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 and communicators. Readers are welcome to join any of these discussions by visiting the links provided. The Nature Network week column is archived here.

What are the chances of publication in Nature or in any other high-impact journal when one solidly disproves an earlier paper in the journal? I would also wish to know how the chances could be augmented. What criteria should one consider? So asks Sangeetha Suranarayanan at the Ask the Nature Editor forum.

The discussion on blogging (or other online posting) and the law has been continuing during the week at the Nature Opinion forum. If you contribute to blogs, forums and online conversations, it is worth checking out this Nature Network forum for its links to some useful articles on the Internet and legal liabilities.

Also at the Nature Opinion forum is a debate arising from Nature's special collection on swine 'flu. The discussion is focusing on whether news of the outbreak has been communicated appropriately by officials and the media; and whether preparation for the worst helps the world to come to grips with the realities of a possible pandemic, or whether perceived ‘false alarms’ erode public trust. What will – and should – happen next? Let us know your views.

What do you know about "the imposter syndrome"? This strange phenomenon is being discussed in the Women in Science forum, and also in the NatureJobs Careers forum. (The article that's the source of the discussion is at the NatureJobs website.)

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 29, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

A hyped-up fossil find highlights the potential dangers of publicity machines, according to one of the Editorials in today's Nature (459, 484; 2009 - free to access online). The Editorial describes last week's publication of paper describing a 47-million-year-old fossil primate with a remarkable degree of preservation, which quickly led to enormous media and internet coverage, including claims that the fossil is a "missing link" in human evolution. The Editorial describes how, "in the paper the authors explicitly state that Darwinius masillae "could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved, but we are not advocating this here, nor do we consider either Darwinius or adapoids to be anthropoids". The authors also refrain from claiming that the fossil changes our understanding of primate evolution."
But the circumstances surrounding the paper's publication were anything but normal. Before the paper had even been submitted, a television documentary and an accompanying book about the find had been commissioned; a week publication of the paper, the book is out and the documentary has been aired on TV in several countries. The Editorial continues:
"Both book and documentary include the the suggestive words 'The Link' in their titles. A press release associated with the New York press conference at which the fossil was first officially described claimed that the fossil represents revolutionary changes in understanding. The History Channel website calls the find a "human ancestor", and the BBC website describes it as "our earliest ancestor".
To be fair, the authors' claims at the press conference were appropriately measured. Nonetheless, the researchers were fully involved in the documentaries and the media campaign, which associate them with a drastic misrepresentation of their research.
Another damaging aspect of the events was the unavailability of the paper ahead of the press conference and initial media coverage. This prevented scientists other than those in the team from assessing the work and thereby ensuring that journalists could give a balanced account of the research.
There is no reason to think that PLoS ONE's editors and reviewers did less than their duty to the paper. Nonetheless, the clock was ticking at the time of submission. Nature has over the years received occasional offers of papers associated with television documentaries, and the offers usually come with broadcast dates attached. Where the refereeing process might have been compromised, we have always said no to these papers. When time is tight, there is a risk that the broadcast will go out even if any problems uncovered by peer review cause the paper to be delayed or rejected.
In principle, there is no reason why science should not be accompanied by highly proactive publicity machines. But in practice, such arrangements introduce conflicting incentives that can all too easily undermine the process of the assessment and communication of science."
Amid all the vast quantity of media and internet coverage of this research, I highly recommend this excellent post, 'Why Darwinius is not our ancestor', by Karen James at her Data Not Shown blog. I also recommend this Nature Network blog post by senior Nature editor Henry Gee.
Nature journals' embargo policy.
Nature journals' policy on confidentiality and pre-publicity.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 28, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Web is rapidly changing the communication, practice and culture of science. Science online London 2009, which will be held on 22 August 2009 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, will explore the latest trends in science online. How is the Web affecting the work of researchers, science communicators, journalists, librarians, educators, students? What can you do to make the best use of the growing number of online tools?
This is the follow-up conference to last year's Science Blogging 2008: London conference. The name of the event was changed to reflect the variety of science-related activities happening online today.
Topics include blogging and microblogging, online communities, open access and open data, new teaching and research tools, author identifiers and measuring the impact of research.
The organizers are still in the process of assembling the programme. To suggest keynote speakers, topics for panel discussions, sessions, demos, and so on, join the discussion at Nature Network, in the conference FriendFeed room or send the organizers an email. You can also follow the conference on Twitter (follow @soloconf, hashtag #soloconf_09) . The deadline for submission of suggestions is 19 June 2009.
Science Online London 2009 is organized by Matt Brown (Nature Network), Martin Fenner (Hannover Medical School), Richard P. Grant (F1000), Victor Henning (Mendeley), Corie Lok (Nature Network) and Jan Reichelt (Mendeley).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 27, 2009
Categories: Conferences | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nature Immunology (10, 553; 2009), in its June Editorial, summarizes the new responsibilities Nature Publishing Group has established for authors.
'Author contributions' statements were introduced by the Nature journals in 2006 to encourate authors to identify the efforts of each coauthor. In a Nature Editorial last month (Nature 458, 1978; 30 April 2009), it was announced that all Nature journals now require that an 'author contributions' statement accompany all original research papers. Authors can decide how detailed these descriptions can be, but no author should be left out.
From the Nature Immunology Editorial:
The purpose of authorship statements is to give coauthors due credit for their relative contributions. This concern is not insignificant to a 'middle author', who may be seeking promotion or a new position. Such an investigator may not have a 'first author' publication to their record but nevertheless has provided a substantial contribution to the development or execution of certain studies. Likewise, for studies that result from the collaboration of multiple laboratories, authorship order can sometimes be difficult to ascribe. Identifying who did what provides greater transparency to the process of assigning authorship.
In the same Nature Editorial, new responsibilities were announced for 'senior authors'. These responsibilities include ensuring that the original data described in the study are preserved and retrievable for reanalysis, confirming that the data presented in the manuscript are representative of the original data collected, and anticipating and minimizing any obstacles to the sharing of data, reagents, materials or algorithms described in the published work. For collaborative studies, at least one senior author who represents their group must assume these responsibilities for their contributions to the study. Often the 'corresponding author' is the laboratory chief and is thus in a position of authority to speak for others in their group. But this is not always the case. Sometimes the laboratory head, acting as a mentor, will assign 'corresponding authorship' to another author as training toward the development of independent research career skills. However, the responsibilities outlined above would remain with the most senior researcher of the group, who is not necessarily the corresponding author.

NPG policies on authorship.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 26, 2009
Categories: Authorship | Permalink | Comments (0)

The June issue of Nature Reviews Genetics (10, 351; 2009) features an interview with Kevin Campbell of the University of Iowa, one of the joint winners of the 2009 March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology. The other winner is Louis Kunkel of Harvard Medical School and The Children's Hospital, Boston. The researchers were honoured for their pioneering work in identifying the genes and proteins that are disrupted in muscular dystrophies. The prize recognizes researchers whose work has contributed to understanding the science that underlies birth defects.
Nature Reviews Genetics talked to the winners about their scientific careers and their views on biomedical research. The interview with Louis Kunkel will appear in next month's (July's) issue; here are a couple of the questions that Louisa Flintoft asked Keven Campbell:

Your bachelor's degree is in physics. Have you found that useful as a biologist?

The problem-solving aspect is what I find really helpful today. Especially early on in your career I think it's important not to be too specialized, and having a diverse scientific background is really helpful. You never know where a research topic is going to lead.

Does the media report disease-related research in a useful way?

The media is really important in getting information to the general public. Sometimes it gets inflated and that's scary. Even scientifically I think we're having a problem. If you search for "rescue for mdx" there are so many papers, but in most cases those are not going to be directly translated into therapies. I think that leads to a lot of people thinking that these diseases are about to be cured. I try to make sure that we don't do that.

See the current (June) issue of Nature Reviews Genetics for the full interview.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 25, 2009
Categories: Awards | 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. Readers are welcome to join any of these discussions by visiting the links provided. The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Language evolves quickly, but some novel words may never appear in a scientific manuscript. Craig Rowell has a "rant about a recent set of buzzwords that some like to throw-around like so many tomatoes at the Valencia Tomato Festival. They are off-line and bandwidth. As in, “let’s talk about this off-line” -used during a meeting when a topic that is not relevant to the topic of the meeting is beginning to take up too much time (formally known as – let’s talk about this later). Bandwidth refers to someones availability to do work with respect to time – “does Craig have the bandwidth to finish his part of the project as well as a new meaningless task or does he need help?” Let me be clear . . . I AM NOT A COMPUTER!" At the end of his post, Craig adds a helpful note: "35,000 foot view and granular are real buzzwords, Hubble-view and Nano-perspective as well as Nano-mangement© (not listed) are not (yet). :)".
Turning from extreme words to extreme mammals - Caryn Shechtman posts about an exhibition with that title (extreme mammals, that is, not words!) that has just opened at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, featuring animals that “depart significantly from the normal, average, or ancestral condition.” Divided into nine sections, the exhibit examines extant and extinct mammals that have unusual body features and those that exist in geographical isolation or extreme climates by featuring fossils, reconstructions, computer interactives and hands-on activities. More details at Caryn's post.
Nature Networkers have been weighing in this week on the topic of freedom of (scientific) speech, in light of a recent case in which a science writer is being sued personally for remarks he made in a newspaper article. One aspect of this case relvant to the scientists and science communicators who use Nature Network is how informed they are about the potential legal risks of what they might write, whether informally online or in a publication. You are welcome to join this discussion, in the Nature Opinion forum.
I was interested reading the discussion arising from a stimulating post by David Basanta, who attended a talk that asks a provocative question: "why don't tumours grow in muscles?" The ensuing online discussion is a great example of the educative potential of scientific blogging and demonstrates the interest of looking at a question from interdisciplinary perspectives. Such a discussion, of course, requires people with the right expertise who are prepared to share it. Rather unlike Noah Gray's illustrated post on "the science news cycle" which, if nothing else, might raise a smile.

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 22, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

The European Commission Gender Challenge in Research Funding report discussed in one of today's Nature Editorials (Nature 459, 299; 2009 - free to access online) "was written by a 17-strong expert group chaired by a woman and containing five men. That male minority is an inversion of the usual pervasive and regrettable imbalance of the sexes in European peer-review structures. Only in those countries that have been most proactive in supporting women's careers — Finland, Sweden and Norway — do women constitute more than 40% of 'gatekeeper' scientific boards, according to 2004 data, the latest available, quoted in the report.
Many leading funders are trying to do better. Germany's DFG, for example, has set equal opportunities as a statutory objective since 2002, with working groups targeting the various factors that undermine that goal. But Germany's overall performance is depressing for its women — and for its men too, who presumably want to see the country make good use of its talent. Between 1999 and 2004, the proportion of women acting as peer reviewers for the DFG rose — from 6% to 9%. Of all European Union countries, Germany has the lowest representation of women in the highest academic positions, despite an equal representation of men and women as graduates.
The pressures on women who want to excel in science are acute everywhere. This is particularly true for mothers of young children who, even in the most progressive countries, are generally expected to take on most of the responsibility for home and family while still being expected to write proposals, publish papers and spend long hours in the lab. Added to that is the committee work. Ironically, being a member of a minority that is targeted for positive action can lead to endless requests for advice and involvement, which cut even further into research time.
Many of these pressures will ease only when fathers regard themselves as having equal responsibility for parenting. But employers also have a responsibility to assist parents. Another report published last week by the EC, Women in Science and Technology — Creating Sustainable Careers, highlights the ways in which Europe's employers provide support. These include such prosaic but essential initiatives as ensuring that important meetings are timed to allow parents to leave the office as necessary, and not overlooking those who work part-time when it comes to assigning senior responsibilities.
According to the report, the Netherlands is a notable hotspot for promoting women's interests. Over the past ten years, the funding agency NWO has given Dutch universities incentives to award senior lectureships and professorships to high-achieving women, without branding them as tokens.
Such collaboration, perhaps with sticks as well as carrots, between funding agencies and the institutions they fund, is essential if robust change is to come more rapidly. Without it, Europe will continue to include far too few countries that, for ambitious women scientists, are good places from which to start."

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

A court case between one of Britain's leading science writers and an organization representing alternative medicine practitioners is causing renewed concern about the potential for libel laws to stifle debate on scientific issues (Nature News, 13 May 2009).
Simon Singh, author of Fermat's Last Theorem and other books, is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association over an article he wrote for the Guardian newspaper last year. In an unusual move, the BCA is suing Singh personally, and not the newspaper.
The case has international implications for science reporting and journalism more generally, warns Singh. It comes against a background of increasing concern in many quarters that litigants opt for British courts as they are seen as easier places to get a favourable result; a problem labeled 'libel tourism'.
Neil White, a partner at legal firm Taylor Wessing (which undertakes some legal work for Nature), says the case should serve as a warning not just for science writers, but more generally for scientists and all who write about similar topics. "I think there is a degree of ignorance on the part of scientists about libel law, particularly UK libel law," he says. "I do think there are some scientists who are rather arrogant about it, and think because they're scientists with a view to express on a matter of potentially considerable importance they can say what they please. That is just not the case. The lesson I think they need to learn is you can usually say what you want to say in a way that doesn't expose you to litigation, by taking a bit of care and taking a bit of advice."
Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, UK, says, "Recent history shows quite clearly there is a danger people can be silenced by the financial and legal might of their opponents."
What are your views? Please let us know, either by commenting at the Nature Network Opinion forum or at the Nature News website (where there is a comment in favour of the BCA, as well as others taking the opposite view). How confident are you about expressing a scientific opinion publicly? How well-informed are you about the legal consequences of what you might write on your blog or for a publication?
See also this Nature Network blog post by Stephen Curry and this alert at Nature Network by Brian Clegg .
Readers' comments at Nature Network or here will be considered for publication in Nature as Correspondence.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 20, 2009
Categories: Communication, Ethics, Public and media, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not all financial interests in drug discovery are detrimental, and many are essential for its success. But focusing on perceived conflicts of interest may cause true scientific corruption to go unnoticed, an opinion expressed in the latest Editorial in Nature Medicine (15, 463 - 464; 2009).
The Editorial describes how a laboratory finding is transformed into a new medicine, involving numerous steps and stakeholders. "In a simple case, a researcher discovers and publishes a new target, and an academic or industrial organization decides to commercialize it. After an initial period of development, this organization licenses the target or a lead compound to a pharmaceutical company with a view to take it to the market. The company sponsors clinical trials, the results of which are also published and evaluated by regulatory agencies that ultimately approve the new therapy for its use in humans. The company then promotes its new product to claim the largest possible share of the market. In an ideal scenario, a postmarketing follow-up of the compound gives the regulators further evidence to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the new medicine."
Money changes hands many times during this process, at various stages and raising several aspects of competing financial interests. The most negative effect of these, of course, is exposing patients to unsafe drugs. Competing financial interests are handled in a range of ways: some institutions have banned staff from consulting for or from owning stock; laws prevent exchange of gifts between doctors and companies; journals often ask authors to declare fiunancial interests as a prerequisite for publication and may ban scientists who report a financial interest from writing reviews or editorials.
The Editorial goes on to argue that it is seldom acknowledged that not all competing financial interests are equally insidious -- some are even necessary for the success of translational research. "Scientists who share their expertise with a company and clinicians who agree to conduct a clinical trial have to be compensated for their work in the same way that every other professional ought to be rewarded for his or her labor. To suggest that they should make their contributions freely is disingenuous, and to argue that they should not get involved at all can only slow the development of new medicines. Academic institutions and their employees must be free to benefit financially from the fruits of the advances made in their laboratories".
A main fear of competing financial interests is that they could lead to misconduct whenever a researcher has a financial incentive to fabricate data. The Editorial proposes that the focus of concern should move away from whether competing financial interests are publicly declared, and towards exposing and punishing scientific misconduct. ..." most financial interests do not represent a conflict as a matter of course and that the influence of money is negative only if it leads to scientific fraud—the one infidel we need to burn at the crusader's stake."

The full Nature Medicine Editorial, which discusses other aspects of this subject, can be found in the May issue of the journal.
Competing financial interest policies of the Nature journals.
Nature Medicine website.
Nature Medicine guide to authors.
Spoonful of Medicine, the Nature Medicine blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 19, 2009
Categories: Competing interests, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Chemistry's second issue is now out. The research articles cover a wide range of topics, including catalysis, mesoporous materials, synthetic methodology, anion transport and DNA conductivity. In addition, there is a Commentary about pre-university chemical education, a Review article on Möbius aromaticity and a Thesis article that looks at alternative forms of the periodic table.
May article - free online access:
In 'Activating catalysts with mechanical force', Alessio Piermattei, S. Karthikeyan and Rint P. Sijbesma of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems, Eindhoven University of Technology (Nature Chemistry 1, 133 - 137; 2009), discuss the potential applications of mechanochemical catalyst activation in transduction and amplification of mechanical signals, as well as the promise of mechanically initiated polymerizations as a novel repair mechanism in self-healing materials.
Submit to Nature Chemistry
The Nature Chemistry editors are accepting papers in all areas of chemistry, as well as submissions detailing multidisciplinary research performed at the interface of chemistry and other scientific fields such as biology, materials science, nanotechnology and physics.
Authors are encouraged to submit their latest work via the journal's online submission system.
Aims and scope of the journal.
View the guide for authors.
About the Nature Chemistry editors.
Nature Chemistry currently has a special introductory offer for subscribers of 25% off the usual personal subscription rate.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 18, 2009
Categories: Publications | 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. Readers are welcome to join any of these discussions by visiting the links provided. The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Jennifer Rohn explodes four myths about editors in her "belated" defence of the profession at Mind the Gap blog. Tune in to the numerous opinions (some by journal editors, some not) about whether editors are scientifically out of touch, are unable to select unbiased peer-reviewers, cannot over-rule a reviewer's assessment, or cannot judge a submission as well as an active researcher could do. "....when I flipped through the revised manuscript personally", writes Jennifer, "I saw that the authors – as many do – had simply lied. Yes, they had fiddled with a few words in the offending sentence, but had not addressed the underlying concern with new experimental data as requested, even though their breezy rebuttal letter certainly implied that they had. Professional editors are less likely to side automatically with authors precisely because they are not peers. They are trained to be incredibly skeptical of claims."

Should I include my blog in my c.v.?, asks Roberto Keller. "I recently asked an adviser in the grants and fellowship department of my institution (who was slightly younger than myself) those questions. Her reply was “A blog? Oh, so you are interested in switching from research to science popularization.” Is the blog stigma that pervasive even among young people?" The ensuing discussion provides various perspectives, on behalf of employers and employees, and I think quite useful to anyone facing this question.

The Tomorrow's Giants conference is part of an exciting week of celebrations for the Royal Society’s 350th anniversary celebrations, including an extended Summer Science Exhibition, at The Southbank Centre, London. A new Nature Network forum is an opportunity for you to contribute to the agenda by discussing the issues you feel will impact on the shape of science in the next 10-50 years. The Tomorrow’s Giants one-day conference will be held in London on Thursday 1st July 2010, co-hosted by the Royal Society and Nature, bringing together scientists and policymakers to gather scientists’ visions of the next 50 years: what is required to enable academic achievement of the highest quality, putting funding issues to one side and focusing on the concepts and practicalities? What will science be like in 10 years’ time? In 50 years? What are the main goals and challenges? What will be the vision of the future for science in 2050? Jason Codrington and colleagues look forward to your views at the Tomorrow's Giants forum.

Matt Brown reports on Nature's debate earlier this week 'Racing to the Moon', which appropriately began at exactly the same moment that the Atlantis space shuttle roared into the Florida skies, on its way to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. Read on at the London blog. Discussions on the topic continue next week (27 May) at a free event at the House of Commons, Space: Exporation and Explotation. The event is organized by the Insitute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the British Parliamentary Space Committee. Branwen Hide has the details. The next Nature debate, by the way, will be held on 8 June, and will address whether the next century will be dominated by biology, in the way that physics has dominated the past 100 years. Plenty to argue about, at The Big Science Debate: A Biological Century?

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

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

The Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation is the first publicly funded UK centre dedicated to synthetic biology – the science of designing and building biological components that can perform useful functions, such as producing drugs or biofuels, according to an online Nature news story (published 12 May; doi:10.1038/news.2009.464).
From the news story: "One of the centre's senior staff is sociologist Nikolas Rose, director of the BIOS Research Centre for the study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society at the London School of Economics. Rose says he aims to make public engagement a key priority for the centre, to avoid a repeat of the public outcry that genetically engineered foods provoked across Europe. "The usual position of the social scientists it to be right downstream, this is a rare opportunity to work right at the beginning," says Rose.
Rose's team will train graduate students and staff to consider the social and ethical implications of their research. He says the centre will also work with government and industry to develop a suitable framework to regulate the products of synthetic biology, and to make intellectual-property claims.
"If the Imperial centre works, it's going to be setting the standard for this," says Pam Silver, a synthetic-biology researcher at Harvard University. Silver is in the process of setting up a synthetic-biology centre at Harvard University, but "so far there's been no real discussion of social scientists' role", she says.
The need for researchers to consider the societal and ethical dimensions of their work in synthetic biology was a key recommendation of a report published by the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering on 6 May. Richard Kitney, a bioengineer at Imperial, who chaired the working group behind the report, is co-director of the new centre, along with Paul Freemont, from Imperial's molecular biosciences division."

Nature journals' author polices on bioethics.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 14, 2009
Categories: Biosecurity, Ethics, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group is pleased to announce the launch of the Lipidomics Gateway - a free, comprehensive resource for researchers interested in lipid biology. The site enables users to stay abreast of developments each month from across the field, and explore the rich information collections, tools and resources from the LIPID MAPS consortium. Each month it is updated with specially written content from Nature Publishing Group editors, including research highlights, news, events and a growing research library.
The LIPID MAPS (Lipid Metabolites and Pathways Strategy) consortium is a multi-institutional effort to further our understanding of lipid metabolism and the role lipids play in diseases such as diabetes, stroke, and cancer. The consortium takes a systems biology approach using the mouse macrophage as a model system, and provides tools and resources for the wider community.

Lipidomics Gateway update (new content added each month).
Events calendar - a directory of meetings, conferences and events of interest to lipid researchers.
Lipidomics Gateway resources.
Lipidomics Gateway search.
About the Lipidomics Gateway.
About LIPID MAPS - the consortium, key people, core labs and bridges.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 13, 2009
Categories: Partners, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

In its Editorial this month, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (16, 453; 2009) looks at the benefits of 'local' science. "How close to publication do you need to be before you present the exciting findings from your laboratory to your field at large in the forum of one of the big internationally attended meetings and symposia? .... In particularly competitive areas, people prefer to wait until close to or after publication before they will talk about recent work in the context of the global community that composes the field at large. At the opposite extreme, laboratory meetings and lecture series at specific institutions provide a more closeted environment for the discussion of new work. However, as travel plans are made for meeting others in the field face to face, it's worth remembering the value of the 'in between', those meetings that bring scientists from the wider local area together to discuss a broader range of topics."
The Editorial goes on to discuss various institutions and academies in its own patch, New York, that organize meetings to bring scientists from local research centres together for interdisciplinary discussions and to encourage a range of collaborations and projects.

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology journal home page.
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology guide to authors.
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology focuses and supplements.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 12, 2009
Categories: Communication, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Nature Medicine Podcast reports on cutting-edge news in biomedical research from around the globe, featuring interviews with experts and a review of the advances that scientists hope to translate from bench to bedside. Tune into the podcast to learn about breakthroughs and policy developments in medical research. The presenter, Molly Webster, began her broadcasting career at National Public Radio's Science Friday, where she is still a guest producer. She also creates shows for The Takeaway, a radio production spearheaded by Public Radio International, and writes for various scientific and environmental magazines and journals.
To subscribe for free to the Nature Medicine Podcast copy and paste this URL into iTunes or your preferred media player.
The archive page for Nature Medicine podcasts list all programmes from January 2009 to the present edition (currently 7 May 2009, in which you can listen in to find out how scientists are overcoming disabilities in the lab and for a recap of the biggest headlines in biomedicine).
Nature Medicine Podcast: current edition.
Nature Medicine journal home page.
Nature Medicine guide to authors.
About Nature Medicine.
All podcasts at nature.com.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 11, 2009
Categories: Author services, Communication, 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. Readers are welcome to join any of these discussions by visiting the links provided. The Nature Network week column is archived here.

"While it is tempting to use these types of networking devices for academic applications, the fact is they are easily exploited for a variety of purposes. No one should ever trust an external site, especially one that does not verify who people are. The fact is, people lie, and the internet – including Facebook, Wikipedia, blogs, Twitter, and all other unmonitored, user-modified sites – should always be viewed with suspicion." This view, expressed at Nature's News website by C. Honeycutt, is discussed in the Scientific researchers and web 2.0 forum, in an online conversation between people who may not be who they say they are, on topics ranging from identify theft to "fake" articles in journals.

Bibliographic negligence is the topic raised by Frank Norman at the Citation in science forum. How often do authors fail to cite relevant work, and whose responsibility is it to ensure that they do? Richard Gallagher, Editor of The Scientist, is quoted as stating: “the openness gifted us by the Internet is revealing the lax standards that have been in place all the time”. What do you think?

The Science policy in the UK forum is always worth checking out for news relevant to science communication and authorship - by no means limited to UK readers. This week's posts include a job opening (chief executive of the Society of Biology), news of the publication of the submissions to the UK's 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, cancellation of Genome Canada's stem-cell project, and a report about the student experience and study hours. Branwen Hide and Gillian Pepper provide a consistently informative and topical forum of news and information.

if you're a blogger, now is the time to submit your favourite post or two to Open Laboratory 2009, the annual book of the best of science blogs. Corie Lok provides the news and links for submissions. Probably best not to use the template for publishing high-profile neuroscience papers, kindly provided by Noah Gray.

If pictures are more your scene than words, Matt Brown posts a round-up of imagery including the latest Darwin birthday effort, a photography competition run by a group of life-science organizations looking for entries that "encapsulate the theme of the exploration and investigation of nature". Deadline for entries, 11 October 2009.

Finally for this week's edition, Henry Gee provides another sparkling insight into the editorial process at Nature, What I think about when I think about manuscripts. A highly enjoyable account, particularly useful for anyone thinking of submitting to Nature for the first time as a refreshing companion to the more formal advice provided at the journal's website on getting published in a Nature journal.

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 May 08, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cross-posted at Nature Network.
Its attack on poverty and arrogance is what makes C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’ lecture relevant 50 years on, according to a Nature Editorial published today (Nature 459, 10; 2009). Three Essays in the same issue of the journal look back on the lecture and its effects. In Dissecting The Two Cultures (Nature 459, 32; 2009), Martin Kemp contends that the real enemy of understanding is not the ‘two cultures’ identified by Snow, but specialization in all disciplines. Georgina Ferry (Nature 459, 34; 2009) suggests that today’s division lies between optimists and pessimists rather than between scientific and literary intellectuals. And Nature’s Books and Arts Editor, Joanne Baker, introduces a passage from Extract from Science and Government by C. P. Snow (Nature 459, 36; 2009). This month's Editorial in Nature Physics (5, 309; 2009) also discusses the impact of the 'two cultures' concept.
The boundaries between the arts and the sciences — and between the sciences themselves — that Snow identified have long since been removed. But other challenges remain. Snow would not have approved of the narrow-mindedness of some researchers who consider the significant costs of their work to be no more than their due from society, nor of their blind resentment when its value is questioned. What Snow urged in particular was an awareness of the problems of poor countries — and of putting scientists at the disposal of solving those problems, for reasons both moral and strategic. The disparities between rich and poor countries may have shrunk since Snow’s time, but are still unacceptably large. Snow’s overriding message — whether about awareness of artistic and scientific experience, or about the applied sciences, or about ‘remediable suffering’ — was that the best and the brightest should not be blinkered. That message still has resonance.
All three C. P. Snow articles in this issue of Nature and linked here are free to access online until Thursday 14 May (the Editorial is permanently free access), so let us know your views on the opinions expressed in them. As usual, contributions to the Nature Network online forum will be considered for publication in Nature as Correspondence contributions.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 07, 2009
Categories: Communication, NPG special content, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a summmary of some 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:

Sceptical Chymist: Why Johathan Clayden became a chemist.

The Great Beyond: Update on the controversial change of rules for grant applications to the UK Engineering and physical science research council.

Nautilus: Nature Structural and Molecular Biology on the NPG press office service for authors.

The Niche: NIH issues draft guidelines for stem-cell research.

In the Field: Quirin Schiermeier blogs from the 2009 European Geosciences Union conference.

The Great Beyond: "Voodoo” no more.

Climate feedback: Is climate change research really social science?

Sceptical Chymist: Questions to and answers from Alan Aspuruguzik and Shana Kelley.

The Great Beyond: Rally in support of research on live animals.

Previous nature.com blogs round-ups.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 06, 2009
Categories: nature.com blogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Methods follows in the footsteps of Nature by ushering in an online methods section, fully integrated with the paper, for all original research articles. Details of the service described in the journal's current (May) Editorial (Nature Methods 6, 313; 2009), and the editors welcome comments on the service at Methagora, the Nature Methods blog.
Daniel Evanko, Chief Editor of Nature Methods, writes: "We are relieved that we will no longer have to relegate important methodological details to Supplementary Information and we expect our authors will appreciate being able to include more citations in their papers. A potential downside of this change is that the print and online versions of papers have quite different levels of methodological detail. What do you think? Those of you who are online readers may not have very strong opinions on this, but what about our print readers? If anyone who regularly receives a print copy of the journal is reading this, we would like your feedback as well."
From the Editorial: "We expect that our readers and authors will appreciate the advantages that Online Methods bring to Nature Methods. With this change effectively increasing the length of Nature Methods papers—and more than doubling the length of Brief Communications—our authors will have far more space to communicate their new methodologies and cite previous work. But by limiting the increase in length to the methods section we continue to emphasize the value of succinct scientific reports. The body of the paper will remain short enough that casual readers can easily obtain the important information. The details required for more in-depth understanding or reproduction of the work will be easily accessible if needed. We hope our authors and readers are as excited by this change as we are."

Nature Methods journal website.
Nature Methods guide to authors.
Nature's formats for methods.
Methods in full, the Editorial announcing Nature's introduction of this service (Nature 445, 684; 2007).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 05, 2009
Categories: Author services, Data availability, Format, Policies | Permalink | Comments (0)

In its May Editorial, Nature Photonics (3, 237; 2009) describes some of the ways in which the Nature journals combat scientific misconduct and practices such as 'guest' authorship. Part of the Editorial concerns plagiarism:

"Many forms of plagiarism exist, but the goal is generally the same — to garner false or undue credit. Plagiarism sometimes involves reuse of another author's published work, but it is commonly thought that the most typical tool of the plagiarist is self-plagiarism: the reuse of substantial parts of an author's own published work, particularly without appropriate referencing, and less commonly, duplicate publication, in which the results are recycled in their entirety.
The peer-review process provides a net for catching offenders, but it cannot provide a fail-safe barrier. As a result, Nature Photonics is now starting to use the plagiarism-detection software CrossCheck, which makes comparative checks between provided manuscripts and those previously published and in an existing database. Any manuscript that seems to show an abnormally high match will be immediately investigated. Unfortunately, plagiarism can also occur without verbatim duplication of words or data. And it is here that the lines between normal and acceptable activity and plagiarism become smeared, and the likelihood of detection and punitive repercussions is diminished.
Using another researcher's arguments and logic, even if the text is not identical, without due reference is intellectual plagiarism. This type of plagiarism can be subtle and as simple as not including a reference to a highly relevant previous paper. Citation-related plagiarism, whether it is intentional, or due to gross negligence, can give an untruthful impression of precedence, reassigning credit from the original discoverer to another person.
When reporting scientific messages, it is an author's responsibility to find and acknowledge the critically relevant literature, or at least to have endeavoured to do so with rigour. Failing this can result in falsely apportioned claims, albeit caused by negligence.
If plagiarism is suspected in research results published by us, it is our policy to conduct an immediate investigation and if deemed appropriate to contact the author's institute and funding agencies and consider a formal retraction of the paper. Although it is often the first authors who have historically borne the brunt of confirmed misconduct allegations, our editorial policies highlight the serious responsibilities of all coauthors: "submission to a Nature journal is taken by the journal to mean that all the listed authors have agreed to the content". It is unreasonable to expect each author to be responsible for every aspect of the paper, but it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to manage the understanding that all authors are expected to have made reasonable attempts to check the findings submitted to a journal for publication."

The full text of this Nature Photonics Editorial.
Nature Photonics guide to authors.
About the Nature Photonics editors.
Nature journals policy on plagiarism.
Nature journals policy on authorship.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 04, 2009
Categories: Authorship, Ethics, Policies | 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 and communicators.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

"The next time you are reviewing a paper and forcing yourself to re-read the lifeless prose for the umpteenth time, please don’t be tempted to fast-forward through the Materials and Methods. Give them all the attention they deserve. And then some. And then some more." So writes Stephen Curry, telling a long tale of frustration at lack of sufficient detail in a published paper and the after-effects, in a post with the ironic title "I'm reviewing the situation".

As reported in a previous column, Martin Fenner recently created a survey to ask scientists what they think about author identifiers (broadly, a unique web address or other identifier that would allow one to be uniquely associated with one's work rather than the present confusion that arises with duplicate names and so on). Martin has now complied the results, which are fascinating in themselves -- and which can be viewed and discussed at Martin's Nature Network blog. Martin has had a busy week, as he continues his series of interviews by putting Richard Grant under the spotlight. Richard has recently begun working for the literature-filtering service Faculty of 1000 (F1000), and takes the opportunity to tell Nature Network readers about the company and its future plans.

Moving from identifiers to role models, Ruth Wilson asks whether we run the risk of role models being too elite and high-powered to be truly inspirational? Ruth asks Nature Network users about their role models (if any) and whether a bad role model can be a good thing. Take a look at the ensuing discussion.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is holding a public consultation on the ethical issues raised by online healthcare, telemedicine and commercial medical profiling technologies such as DNA testing and body imaging, writes Gillian Pepper. The council would like to hear your views, and those of others, by 21 July. Details at Gillian's post, including links to some newspaper coverage of the exercise.

Publish an article with the title "End the university as we know it", as the New York Times did the other day, and you can guarantee a response. Nature Network users provided some stimulating thoughts on the piece (by a member of a department of religion, as it happens) -- particularly Craig Rowell, who likes the proposed restructuring of departments, and Pamela Ronald, who approves of increased collaboration if not of abolishing tenure.

Whether scientists should speak out in public about their work and values is debated by Piero Visconti in the Science in Italy forum. Piero believes that scientists should have a say in the decision-making processes for which they have expertise, as scientific advice can prevent some of the negative consequences of leaving decisions to policy-makers who aren't expert or who have other interests. Visit Nature Network Italy to contribute your thoughts.

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 May 01, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)