publication of an article by J. Sui and colleagues on the isolation of monoclonal antibodies that could recognize a variety of influenza strains, paving the way for a broad-spectrum therapy against 'flu and giving hope for the development of a long-sought-after universal flu vaccine.
The NPG press office sends press releases to more than 3,000 registered journalists for articles published by all Nature journals, and helps coordinate press coverage by the media. With offices in the US and UK, NPG's press officers serve as first contacts for journalists both local and internatinally. From the NSMB Editorial:

"The NPG press office is notified of every manuscript that is accepted for publication and is responsible for coordinating the press release of manuscripts once publication dates have been set. For the Nature research journals, research articles are published online every Sunday, and the news embargo lifts at the time of publication on the journals' websites, at 1 p.m. US Eastern time (6 p.m. London time). The press office performs a variety of tasks as each article is prepared for publication. Importantly for our authors, the press office provides additional notification to the authors of a research paper the Tuesday before the particular Sunday a paper is scheduled to appear online, informing them of our embargo policies, which are strictly enforced. [Nature publishes research papers online twice a week.]
In a recently added service, press officers also contact relevant funding agencies and home institutions involved with the work. This gives adequate time for internal coverage by institutional public information or public affairs offices. Advance notice is particularly useful for large agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, that participate in a large number of research programs and may therefore be contacted about any number of forthcoming research publications.
With backgrounds in the biological and physical sciences, the NPG press officers write the press releases for newsworthy articles published in Nature. They also work with the editors at the Nature research journals to compose press releases for articles that may have wide public appeal. (Usually, articles whose findings have a direct connection to a disease may garner attention, though it can be difficult to predict what will catch the eyes of science journalists.) Author contact details accompany the highlighted papers within a release, along with a list of all papers that are being published in that journal in that particular week. On the Tuesday before the articles will be published online, the press office e-mails a compiled release covering Nature and the Nature research journals for that week to more than 3,000 registered science journalists and media organizations. In some special cases, the press office will also organize a press briefing, at which journalists can speak directly to the researchers about their work."
More about the NPG press office.
More about Advance Online Publication.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 06, 2009
Categories: Author services, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 and communicators.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Bibliometrics is big business at the moment, writes Brian Derby. So why hasn't he optimized his strategy for playing the citation game by, for example, citing himself more often? Read his post to find out, and also discover his take on the algorithm used by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences research council (EPSRC) to determine whether it will fund a grant proposal, which he says takes "the number of times you have applied for funding over the past 2 years as PI and computes your success rate (% of funded applications). If this is below 25% then you are at risk. If, in addition to this, you have had 3 or more applications in the bottom half of the ranked list of proposals then you are deemed to be a danger to the EPSRC and you are excluded from applying for grants for 12 months."

Whether or not obscure and incomprehensible, the EPSRC method of "peer review" is certainly confidential ; Stephen Curry discusses the opposite extreme in the case of journals - the pros and cons of the peer-reviewers' comments and authors' response being published alongside the final version of the paper. Stephen describes a particular case of a paper in the journal Biology Direct which reports errors in a previous paper published elsewhere. Fascinating in itself, but what impresses Stephen is the Biology Direct practice of publishing peer-review reports with the paper, so that the arguments leading up to eventual publication can be followed by readers. Eye-opening indeed, and for those interested in the topic, there are some useful links and remarks in the comments to the post.

Raf Aerts describes another case "where the peer-review process obviously failed". He enumerates a list of specific technical problems about the paper, which is published in "a good journal" to which Raf would recommend colleagues to submit. So what went wrong?

It is increasingly hard for businesses at this time of global financial crisis. In the case of science publishing, how are journals coping? Noah Gray reports an abrupt change of pricing model for JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments. This decision caused a predictable storm on the Internet, not least because of confusion over the journal's decision and how it affects authors and readers. Moishe Pritsker of JoVE provides clarification in an online comment to Noah's post.

Ending this week's report on a more upbeat note, Elizabeth Moritz is the latest blogger at Nature Network, with PhD to be. She writes in her first post: "I am a Microbiology PhD student in, what I hope, is my final year before heading to a postdoc. In this blog I plan to chronicle my experiences in completing a PhD and securing a postdoc in the life sciences. There are sure to be many ups and downs and probably some funny stories too." Welcome, Elizabeth.

Further science-related blog reading and online discussion can be enjoyed at:
Planet Nature
Nature.com's science blogs index and tracker
Nature Network's many blogs and forums
Nature Publishing Group news at Nature Network
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 03, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the April issue of Nature Geoscience (2, 229; 2009):

Until now, the online submission system for Nature Geoscience has allowed prospective authors to contact the editors formally with a 'presubmission enquiry', consisting of an abstract and a brief cover letter. A small fraction of our authors have taken up this option, which promises a fast evaluation of the suitability in principle of a piece of research for publication in Nature Geoscience. We are now closing down this option.
Presubmission enquiries are useful in fields where the interest of a manuscript is readily apparent from a brief summary. We have found that in the geosciences, such a shortcut assessment is almost always impossible: the novelty and importance of a study usually relies on factors that can only be fully appreciated by reading the whole paper and often previous publications in the field.
We would hate to miss an interesting paper because of a badly written abstract. In response to a large proportion of presubmission enquiries we have therefore simply asked to see the full manuscript. Furthermore, we have always carefully considered full submissions of manuscripts that had previously received a discouraging response on a presubmission enquiry.
We feel that our authors are best served by a careful assessment of the suitability of their paper, based on all the necessary information, therefore we now encourage authors to submit their full manuscripts right away. Of course, for any brief and informal enquiries — regarding a manuscript submission or anything else — we can always be contacted at geoscience@nature.com.

The other Nature journals' presubmission enquiry service is described at the author and referees' website:
Presubmission enquiries :
Researchers may obtain informal feedback from editors before submitting the whole paper. This service is intended to save you time — if the editors feel it would not be suitable, you can submit the manuscript to another journal without delay. If you wish to use the presubmission enquiry service, please use the online system of the journal of your choice to send a paragraph explaining the importance of your paper, as well as the abstract or summary paragraph with its associated citation list so the editors may judge the paper in relation to other related work. The editors will quickly either invite you to submit the whole manuscript (which does not mean any commitment to publication), or will say that it is not suitable for the journal. If you receive a negative response, please do not reply. If you are convinced of the importance of your paper despite editors' reservations, you may submit the whole manuscript using the journal's online submission system. The editors can then make a more complete assessment of your work.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 02, 2009
Categories: Author services | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via press release: Most scientific research goes largely unnoticed by the general public until media reports reveal major scientific breakthroughs or biosafety accidents. The most recent module in the Fedaration of American Scientists (FAS) Case Studies in Dual Use Biological Research series examines the public reaction to scientific research. It is designed to increase scientists’ awareness of the general public’s perception of their research, the possible consequences, and how scientists can engage the public to address their concerns. “Scientists have to realize that some people are afraid of research being done in their community,” said Michael Stebbins, FAS Director of Biology Policy. “They need to do a better job of reaching out to the public and communicating the benefits of science.”
The Public Reaction to Science Research module is the latest addition to the FAS Case Studies in Dual Use Biological Research multimedia online education material. The series illustrates the implications of dual-use biological research through case studies of researchers and provides a historical background on bioterrorism, bioweapons and the current laws, regulations and treaties that apply to biodefense research. This module is one of a series of case-studies in "dual use" of biological research.

The Nature journals' policies on biosecurity, including an archive of free-access journal editorials.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 01, 2009
Categories: Communication, Education, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)