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.

Anna Kushnir continues to find out about contracts for government-funded research. "Writing a proposal is no different than writing a grant, it turns out. You tell the funding body (in this case, the FDA) how you are going to approach the problem, lay out the experimental detail and list alternatives, should obstacles be met. You then describe how you will process the data once it’s acquired and what it will mean, in the grand scheme of things."

To coincide with the Science Online conference, Matt Brown is organizing a couple of events similar to those of last year. One is a pub crawl on Thursday 20 August around four central London pubs, each with a scientific connection. The second is a guided tour of some of London's scientific museums and attractions on Friday 21 August. Matt writes: "I’ve still to plan out the route, but the tour will probably take in such venues as the Wellcome Collection, Royal College of Surgeons Museum and the South Kensington Museums. I’ll also point out sites of historic scientific interest as we go round. The tour will be free (including entry into all venues) and you can join at any point. All you’ll need is a Zone 1 travelcard or Oyster ticket." More details are in the Science Online London forum. Register interest in either event by sending Matt an email . In the meantime, if you're in London, you can take a look at some science-art: "carbon rapture", as reported by Chloe Sharrocks.

If you already blog or are interested in giving it a try, and live in New York, Nature Network is looking for contributors to its New York hub. More details here, from Caryn Shechtman.

The journal Cell has announced a project called "article of the future" and has displayed two article prototypes on its website for reader comments. In the Good Paper Journal Club, Martin Fenner asks whether new article formats that move away from the traditional print format are better suited to communicate the message of the paper. Examples include the use of audio and video, and different versions (basic and extended) of the materials and methods section. Futher discussion on the broader role of the "paper" is in the forum Scientific Findings in a Digital Age: What is the Genuine Article? , based on issues addressed by John Willbanks at the British Library earlier this week, as part of the Talk Science series.

This weekly column will be taking a break. 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 July 24, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

Teisha Rowland provides her perspective on the oft-discussed topic of why scientists blog in the science blogging forum. She writes: "many of the stem cell blogs I’ve seen focus (often entirely) on stem cell news and politics, while not going into the biology enough to quench my curiosity. This originally inspired me to create my blog; I wanted to explore the topics less visited by most stem cell blogs (i.e. history and the biological details) and in this way educate myself more as well as make this information more accessible to a wide audience." Another perspective on science blogging is provided in this stimulating post by Anna Kushnir.

Metrics are in the frame again, as Bart Penders argues in the citation in science forum that despite their many flaws, scientists have to take them seriously. Other views follow.

Massimo Pinto comments on Italy's decision to "outsource" its grant peer-review process. It's bordering on humiliation, he writes, but necessary. Roberto Cerbino adds that it is "he first step toward a more intelligent organization of peer review procedures in Italy." Join their discussion at the Nature Network Italy forum. A different aspect of peer-review is hotly debated as a result of a post by Martin Fenner, who muses on whether companies and organisations would pay journals for "peer-review information". Whatever one may think of that idea, peer reviewers' reports should be kept confidential, writes Roger Macy in the Nature Opinion forum discussion arising from a recent Nature Essay in which Toby Murcott argued for journalists' access to peer-reviewers' deliberations.

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 July 17, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

Martin Fenner this week provides a recipe for receiving journal tables of contents (TOCs) automatically. Among other tips, he explains how RSS feeds can be used to set up a web page with all the journal TOCs relevant to a group of co-workers, or share just the articles of interest using a social bookmarking site. And on the topic of web tools, Richard Grant shares the initial results of his poll about scientists' use of Twitter, a popular microblogging service.

If you wonder what a science consultant does to apply for a contract from the US government, look no further than Anna Kushnir's post about her new job. "The process of winning government contracts is not easy and it’s not fast, but the pay-off could be huge, especially for a small company such as the one I work for. Contracts can take as little as a few months (or even weeks) to years to complete, with compensation ranging from a few thousand dollars to millions", she writes.

"Adverjournalism" is decried by Craig Rowell, who cites a journalistic article about pharmaceutical research that mainly serves to advertise a company's programme. How common is this practice?, asks Craig - who also notes an associated issue - sensationalism - from some press reports earlier in the week.

Best-practice for journals in their formatting of online-only Supplementary Information is raised this week by Stephen Curry, and a feisty debate follows his post (in which I confess to being a protagonist). Feel free to weigh in on this important topic: to what extent is SI an integral part of a paper, or part of a wider universe of data and resources?

How can professional women scientists support younger women in their careers if they themselves do not yet have tenure? Deborah Yoder-Hines was surprised at the answer she received to this question when she asked it at a conference session. She goes on to ask members of the Women in Science forum to suggest additional ways to support women scientists in their early careers, even if they are not in an ideal position themselves.

I, Science magazine is one of the latest groups at Nature Network, created by Mico Tatalovic. I, Science is Imperial College’s award-winning popular science magazine, mainly run by the MSc Science Communication students.

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 July 10, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

Ruth Wilson is going to Istanbul later this month to give a talk at the Equal Opportunities Conference. She'll speak about the steps she and her colleagues at the UK Resource Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology have taken to help women scientists connect online. To gather information for her talk, she asks Nature Network users for their views and experience of whether blogging, twittering, and other social media help women’s careers in science, engineering, technology. Is this male-dominated area any less so in online environments? Are there online facilities or developments that would help women wanting to start/develop their careers? Ruth welcomes your views at the Women in Science forum (views from men are as welcome as those from women).

Do we need a scientific literature? The answer might seem obvious, but Bob O'Hara gets to the basics of "why we consider peer-reviewed research so important". It's a very well-argued post, covering access to the literature itself and to what it says once you have access to it. Unusually for a blog post, a diverse range of commenters broadly agree with it, in a discussion of a range of "accessibility" issues. Please join in.

Cath Ennis gets to grips with the writing style itself. "It began with the phrase “The human genome is a motley harlequin”, and became even more eccentric as it progressed. It was wonderful stuff. I loved it. But I knew I couldn’t use it. A little part of me died as I took out my red pen and rewrote his words in a more conventional academic style." Read on at Cath's blog post 'Resistance is futile', which refers to Jennifer Rohn's stimulating post about "the untold narrative of the precise dryness of scientific papers".

The writing process will be further dissected at Second Life on Tuesday (7 July), where visitors can join Tom Levenson, professor of science writing at MIT, who will be talking about his new book, Newton and the Counterfeiters. Professor Levenson will be taking questions from the audience on the book, his career as a writer, or anything else. See Joanna Scott's blog for more details of the event itself and of how to set up an account on Second Life.

Dara Sosulski picks up a bit of pseudoscientific news education, in a week when the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists has been putting science news reporting in the spotlight. There's a discussion in the Nature Opinion forum about Nature' s special issue to accompany the conference - a collection of articles ranging from the evolution of the science journalist from cheerleader to watchdog, to how blogging by audiences at scientific conferences is challenging traditional newspaper reporting. Another aspect of science journalism - scaremongering - was at the heart of the most recent Boston "Skeptics in the pub" meeting, explosively described by Robert Pinsonneault.

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 July 03, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

Registration is now open for the Science Online London 09 conference this summer. Act soon if you would like to attend, as there are only 150 places, 100 of which have already gone. A list of the attendees (so far) is here. The organizers have been collecting ideas for topics for discussion over the past few weeks, and will be announcing the programme soon.

Branwen Hide was asked the other day how she would set up a research base in the UK if she could start with a blank slate. She passes the question to Nature Network readers: "If you had ultimate power what would you do? If you want you can start now and talk about changes you would make and things you would like to see." Visit the UK science policy forum to add your answer! (Mine is there.) Moving from the UK to the US, Michael Nestor says that we need a national consortium of science, and for universities to be parallel distributed processors. Read on, and contribute.

Maria Nowotny, a researcher in materials science, enjoys peer-reviewing papers and acting as a guest editor for journals - so much so that she's interested in an editing career. An online discussion follows of the qualifications and experience needed for this role.

If you're a scientist who writes, and you like travelling to the remotest of places, Steffi Suhr rounds up current opportunities to visit the Antarctic, complete with insider tips.

How do you fit 4,000 years of science into 400 pages? Historians of science call this the Big Picture problem, and now Patricia Fara has provided the first ever solution – Science: A Four Thousand Year History (Oxford University Press). In a Second Life talk on Tuesday 30 June, she discusses three of the Big Questions she had to confront while she was writing her book – When did science begin? Who did science? How does science change? Some of her answers may be unexpected. More details are here. You may have difficulty attending if you are in Australia, unfortunately, as Craig Rowell reports censorship plans.

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 June 26, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

María José Navarrete-Talloni writes about her involvement in a Chilean organization for scientists called RedCiencia, a web platform for Spanish-speaking scientists from all over the world that promotes funding opportunities and jobs, as well as publishing news and columns (including one by her).

The Semantic Web is based on the relatively straightforward idea that to be able to integrate (link) data on the Web we must have some mechanism for knowing what relationships hold among the data, and how that relates to some “real world” context. Jim Hendler tells us what it is really all about at his Nature Network blog, and how useful technology is ready to be applied in fairly simple ways.

More on technology: what can we do to close the "digital divide" among scientists? Martin Fenner writes that "many if not most scientists are experienced users of computers and the internet, and use email or public databases such as PubMed on a daily basis. But few scientists regularly use Web 2.0 tools, which would include both general tools such as Twitter, FriendFeed or Facebook, as well as tools specifically targeted at scientists (and this would of course include Nature Network)." Some good suggestions for closing the gap follow, both in the post and in the ensuing online discussion.

Mickey Schafer and Linda Cooper discuss whether poor writing can be useful in teaching people how to write well in their scientific papers, in the Good Paper Journal Club.

Happy second birthday to Nature Precedings, a wesite now hosting more than a thousand documents, including several specialized document collections. Hilary Spencer writes that thousands of researchers have signed up to read and view pre-print manuscripts, posters and presentations, and many have posted comments providing feedback on these submissions. Santosh Patnaik assesses usage of the service during its second year. More information and updates are at the Nature Precedings forum.

Streamosphere is the latest web application from Nature Publishing Group. Euan Adie has created a visualisation and aggregation tool that lets you track scientific discussion on the web in real-time. Futher details, with links to the service, are provided at the Nature Publshing Group news forum.

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 June 19, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

Do you deposit your materials and data in a suitable public resource when you write and publish a paper? You should: some of the reasons for doing so are discussed this week by Chris Taylor and Allan Sudlow , in a conversation that contains links to articles explaining why, for those who need convincing.

Gillian Pepper notes that much of the recent House of Lords debate about the contribution of science, technology and engineering to the UK was not about the contribution of these disciplines directly, but about secondary organizations that highlight and facilitate. Would be more interesting, she asks, to discuss specific emerging disciplines and technologies, what they might contribute and how this can be supported?

The United Kingdom is a world leader in measurement, writes Scott Keir – although measurement is not something that’s often talked about. The National Measurement Office is undertaking a consultation exercise looking ahead at the country's needs for measurement infrastructure and standards. What are the priorities for measurement research -- business competitiveness, sustainability, security, other? Should the government invest in new advanced laboratories? What do scientific institutions requirements for measurement technology and expertise? There are other questions at the National Measurement Office website, and there will be a free event on Tuesday 16 June 2009 at the Royal Society, London, to discuss these issues. Futher details are at Scott's post.

Also on the topic of priorities, Branwen Hide posts links to a Foundation for Science and Technology event summary and speeches by Sir Leszek Borysiewicz (Chief Executive of the UK Medical Research Council), Sir John Bell (President of the Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research) and Sir David Cooksey (Chair, Bioscience Innovation and Growth Team,) on the future for medical research in the United Kingdom.

The old question of extrapolating to a general conclusion on the basis of a certain sample size pops up at Raf Aerts's blog. If you want to weigh in, there are a couple of views to choose from - or maybe you will have a different perspective from either.

"Why do we go to conferences?", asks Martin Fenner. Quite a few telling reasons are outlined in the post, along with an update about the Science Online 09 meeting, which Martin is co-organizing.

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 June 12, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

Scientific findings in a digital world: what is the genuine article? A Nature Network forum has been set up to discuss this question in advance of the next British Library Talk Science evening on 22 July 2009, where John Willbanks of Science Commons will speak. Some of the discussion topics include: looking good on paper; video killed the methods section; share and share alike; and on common ground. Please join the forum to contribute your views.

Larry Brownstein presents a fascinating post about Temple Grandin, an animal behavourist who is autistic, a condition which she believes enables her to understand more clearly how animals "see" the world. A film about her life and work is due out later this year.

Suggestions are pouring in for speakers and sessions at the Science Online London conference in August this year. The deadline for you to make yours is 19 June.

Terminologies are in the frame this week, from the sublime to the ridiculous. In the former camp is Jennifer Rohn's post on the convolutions of the geneticist's mindset (Dara Sozulski has some useful names at the ready for any new discoveries, incidentally), and at the opposite end of the spectrum is Cath Ennis's discovery of strange definitions of the word "other". More scientifically, Henry Gee investigates the origins of the inadvisible term "missing link". The use of language, particularly in letters of application, is deconstructed by Research Assistant Audra McKinzie.

Martin Fenner has been looking at the newly announced Google Wave communication tool (not yet available), letting readers know why scientists should be interested in it and how they might use it, with the appropriate extensions.

Two new opportunites were announced on Nature Network during the week, the nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion and the Eppendorf young European investigator of the year award, in partnership with Nature.

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 June 05, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)'s decision to deny unsuccessful applicants the right to re-apply for future grants for a time period, bringing into question the peer-review process, as reported in Nature News online and in Nature 's journal edition, is highlighted at Nature Network in a post by Katherine Haxton about the effect of this policy on a young academic researcher learning how to apply for grants, compared with those who have a longer track record. Further discussion arising from a Nature Editorial is encouraged at the Nature Opinion forum at Nature Network, and researchers who do not agree with the EPSRC policy may sign an online petition to the UK Prime Minister before 17 May. At time of writing this post, nearly 1,500 people have signed.

If you could reshape scientific exchange to meet your needs, what would you change? Would you restructure the format of the journal article? Would you eliminate the article altogether, opting for an open notebook approach? These questions are asked in a meeting report by Caryn Shechtman, but the ensuing discussion to her post is an informative comparison of online protocols websites, the value of collaborative editing for this type of research, and how protocols publication is best organized.

Those in Brisbane and interested in science communication can attend a series of lectures in April and May being organized by William Burns; the speakers will be Dr Joan Leach, a lecturer in the rhetoric of science; and Dr Phil Dowe, associate professor in the philosophy of science. Further details at William's post. And for brushing up your written scientific communication skills, Brian Clegg reviews the new Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors.

Bob O'Hara shares the content of some of his correspondence from a new journal, and provides some seasoned advice on how to respond to calls for submission (or indeed, to calls for applications as Editor in Chief).

For scientists-as-novelists, Jenny Rohn's novel Experimental Heart is the subject of the next Fiction Lab reading group, in London on 7 April. Further details at Jenny's post. And if art is more your scene, try this delightful periodic table of typefaces, courtesy of Scott Keir.

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 March 27, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

Research institutions and universities are slowly beginning to integrate new web tools, such as wikis, into everyday operations, writes Anna Kushnir at the Boston blog. But is use of these tools at odds with institutional policies on record-keeping? Anna looks at the case of electronic lab notebooks, and asks readers about their experience.

Ada Lovelace day, 24 March, is fast approaching, and Ruth Wilson of the UK Resource Centre for woman in science, engineering and technology provides an update of plans and events - in which you can take part. On the subject of Ada Lovelace day and other related topics, Erika Cule discusses the lack of self-belief among PhD students. Could gender be a factor? An interesting online discussion follows.

Brian Clegg brings news of his appearance at the British Science Association's popular science book club in London on 29 April. Details are provided.

How often do you go on the stump, talking about research to people in schools and elsewhere? Henry Gee provides an entertaining account of one of his adventures in outreach, and some unconventional ways to enthuse teenagers about science.

Much has been written in the media and on the Internet in the past week about conflict of interest declarations in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), after remarks from the journal's chief editor were published in the Wall St Journal. Noah Gray has the details, and links to accounts elsewhere, including this one at The Great Beyond, the Nature science news blog.

Martin Fenner provides a useful graphical overview of Reference Manager, available also as a PDF. Well worth a look.

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 March 20, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.

Doing translational research is interdisciplinary in nature. But, Caryn Shechtman asks, have you ever stopped to think about what interdisciplinarity really is? What exactly does that mean? How is it defined? She provides one definition, and muses on the components of a successful interdisciplinary collaboration. Farooq Kahn also writes about interdisciplinarity and complex systems in the context of Darwin's revolution, which continues to illuminate science.

There is much celebration on Nature Network this week about the lifting of the ban on stem-cell research in the United States. Robert Pinsonneault joins the chorus of approval, but writes that it "would seem a bit of a stretch that lifting this ban will magically remove the teeth from the moral opposition; those that are very nervous, indeed outraged, about the prospect of increased use of human embryos for any manner of scientific and medical research." Robert sums up the ethical and social conflicts inherent in this type of research, and why he for one is pleased that work in this discipline will now be moving forward.

Ian Brooks ruminates on career development, linking to several posts by other scientists and scientific users of Nature Network. Ian is a postdoctoral advisor, and write that there are "between 60-90,000 postdoc scientists in the US, and only ~20% will go on to become full time tenure track faculty at major/tier 1 research institutions. About 60% of that 60-90,000 say they want a full tenure/tenure-track position. Spot the disconnect? the biggest reason for this gap is not the quality of scientists nowadays as some assert, it’s just that there aren’t enough jobs: an increasing candidate pool coupled with a lengthening age-of-retirement." One option, he suggests, is to maximize your chances of success by forming an individual development plan and creating a mentoring group. There is useful, and varied, advice in the online discussion following Ian's post. On a similar theme, Branwen Hide writes about a recent talk she gave to PhD and early-career researchers about science policy, and asks users for their advice about making the transition from research.

I quite often post on this blog about meetings in Second Life. I've attended a couple, and the experience has been mixed. Joanna Scott, Nature Publishing Group's expert on the subject, draws attention to a post about "why Second Life sucks and rocks for meetings." Judge for yourself - or rather, wait a bit, because Joanna promises us her own article on the topic soon.

And a Nature Network blog that I've just discovered, a hidden gem, is Chronicle: the online portal of the University of Rural England. For a taste, John Gilbey writes this week about a proud future [to be continued].

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 March 13, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

What makes an "unconference" distinct from a "conference", or indeed an unconference for scientists different from an unconfernce for "geeks", and how do your organize one? These questions are addressed by Ian Mulvany at the researchers and web 2.0 forum. He writes: "One of the goals of an unconference is perhaps to tease apart the complete and finished story, to look at the spaces in between and to be open to blue sky thinking. This may lead to a slight mismatch in expectation about the kind of conversations that the organizers might hope to happen at an unconference, compared to the mode of communication that a scientific group brings with them to the meeting." There are some very thoughtful and helpful responses from scientists who have organized these unusual gatherings, which provide useful tips to anyone considering taking the plunge. A recent unconference was featured on Nautilus earlier this week, complete with excellent examples of scientific creativity and lateral thinking.

In last week's Network round-up I wrote about Eva Amsen's and Katherine Haxton's separate talks about the relationship between science and blogging. This week, Eva has written up her thoughts, partly resulting from the previous week's discussions, in a blog post. After considering various lines of logic, she decides "I’ll talk about older uses of science online vs newer ones, and try to figure out what makes a blog scarier than a lab website. And I’ll get back to why I use Delicious, and what makes it (and Flickr) work, and how that could relate to getting scientists to adopt web 2.0 tools . Sounds good?" Yes, sounds fine to me. I wish I could be there.

Laura Goodall reports that the "newest branch of the British Science Association – SCIENCE LONDON – is hosting its very first event, to be held during the National Science and Engineering Week. (Yes, that’s next week! Looks like we’ve just about managed to organise it in the nick of time!)." The event is to discuss popular science books and will be in London on Wednesday 11 March. More details at the link.

What makes good science into a good science story? So asks Matthew Dalzell, who is preparing a presentation for practicing scientists on what he does as a science writer, "including how an interesting piece of research attracts media attention. While I have some of my own ideas and have heard many presentations on this topic at conferences, it’s always good to hear more opinions. So, what are the key elements of a ‘good’ piece of scientific research that can give it legs as a science story?" Matthew would welcome your views at this Nature Network forum post.

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 March 06, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

The pros and cons of that most informal kind of scientific authorship, blogging, have been mulled over again at Nature Network during the past week. Katherine Haxton summarizes a talk she has just given with the title "Can science blogging enhance your research life?", briefly describing the history of the medium, explaining what a blog is, and identifying several uses of blogging, including researchblogging.org , Jean-Claude Bradley’s Useful Molecules , Nature Network and Rosie Redfield’s Research blogs (links are in Katherine's post, together with a link to her slide presentation). Eva Amsen is similarly preparing a talk and asks Nature Network users what they think are the benefits of blogging to scientists. Some very interesting discussion ensues. I think the clearest contribution to this particular conversation in favour of blogging is from Katherine: "scientists must do better at outreach and communication. Scientists must lower the barriers between their profession and the rest of society. Scientists must get their own positive publicity and information out there because no one else is doing it for us. Blogging is a means of engaging with a wider scientific audience." Indeed, researchers should blog more than they do, according to an Editorial in Nature this week, subject of further discussion at the Nature Opinion forum on Nature Network.

Moving on from blogs but remaining online, Caryn Shechtman reports on a panel session at Columbia University on whether open science is good for research. Open science holds that all data are free and public; and that results and methods can be portrayed in various web-based media. Although there are risks, the consensus of the Columbia panel was that open science has many more advantages than disadvantages, both of which are described further by Caryn in her post, and addressed in the discussion that follows.

Another topic of perennial interest to scientists as authors is that of how their work is cited and how those citations are measured and used to assess their performance. Noah Gray provides an entertaining response, in the form of an intereview with Dr Obvious, to a recent study on the effect of "open access" publication on citation rates. And the advantages and disadvantages of tagging one's citations and libraries are throroughly dissected by Thomas Kluyver in the citation in science forum, and in the web 2.0 forum, in which opposing views expressed in blog posts by David Crotty and William Gunn are featured.

A post in the Nature Publishing Group News forum notes that the first papers in the company's latest journal, Nature Chemistry, are now published online (AOP). Via this forum post, you can read an account by the Chief Editor of the journal, Stuart Cantrill, describing why NPG is launching Nature Chemistry, how the journal might affect the chemistry publishing community, his vision for the journal, how it might be different from other chemistry journals, and more. A free sample copy of the journal can be ordered at the Nature Chemistry website, where you can also submit your work to the journal, and find out more information and news about what's in store when the first printed issue is available in April.

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
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 27, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Martin Fenner, founding president of the Good Paper Journal Club, notes that Vineet Sharma, who joined last week, is the 250th member. This Nature Network group started in March 2008 and had 100 members by May. Martin writes: "We had a number of interesting discussions with close to 50 messages and 36 recommended papers in the Connotea archive." All are welcome to join the group, to post examples of what you consider to be well-written papers, and to join the discussion about what makes a scientific description widely accessible and stimulating. Terminology, of course, is one serious hampering factor in this regard. In a group discussion of a paper on 'natural killer' cells, Linda Cooper is "struck, however, by the use of words such as “natural killer cells”. They sound scary and dangerous. Moreover, these cells have “self-renewing ‘memory’” (a very human concept) that is transferred into “naive” animals that respond with a “viral challenge”. (What is the opposite of “naive” I wonder, and would ‘response’ be more precise and less human-like than “challenge”?) While such terminology may make a story more exciting it could also have unintended consequences."

For those scientists who branch out as book authors, or who enjoy reading books about science written for a general readership, Angela Sani says that although she loves reading such books, many of them are dense, extremely long and can become boring. She asks Nature Network users to recommend some of their favourite gripping, narrative non-fiction science writing. There are plenty of well-known and not-so-well known suggestions and meta-suggestions, sufficient for about a year of reading at least, I would think.

Nature Network celebrated its second birthday on 14 February last week - a memorial that went relatively (but not entirely) un-noticed, possibly because of the Darwin frenzy and other less scientific but no doubt distracting celebrations (Abraham Lincoln's bicentennary and St Valentine's day). One person who noticed is Andrew Sun, who began his Nature Network blog in the early days of the platform, and here reflects on the past two years writing it. Before joining Nature Network, his main blogging activity was writing about scientific papers. Once he found himself with a ready-made audience of scientists, however, he decided to write with the perspective of being in China, and whether events he observed and experienced there were mirrored in other users' (not from China) experience. Soon he found his answer, and returned to writing about scientific papers, but notes that such posts do not attract many comments.

As well as founding and running the Good Paper Journal Club, Martin Fenner also blogs at Nature Network about scientific publishing in the digital age. I strongly recommend his blog to all scientists, as many new tools are discussed and their developers interviewed. One such interview featured last week: Geoffrey Bilder of Crossref , an organization best known for managing dois, or digital object identifiers, by which journal articles are uniquely recognized online. On this occasion, however, the conversation is about author identity. Would it be possible for scientists themselves each to have a identifier so they can be unequivocally associated with their papers? (This is an important question, for example, for Asian scientists who share a relatively small pool of surnames, or when one considers the amount of duplications and name/address errors in abstracting and indexing databases of papers.) The question of author identifiers is by no means simple, and the interview with Geoffrey Bilder provides an informative outline of some key aspects, complete with links to further information and discussion.

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
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 20, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

How optimally to scan the new literature for pertinent information is discussed at Katherine Haxton's Nature Network blog - whether scanning the contents listings from journal emails, or automatic RSS keyword searches. There are perspectives and suggestions in the discussion following the post.

It's all a mystery, writes Linda Lin at her Nature Network blog, how reading the literature to answer a question raises "several more questions all leading in different directions". What follows is a refreshing contrast to "scientifically proven" approaches to the communication of scientific research to the general public, as Frank Norman points out in a comment to Linda's post.

Deanne Taylor makes a welcome return to Nature Network with news of her leap into "an exotic metaworld of informatics". What is the best word for it? Medbioinformatics? Help to resolve the question at Deanne's Nature Network blog.

The effect of impact factors on our reading and writing about science is a question raised by William Burns in the Good Paper Journal Club forum in the light of the decision by the European Science Foundation to develop impact-factor measurements of the quality of journals covering the history and philosophy of science. Many of the arguments for and (mainly) against impact-factor metrics have been discussed and archived at the Citation in Science forum, and a pertinent question is how many of these will translate into journals in these other fields. Martin Fenner adds a further question: "Does the (over)use of impact factors change the readability of papers? Do authors cut a research project into smaller pieces that may increase your science metrics but make the project more difficult to understand? In what other ways could the reliance on impact factors change the readability for the worse (or the better)?"

Reported elsewhere on nature.com blogs and even in the journal Nature itself, but I think not logged by this column, Shirley Wu and Russ Altman have won the science blogging challenge issued at the Science Blogging conference in London last August. Congratulations to both winners: read all about it in this post by Nature Network's Editor, Corie Lok.

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
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 13, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

A detailed dissection of the new J. Biol. (a journal published by BioMed Central) policy of allowing authors to publish papers after one round of review without making the changes requested by the reviewers is provided by Noah Gray, himself an editor at Nature. After summarizing the arguments for and against this system, Noah comes down against it - as, in the main, do those who comment on the post.

"Who will be science's Oprah?", asks Craig Rowell. Al Gore, Anderson Cooper, Alan Alda and Julie Roberts are considered but found wanting. Where are the spokesmen and women for science in the Obama era, to add some charisma and glamour? Not many nominations as yet - David Suzuki being one of the few. Do you have any good suggestions? If not, you can always join Jennifer Rohn and find out how to apply to be a scientific film star.

In the meantime, Brian Derby checks out his progress in another kind of 'science pop' chart - providing a commentary on which papers are climbing and which falling in the Web of Science citation index - as well as experiencing some bemusement as to why. Yet another indicator of the impossibility of 'quality metrics'?

"Why is science important?", ponders Henry Gee. For him, not because it is useful, or for what it has allowed us to discover, but because of how it frames what we have not found out yet. An amusing Hilbert's list follows.

Martin Fenner, on the other hand, has been busy interviewing Kevin Emamy of Cite-U-Like, a social bookmarking service for scientists.

If you blog about peer-reviewed research on Nature Network, you can now submit your posts to researchblogging. org, a website that aggregates blog posts about peer-reviewed research. Bloggers simply need to register their blog with the site and then submit individual posts. Full details from Corie Lok, Nature Network's Editor.

And in further Nature Network news, there is now a ‘hub’ dedicated to New York City, offering a dedicated blog, forum, jobs and event listings for the city’s thriving scientific community. “We decided to launch a hub in New York because, of all the local communities using Nature Network, the NYC one has been the largest and most active,” says Corie Lok. “For the past nine months, New York scientists have been meeting monthly in pubs to socialize and network, and it's all been organized and advertised through Nature Network.” Two Columbia University-based scientists are helping to bring the community together: Caryn Shechtman, a fourth-year graduate student, and Barry Hudson, an associate research scientist, blog about scientific life in the city, by covering scientific events, writing about local research, and profiling local researchers.

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
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 06, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

It’s not exactly easy to get funded in science, writes Steffi Suhr at her blog Science Behind the Scenes. "Those who do are, to a large extent, lucky (on top of being hopefully very good). In this time of financial crisis, there will be even more scientists who have to consider ‘alternative careers’, and not all of them will do this by choice." Further discussion follows.

Jennifer Rohn "dallies with both sides" in a typically engaging post on her blog Mind the Gap about her experiences dealing with the journal office over a review article she is writing. Being a scientist, then an editor, and now a scientist again provides a particular perspective on the process that can be used to good advantage when asked to meet a publication deadline. Again characteristically for this blog, a large number of comments follow - many about the experience of submitting to, writing for, and being edited by, journals.

How useful is online networking to scientists, asks Richard Grant on The Scientist blog - no substitute for meeting in person? There is a stimulating discussion of these points, but here I highlight a comment by David Crotty on the question of time management." How much of your time as a scientist should be spent networking? It seems to me that it’s a minor part of the job, at least compared with doing the actual research and raising funding. Which is more important to you, doing the experiments, writing up the paper for Nature, getting a grant to pay your postdocs or chatting up other scientists? Networking is important, to be sure, but it’s meaningless without the actual work being done in the lab behind it.....Social networks for scientists and meet-ups like Science Online do a lovely job of putting together people who are really interested in science networking, people for whom this is a priority. ... For the average working scientist though, are they really going to spend that much time blogging when they could be running more experiments? Are they going to spend the time and money to come to a meeting on networking when they could instead go to a meeting in their field and do some actual networking? I’ll ask you and your commenters, what percentage of one’s working day/week should be spent on networking and doing things like blogging as compared to things like doing actual research, reading the literature, securing funding, faculty duties like committees, meeting with one’s students/postdocs/PI, teaching,etc.?"

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
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Mike Fowler muses on the age-old (fossil illustration included) dilemmas not only of keeping up with the current literature, but also how young scientists can get to grips with all the old literature. He pictures this problem as an upside down pyramid.

Access to information and filtering out the important information are also topics addressed by Martin Fenner in the context of medical research, in a post rehearsing the author's contribution to last week's ScienceOnline09 conference. He writes: "There are many reasons why people are interested in reporting or learning about medical research. But betroffenheit [see his post for a definition] and financial interests are two very strong reasons that should always be kept in mind. "

Ai Lin Chun, a senior editor at Nature Nanotechnology, shares with readers of the Asia-Pacific and beyond forum some tips on the types of things one would learn in an editorial job. Her post is intended to help those interested in editorial jobs to reflect if these activities are things that really interest them, and if they are skills that people want to build.

For scientists interested in starting a blog, here are some words in a comment from Stephen Curry: "Maybe it’s too easy to forget what it was like before you jumped in. I had been mulling over starting a blog for about a year before I actually got started. I even did a hidden dry run on Blogger to see what it would feel like. However, starting for real on Blogger didn’t seem feasible – I couldn’t see how the blog would ever get noticed. Only when I discovered Nature Network (NN), first as a reader, then a commenter did an opportunity begin to emerge: it had a ready-made audience with strong scientific interests. But only by attending the conference in London last August (which itself took a little gumption) did I realise that pitching in might not be too horrendous. And now, looking back, I think “What was I worried about?” But I imagine there are plenty of others out there who have similar concerns that they haven’t yet worked through. Hopefully they will see the friendliness of NN as genuine and dip a toe in the water. It’s not that cold. Really." If you are tempted, you can start the process at Nature Network here. As Eva Amsen writes, the entire Internet turns out to be a small, even friendly, village.

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
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 23, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Just imagine 5 clinical trials with a new drug where one trial will show an advantage for the new treatment, writes Martin Fenner. "This trial will be published in a nice journal, probably one negative trial will be published in a small journal and the remaining 3 trials will remain unpublished. Just looking at the published literature will of course give the wrong impression, but these are the only data that are available to most people." Martin goes on to outline the ways in which 'science is shouted about', from the perspective of a drug company, an insurer, the media and the patient.

If you are in Toronto on 26 January, drop in for the Nature Network pub night. Eva Amsen provides a taster of the agenda. And from 12 to 15 February, Bob O'Hara notes that participating bloggers around the world will be celebrating the bicentennary of Charles Darwin’s birth (12 February 1809) with a 'blog swarm', in which posts will be aggregated on Blog for Darwin to be kept as a resource for educators, students, and others - all are welcome to join in.

Are scientists good at making decisions? So questions Craig Rowell, who writes: "I would like this to be a fairly serious and critical look at the process of decision making by Scientists and if there is anything of inherent value or is there anything lacking in how we train scientists to make decisions." Read his post and contribute your own answers.

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
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 16, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Erika Cule picks up on a paper in Science addressing whether peer discussion could improve student performance on in-class questions, even when none of the students in the discussion group know the answer, via a technology similar to that used for "ask the audience" sections of the TV show 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. Erika wonders whether students could learn more from each other by collaborative problem-solving, than they could from a conventional lecture.

In the Nature Nanotechnology - Asia Pacific and beyond forum, editor Ai Lin Chun describes the pleasures of meeting scientists and hearing their stories, which she is able to do as part of her job. One such scientist is Dan Peer, who was a postdoc at Harvard Medical School when he published a review article in Nature Nanotechnology, and who is now head of the Laboratory of Nanomedicine at the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Tel Aviv University. Dan writes in the forum about his experiences of nanotechnology research in a country at war.

Nature Network bloggers have made a strong showing in Open Laboratory 2008, this year's anthology of science blog posts, writes Corie Lok, Nature Network's Editor. Six of the 50 selected posts are by Nature Network bloggers: the posts and links to them can be accessed here. The editors are currently compiling the posts into a book.

On reading Darwin's Origin of Species, Bob O'Hara came across this passage: "So again with the varieties of sheep: it has been asserted that certain mountain-varieties will starve out other mountain-varieties, so that they cannot be kept together. The same result has followed from keeping together different varieties of the medicinal leech." This prompts him to ask how medicinal leeches are kept when they are not used. Answers in the comments to his post, please.

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
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 09, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

At a time of year when many publications are listing "top ten" scientific discoveries of the past 12 months, Hank Campbell has a different perspective in his "top 20 science stories of 2008" post: an alarming decrease in available clichés to describe what scientists think about new discoveries.

Eva Amsen writes a thoughtful essay entitled "Failure", at her Nature Network blog Expression Patterns. She argues that the unit of publication is the basic measure of 'success' for a scientist, and hence that not publishing is perceived as a sign of failure. Publishing or perishing has driven some to extreme measures, not least of which (in the political science literature in any event) is a strange distribution of reported P values. If the production of exciting data is the only way by which a scientist can be judged as successful, what of all the things that get left out? Journals for negative results may be one part of the answer, but the question remains of what is the best way to assess the quality of science and scientists.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 02, 2009
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

More and more non-fiction authors are creating dedicated book blogs to supplement published work. So blogs may be good for science book authors, opines Scott Keir. A discussion follows on the relative usefulness of online blogs or websites as supplements to non-fiction books. Also on books, Brian Clegg draws attention to his review of Experimental Heart, a novel by scientist and Nature Network blogger Jennifer Rohn - both of which (review and book) are subsequently debated.

Xiaoli Li is calling for submissions to a special session on “Data Mining in Protein Interaction Networks” at the 2009 International Joint Conferences on Bioinformatics, Systems Biology and Intelligent Computing conference, to be held in Shanghai, China , 3-6 August. The deadline for submissions is 15 February 2009.

"I arrived a month late as I had been working in the USA that summer. I was shown a desk, handed a copy of a PhD on sintering theory and told to develop a model for diffusion bonding." Thus reflects Brian Derby on the 30th anniversary of starting his PhD, in an evocative description of a life in science.

Nature Network online forums relevant to authors include Ask the Nature editor, Publishing in the new millennium, Citation in science, and The good paper journal club. All are welcome to join these groups and to contribute questions and discussion.

Next Friday is 26 December and is a public holiday in the UK, so the column will miss a week and return next year on Friday 2 January 2009.
Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 19, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Researchers may be good innovators, and good leaders, but are they good managers? So asks Heather Etchevers in a wide-ranging post about ranking, credit and other similar matters.

Why scientists blog, or should blog (or not) is a topic of perennial interest, not least to scientists who themselves blog. Martin Fenner raised the issue recently, in the form of a set of ten questions to science bloggers. More than 30 of them answered. If you don't know much if anything about blogging and want to know why you should consider undertaking it, Martin's summary of the replies is an excellent place to start (you can also read all the individual replies in full via the links collected in Martin's post).

Are you, or do you know, a brilliant science communicator?, asks Branwen Hide in the UK science policy forum. Nominations are now open for the BA award lectures (closing date 27 February). Each year the BA honours five outstanding young communicators with the opportunity to present a prestigious Award Lecture at the BA Festival of Science. The 2009 Festival of Science is taking place from 5 to 10 September 2009, hosted by the University of Surrey, UK - more details are available at the BA website or via email.

Steffi Suhr draws attention to a theme section on the ethics of science journalism for the journal she edits: Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics (ESEP). The theme section is intended to bring together viewpoints from all parties involved in bringing science to the ‘public’ – writers, editors, publishers, and – not least – scientists themselves. The first two of these open access articles are now published: Michael Gross asks whether science reporting is turning into fast food; and I (Maxine Clarke) discuss the ethics of science communication on the web (links to these open access articles are at Steffi's post). These articles and the issues they raise are being discussed at Nature Network, so please do contribute your own views.

Bob O'Hara opines on the form of peer-review to be adopted by a new journal called Ideas in Ecology and Evolution: "you pay for refereeing, with no guarantee that the manuscript will be published. If you fail, it's $400 down the drain. Make sure you get some nice referees! I can see a lot of people looking at this and deciding to submit to another journal, where they don’t have to pay for the privilege of submitting." This is not the only experimental approach proposed by the journal, as discussed by Bob and by the commenters to his post.

Trends in virtual worlds are highlighted by Maria Hodges, who discusses in the Second Life forum two reports published last month (links in Maria's post) on the educational uses of such worlds. Apparently there are more than 80 of these platforms that exist, and Maria asks whether Second Life will retain its current dominance in the light of such consumer choice.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 12, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

What type of licence should authors choose when they post their articles on preprint servers? Will it restrict their options for subsequent submission to journals, or conflict with some publishers' policies? These questions are asked by David Bickel at the Nature Precedings forum, and the pros and cons of different forms of creative commons licences are discussed by Hilary Spencer of Nature Precedings, John Wilbanks of the Science Commons, and others.

Alfredo Pereira Jr announces a conference Investigating Inner Experience Brain, Mind, Technology, to be held in Hong Kong, from 11 to 14 June 2009. This is the fifteenth in an annual series of 'Toward a Science of Consciousness' conferences, "known for broad, interdisciplinary and multi-faceted approaches to the age-old question of how the brain produces consciousness awareness", writes Alfredo in the Nature Network forum which contains what must be the longest-running online conversation on the network - 485 replies to date to the quest for a definition of the term 'consciousness'. The number of replies would be even longer if the discussion had included another conversation thread, 'What is the most well-accepted model of consciousness?', now up to 64 responses.

There is discussion at the science writers' forum about Euan Nisbet's review for Nature Reports Climate Change of Tyler Volk’s book ‘CO2 Rising’. The author uses parables and puns to describe scientific concepts. The book’s protagonist is “a little carbon atom called Dave.” Nauseous anthropomorphic twaddle, as one commenter has it, or accessible and fun, in the opinion of another?

The winners of this years’ AAAS/Science Dance Contest were announced on 20 November, writes Branwen Hide. There are four categories, graduate student, post-doctoral student, professor and popular choice with the winning dances being those that most creatively convey their PhD theses. All the dances are available on You Tube, apparently. If you prefer a science or science-related career to one of ballet or tap, Deb Koen, the NatureJobs career expert, is now answering questions from Nature Network users.

Ruth Wilson notes that the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology is running an open evening event in Second Life, 15 December 2008, 1850 - 2000 h GMT. She writes that the focus is gender equality and ‘a vision for science and society’, and that this Nature Network group is for anyone interested to comment, ask questions, share advice and recommend links. "And if you are joining us in SL, introduce yourself so we can get to know each other before going virtual." Moving off-topic somewhat, the Resource Centre has also set up a Facebook group called 'Make the next Dr Who a woman!' Suggestions are invited for the time when actor David Tennant quits the popular UK science-fiction TV show. The group is pretty popular, being the topic of an article in the Daily Telegraph on Monday of this week; you can contribute to the seasonal frivolities by casting your vote for who should take the role in an online survey.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 05, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Eva Amsen calls for science fiction authors and science bloggers to opine online on the use of science fiction to communicate science. The organizers of a session at next year's ScienceOnline conference are seeking views to help in the preparation of their presentation. For more information, and for Eva's answers, see her Expression Patterns blog post.

Coming down to Earth, Paul Smaglik's latest column in the science careers advice forum is the 'new president' edition. What might be the effects of the new US administration for science careers and prospects - and indeed, are university, never mind national, presidents overpaid?

What are the right numbers for JUPITER?, asks Martin Fenner. He analyses the reporting of a clinical trial at the recent American Heart Association conference, and how the results were presented at the meeting itself, in a press release, in journal articles and on blogs. (There is a related but independent Nature From the Blogosphere column about coordination of presentation at conferences with journal publication of results.)

"What’s the most inspirational short scientific video you’ve ever seen, which everybody should watch?", asks Matt Brown. "Videos have a unique power to put across an important message in a memorable way, in a short timeframe. Are we using such videos to their full inspirational potential in classrooms and ‘public engagement’ events? I suspect not." If you've seen any suitable candidates, please post a link at Matt's Nature Network London blog.

"Science, if properly approached, is a business of setting very well-defined tests on tiny rockpools on the edge of that ocean of ignorance, whose answers can never be anything more than provisional and subject to revision. Science therefore demands a certain humility before the evidence", writes Henry Gee on 'the unknown' of science in response to Richard Grant on 'the beauty' of science: what it's all about for you.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 28, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

In the light of a recent announcement that Conservative MPs in the UK are to "increase their science awareness", Brian Derby asks some pertinent questions, including why there are so few scientists in politics. "Are scientists uninterested in politics (outside the need to lobby for greater research funding of course) or are the skills required for both occupations so different that crossover never occurs?" He also asks whether scientists are so bad at communicating that politicians ignore what they say; and whether people wishing to go into politics for a career do not think science is an important topic for study.

Simon Buckingham Shum draws attention to ESSENCE: E-Science/Sensemaking/Climate Change, the world’s first global climate collective intelligence event — designed to bring together scientists, industrialists, campaigners and policy makers, and the emerging set of web-based sensemaking tools, to pool and deepen our understanding of the issues and options facing the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. The event starts online in January 2009 and culminates in a conference at the National e-Science Institute in Edinburgh, in April 2009. See here for further details.

While on the topic of events, on 2 December there is a free workshop to provide information on the Wellcome Trust's Engaging Science grant schemes, including an overview of the grants programme, the aims and objectives of the awards, and details of the application and review process. As well as finding out how to produce an appropriate grant application, there will be opportunities to exchange ideas and develop partnerships and collaborations. More details at Nature Network events.

One grant catetory is for the arts, which came to mind when viewing Christie Wilcox's favourites from the entries to the 2008 Olympus Bioscapes photo contest, an international competition that honours "the world’s most extraordinary microscope images of life science subjects".

A different kind of visualization is reported by Hilary Spencer, who posts Pawel Szczesny's c.v., shown as a scatter plot in which the y-axis represents time and the x-axis is roughly 'skillset' (ranging from artistic endeavours to scientific ones). A neat way to see at a glance what a job candidate has to offer.

Last week's roundup reported on the interpid task of Matt Brown, to find the most popular science cliche (if that isn't an oxymoron). This week, Matt provides the reckoning - here according to Google, and here, Google Scholar. Check out the lists for your favourites - and for hints about what to eliminate from your own prose.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 21, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

When writing your paper, or any scientific document, how inventive are you with your prose? Lapsing into the over-familiar phrase can now be easily avoided via a definitive list of scientific clichés put together by Matt Brown and many users of Nature Network. Entering hackneyed terms into Google reveals the extent of their use: 'implications for therapy’ (230,000 hits); ‘it has not escaped our notice’ (14,200 hits); and ‘this raises more questions than it answers’ (1,030 hits) are three popular examples, but nowhere near ‘further research needed’ (520,000 hits). A fairer test of the scientific, as opposed to any other form of, literature would be to use Google Scholar. There, ‘the next ice age’ has 313 returns compared with 4,300,000 on Google itself. See plenty more suggestions at the Nature Network discussion - and for those even more interested in this type of esoterica, note Nature's recent News feature (455, 1023-1028; 2008) 'Disputed definitions', containing plenty of useful tips on what not to write and how not to write it.

Moving on to the more uplifting, the 2009 Subtle Technologies Festival is currently seeking submissions for its festival on the theme of “networks”, writes Jim Ruxton. The festival takes place in Toronto from 11 to 14 June 2009. "It is time to critically discuss the network metaphor and how it affects the direction of various disciplines and our societies at large. Under this theme, we will be curating a symposium, exhibition, workshops and performances." Biological networks, virtual worlds and social networking are three of the areas covered, but there are other science-related themes, so do check out the post.

Branwen Hide draws attention to a meeting in December 'The journal article: what does it cost and who really pays?', under the auspicies of the Research Information Network. The meeting is based on a report by the organization in which they examined the costs and funding mechanisms of 'scholarly communications' - publishers' costs, the cost to academic libraries, and the hidden costs to researchers in producing and accesing journal articles. Branwen writes that "it would be great to get some researchers there to talk about it, and discuss the types of changes reseachers would like to see happen in the area." It promises to be a stimulating meeting, and I hope to be there.

Two posts about scientists' public engagement featured at Nature Network during the week. Sara Fletcher reported on a visit to Diamond, the UK's new synchrotron facility by science minister Lord Drayson, asking whether whether Diamond (her choice) or Lewis Hamilton (Lord Drayson's) is a better example to help demonstrate the attractions of a scientific education and career to young people. And Stephen Curry proposes a new form of 'lay summary' for articles and grant proposals:
"Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
No! A nonsensical hypothesis!
Your DNA sequence will show the way
And give a much truer diagnosis."
There is, as may be imagined, plenty of discussion of this idea, but perhaps the Brian Derby Roxy music tribute is the most melodious attempt to make science accessible.

The peer-review process comes under scrutiny in a post by Mike Fowler, 'Peering at the review process', which addresses the question of whether peer-review is a conservative process that is biased against new ideas and paradigms, as well as various other issues about the interactions between authors, editors and peer-reviewers. There is an informative discussion at the Nature Network post.

Michael Durney calls attention to yet another social networking site for scientists, ResearchGate - which aims to help share resources and data. In the discussion to this post are links to lists of other social networking sites and brief reviews of those (see David Bradley's, for example), as it seems that there are rather many of them in existence or almost-existence. How many repeat what already exists, and how many offer useful new services to scientists interested in online collaboration and other types of open sharing of information and ideas?

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 14, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

"What can print copies offer that online access cannot?", asks Nature Nanotechnology editor Ai Lin Chun. Wen Jiang provides one answer in an online reply: "When I grasped the last printed copy of the March 2008 Nature Nanotechnology issue at the MRS conference in San Francisco this year, I felt that I had won the jackpot! Although more and more scientific journals are becoming fully digitalized, the printed format holds a longer-lasting sentimental value for the student authors publishing in the journal, similar to having a “Collector’s Edition”."

Richard Grant is the latest to address the complex question of the motivation of scientists to communicate their work to the public, sometimes "to encourage children to become scientists—or at least convince them that science is important—other times it’s to secure our funding, or explain why there’s no link between the measles vaccine and autism, or why GM crops are better for us and the environment. Other times it’s because we want to persuade people with treatable diseases to take this drug and live, rather than go to a homeopath and die." And have those encouraging clear writing in scientific papers thought about issues such as the one Richard provides in his post? "Here’s an example: [Butterflies] were subjected while being held by hand to hindwing removal. (The hindwing was severed with scissors along a line just distal to the point of articulation of the hindwings with the thorax, so that only a small triangular flap of each hind wing remained). Here’s the same sentence, rewritten so that my daughters can understand it: We cut the back wings off butterflies." Please join the discussion if you can help address this conundrum.

Eva Amsen, on the other hand, provides some good news about scientific papers, specifically the performance of the students on her science-writing course. Although one of the welcome pieces of news is that students are using the active voice in preference to the passive, Linda Cooper comments that "[teaching assistants] at my university still deduct marks from lab reports when students use the active voice. Such a pity because in addition to draining the life out of a sentence, the passive construction encourages writers to overuse weak linking verbs (variations on the verb “to be”), nominalizations (noun forms of verbs), prepositional phrases, and imprecise terms. While the passive voice is useful in making transitions between sentences, scientific articles written largely in the passive voice are often boring to read (and to write, i imagine!). My guess is that many researchers have difficulty transforming passive sentences into active ones – one more good reason for them to take science writing courses!"

Writing aside, "how do you read scientific papers?" asks Anna Kushnir, after reading a blog entry by Chris Lasher. "How do you read papers? Only look at the figures? Skip the intro? Have you read (really read, comprehended, and retained) every paper you have cited in your own publications?" As the number of papers and other reading material inexorably increases year-on-year, a reading strategy is essential to keep up to date without being swamped.

Joerg Heber, a senior editor at Nature Materials, asks whether, in the light of current economic concerns, there "will be an impact for some web 2.0 initiatives in science, where funding might become more difficult in the near future. For example, should we worry about long-term funding for initiatives such as open notebook science, where data volumes might be rather high? Or is there no reason for concern at all?" Bob O'Hara responds: "I can’t see that the recession will hit Web 2.0 initiatives in science, partly because we’re buffered (to some extent) against the “real” economy, but also because we’re generally not using Web 2.0 to make money, our motivation is to improve the way we do science." Further views are welcome at the Nature Network publishing forum.

Every Thursday at 11am PDT, writes Joanna Scott, the Nature Podcast will be broadcast at the rooftop cafe on the Elucian Islands, Nature’s home in Second Life. "It is completely free and anyone is welcome to come and listen to the Podcast and chat with other science enthusiasts......I’m also wondering about having a later listening as well, perhaps in the evening PDT. I know some people are missing out on everything – anyone with any comment to make about timezones or scheduling, please do get in touch" via her Nature Network Second Life blog.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 07, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Join Nature Networkers and other scientists on 7 November (2008) for a Nature Network Berlin dinner with Arianne Heinrichs, Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology. Students are particularly welcome. Arianne will be in Berlin to give a lecture about scientific writing to students of the FMP (Leibnitz-Institut for Molekulare Pharmakologie in Forschungsverbund Berlin). See the Nature Network Berlin group for more details.

Two other upcoming events are on 18 November (2008) at the R&D society in London. Scott Keir highlights a seminar 'Facilitating Creativity and Innovation', which will cover how to optimize the relationship between R&D (research and development) and marketing – essential for successful commercialization of technology. Later in the day, Dr Allyson Reed, Director of Strategy and Communications of the UK Technology Strategy Board will speak on 'Connect and Catalyse' – how the Technology Strategy Board accelerates innovation. This will be followed by a discussion dinner with Allyson. (More details at Scott's post.) And here is an early 'heads-up' for the next Talk Science evening at the British Library in London, on 10 December (2008). The subject is 'Infectious disease: what can evolution do for us?' Please join the Nature Network group and make your own suggestions for topics to discuss in December.

'Inspired' by the hundreds of articles published weekly, particularly in large journals such as Journal of Biological Chemistry and PLOS One, Richard Grant asks whether anyone actually reads journals for research articles any more. Do people take each new issue of a journal (online or print) and read through the table of contents? Do people read tables of contents via email alerts or RSS feeds? Plenty of answers follow about how people read, and organize the articles they bookmark or accumulate.

Craig Rowell has an unusual take on search. "I believe that a key to improving literature searches is to know what question (not merely the hypothesis) the researcher thinks their work has answered. Knowing that an article feels it answers more of a “what” question rather than a “how” question could be of tremendous help when looking for relevant literature." He asks readers for feedback on his proposal of 'question inclusion' as a search field.

In a conversation about the recently awarded Nobel prize in chemistry, Heather Etchevers responds to the suggestion that as the gender distribution among active scientists becomes more even, a (slowly) growing number of women will be awarded future Nobels. She points out that a pertinent question in this regard is that of gender equity among the nominators. Anna Kushnir checked out the numbers: the committee on physiology has no women, chemistry has two of a total of seven, physics two of a total of eight, and economics one of a total of eight.

Stephen Curry was surprised to hear on the radio an interview with a scientist who claims to have "converted the electrical signal from a nerve cell into an audible sound and claimed that this revealed a kind of cellular intelligence. As far as I can tell, this ‘finding’ is not based on any kind of peer-reviewed research. It seemed to be pure supposition". The reliability of science as reported by the media is dissected in the comments that follow the post.

There is a fresh wind of hope for young italian scientists amidst the recent government restrictions to temporary employments, writes Poltronieri Palmiro at the Nature Network Italy forum. "It comes from a regional Institution, Regione Piemonte, an example to be followed by other counties in order to provide adequately to the innovation needs of industry and public research bodies. Recently, in a meeting with authorities of Puglia Region, I suggested that in addition to the salary, the regional authority should provide in the grants also a budget to cover research costs in autonomy from the bureacracy of the hosting Institute". Read on at the Italy forum.

Finally, if you ever wondered how your salary compares with a football coach, check out Mike Fowler's post When comics stop being funny. The subseqent discussion is perhaps aptly summed up by science writer Brian Clegg's comment: "If it’s any consolation, the bar for an average author’s income probably wouldn’t even be visible on the scale of that chart. AND they have even more insecure jobs than football coaches."

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 31, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Eva Amsen in the Ask the Nature editor forum asks whether there is a definitive resource for looking up the spelling and capitalization and hyphenation of scientific words."I used MESH to find the proper spelling of gene and protein names, but I’m now trying to find out if it’s “Western blot” or “western blot” or “Western Blot” and find that all three are in use. Southern was a name, but what is the rule for Northern and Western? Is there an OED of scientific language or something equally useful?"

In the Naturejobs careers forum, Paul Smaglik rounds-up news from the web related to scientific careers. Included in his post are links to the recent Times Higher Education Supplement ranking of the 'top 200' universities in the world and a report on US state biotechnology initiatives. On a similar theme, Matt Brown provides advice for how to get into science journalism, in a summary of Simon Franz's talk at the recent Source Event careers fair. Matt's post is the last of a series of four: previous entries can be accessed via this link.

Have you ever wondered about the differences and similarities between artists and scientists? Can we say that a successful scientist is also, per se a great artist? David Papapostolou is tackling these and related questions on a new blog about the interactions between art and science.

Frank Norman describes the Elucian Islands, a new site in Second Life that includes Nature Publsihing Group's Second Nature islands. "This new site provides space not just for scientific stuff but the whole range of knowledge and scholarship. It will be interesting to see how it develops", writes Frank. How long will it be, he muses, before Nature publishes its first paper that can only be fully appreciated in Second Life?

In the biomolecular NMR spectroscopy forum, Evgeny Fadeev introduces the Open NMR project, a NMR wiki (collaborative editing tool) that allows users to search and update the pulse sequence database, create pulse sequence images from wiki text, and to read and write about theory and practice of spectroscopy, software and anything else relevant to magnetic resonance.

Jean-Paul Boucher's job is to find and implement technology solutions that will directly impact the medical and scientific research mission of the US Natoinal Institutes of Health (NIH). Social tools like Nature Network "have the possibility to radically transform the way NIH does its business", he writes, "from direct expertise and material finding between labs (“has anyone used algae for X protocol before?”) to even cross-disciplinary research team collaboration." He asks Nature Network's NIH group members what kind of “collaboration” they want NIH to be able to do. Readers are invited to join the group and to give Jean-Paul their suggestions.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 24, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

"Writer’s block can be an impediment to putting thoughts on paper but there are other obstacles as well – obstacles that can be overcome once they’re made explicit", writes Linda Cooper in the Good Paper Journal Club forum. "...many of the students I teach are ‘flummoxed’ because they have difficulty pinpointing their most important finding – they usually want to include – everything – in their articles – especially the technique they’ve struggled to develop. To help remedy this problem, students explain their research to a sympathetic group of their peers. Because this group is multidisciplinary, they can comfortably ask clarifying questions (questions that a specialist reader may not feel comfortable asking – you’re the expert after all!). This process helps researchers think critically about their work – a crucial step on the way to writing clearly about their important finding."

In a more light-hearted vein, Bob O'Hara points to a discussion from someone worried about whether papers are more cited if the author list contains "bigwigs". One study suggests it can do, if there aren’t too many authors. If it were true, does this reflect the actual contribution of the "name", or a tendency for other researchers to be drawn to the paper by the name they recognize?

Henry Gee continues a theme of how scientists communicate their work to the broader public. "Here is an example of what I mean by this authoritarian approach. Ten years ago, John Durant, then Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Imperial College, used the release of the first X Files movie as an opportunity to attack pseudoscience (’Pseudo-science, complete fiction’, The Independent, p. 13, 21 August 1998). What Durant missed is that for all its content about aliens, paranormal phenomena and conspiracy theories, the X-Files is scientific in the sense that the two protagonists, FBI agents Mulder and Scully, approach their mysterious cases, each with their own hypotheses, which they argue about, and then seek to test, only to find, vwery often, that a definitive result remains just out of reach. The lab scientists among you will know just what I mean. Real science is often messy, argumentative – and inconclusive."

Craig Rowell has established a new Nature Network forum, 'Going to meetings', for people to list the meetings they plan to attend and what they are presenting. This will be an opportunity to educate everyone about different meetings, he notes, and to connect with other Nature Networkers at the conference.

Why aren’t scientists’ biographies in the bestseller list?, asks Nature's Books and Arts editor, Joanne Baker. She wonders whether our picture of science takes enough notice of the characters and life stories of individual scientists, noting an essay in the 16 Oct issue of Nature (p871), in which biographer Georgina Ferry* asks why the life stories of so few scientists make it into the bookshops or are in the "top 100" biographies on Amazon. What do you think? Join the discussion at the Nature Network Opinion forum, and add your favourite scientific biographies - so far including William Bateson and Alfred Wegener. (*Georgina Ferry is the author of very well-received biographies of Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz.)

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 17, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

In praise of the scientific amateur, Richard Grant writes: "the ‘cult of the amateur’ if you like, is tightly linked to our engagement with the wider public. There are a lot of very smart people out there who are not doing science as a day job. They may not have scientific training, and might in fact have some wrong-headed notions, but that does not mean they’re stupid. They may, in fact, have a lot to contribute. What, in effect, could we spool out to enthusiastic and capable amateurs in our own fields? Would it be useful? And as these people get involved, and talk to their friends and families, would it eventually serve to increase scientific literacy?"

Frank Gannon's recent EMBO Reports editorial on bullying in science is discussed in some detail. Heather Etchevers refers to a HHMI booklet Making the Right Moves: a practical guide to scientific management for postdocs and new faculty, available free either as a download or by mail, which she and others have found helpful.

The Italian government is intending to interrupt the temporary employment in the public administration which will affect all the “precari” in the public research institutions in the country. The amendment, known as “Brunetta” after the minister of public administration and innovation, is supposedly aimed at cutting the cost of the temporary employment, increasing the efficiency and promoting the stabilization with competitive examination. Its practical effect, however, is that thousands of temporary employee will lose their job 30 days after the promulgation of the decree. Piero Visconti asks those in the Nature Network Italy forum: will you be affected by the amendment? Do you agree with the protest? What do you think is the most effective way to change the political agenda in terms of funding research and promoting job security for Italian researchers?

Anna Kushnir asks whether there "are aspects of a grad student’s personality which can serve as predictors for whether or not they remain in science, whether or not they love it or hate it by the end. I also wish to figure out how much of the decision is dictated by external factors, such as the quantity and quality of a student’s interaction with their advisor, or the success of abject failure of their thesis project(s). I guess I am asking if there are people who are pre-destined, programmed and fit to continue on in science. Who are those people? What are they like?" Provide your answers on an online postcard at Nature Network.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 10, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Catherine Mavriplis of the US National Science Foundation is part of a group researching the situation of women in career breaks (voluntary or not), and which aims to provide resources for these highly trained scientists to re-enter research. She is looking for women to interview to gather data and trends that will serve for a larger survey later this year. If you would like to contribute your own experiences, please visit the Mind the Gap website, where there is more information about the project as well as contact details.

At the Nature Jobs careers forum, Paul Smaglik has been watching an NIH Powerpoint presentation (link in the forum post) which asks for “best practices for predoc and postdoc training.” Paul writes: "As far as I know (and according to the extramural NIH officials I interviewed for the policy piece) this has not yet formally happened. So, I am wondering what readers think should be “best practices”? Please share! Meanwhile, I will search PDA recommendations nationwide, and throw in my own 2 cents (tuppence, in England) about what SHOULD constitute best practices. Also, please let us know if universities with ‘best practices’ practice what they preach."

Nature has just published a special issue on the US elections (free to access until the election date). News Editor Alex Witze draws attention to the question asked by Nature's book review editor, Joanne Baker, to several leading thinkers to recommend the single science book the next president should read. Check out their suggestions here. What book would you recommend? Let us know at the Nature Network forum.

With Nobel prize season upon us (the first prize, in physiology or medicine, is announced on Monday), Anna Kushnir suggests that Nature Network and other science bloggers all write related posts. Topics she suggests inlclude choosing a scientist who you think deserves the award; predictions of winners; or descriptions of how the work of Nobel prize winners affected your own work and influenced you. If you'd like to participate, start today! Posts on the topic during the next week from today should be tagged "Nobel prize" for aggregation purposes. Simon Frantz , who runs the Nobelprize.org site, draws attention to the Nobel organization's Q&A each prize announcement, in which people can submit questions to each prize-awarding committee, and to newly awarded Nobel laureates. Anna is collecting questions from Nature Network users, who can then vote on which to submit to the committee after the award announcements are made. Please visit this forum link to submit your question(s).

Nature Network users discuss David Crotty's post ‘Digital intimacy’ at his blog Bench Marks, on topics such as reporting (blogging) at conferences and 'scooping' via internet posting. The post also discusses the benefits and disadvantages to scientists of online forums such as Nature Network and FriendFeed. From the discussion at Bench Marks, David comments "open networks should currently be viewed somewhat skeptically–do they represent the mainstream of science? Or are they instead skewed toward certain personality types, or people with their own agendas (such as personal promotion and/or promotion of a cause) and those with a fondness for new technologies?" Plenty to discuss.

Martin Fenner provides a very useful round-up post 'New ways to look at your presentation', including various tips and advice about using PowerPoint, and describing some newer ways to present your results. Well worth a read, and there are plenty of useful references in the post for those who want further details and interactive examples.
In a separate post, Martin interviews Alexander Griekspoor about Papers, a Mac-based solution to the problem of storing and organizing your PDF article collection. Alexander's description of what Papers does: it "provides a complete workflow for finding new articles using built-in search engines, browsing the publisher’s website using the built-in Safari web browser, downloading, archiving and renaming the PDF files, and organising and indexing these articles. Finally, it allows you to easily read the papers and share them with colleagues."

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 03, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Pamela Ronald writes both poetically and informatively about the experience of writing a grant proposal. "I am fascinated with something no one understands and only a few of us would care to. I am consumed with the desire to think through this mystery, to know it. As Thoreau said, “to gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it and gnaw at it still”. It is exhilarating to be drawn into the deep realm of the undiscovered and it is a challenge to harness the wild power of scientific ideas by writing about them. I want to explain our research results clearly to my colleagues, propose a model and ask them “don’t you see it too?” My intellect is engaged and my heart too, because I love this work."

Bob O'Hara has been doing some calculations to see how citations vary across some journals. Bob describes the figure thus: "The points all lay along roughly the same line. Cell is lower, i.e. there is less variation than we would expect from the other journals: no doubt this is because it covers a smaller area of biology, so the slower-moving areas are excluded, and hence the mean is higher and the variance is lower. PLoS Biology is in the same area as PNAS (not a bad journal to be compared to). Proc. R. Soc. B is at the bottom: no doubt because it tends to publish more in the slower moving areas of biology." For details of how the numbers were derived and the calculations performed, see Bob's Nature Network post.

Marco Boscolo, a science communicator, is collecting educational videos for students who are about 14-18 years old on the topics of cosmology, astronomy, geology, hydrology, oceanography, and all the other Earth sciences. Various resources are provided in the comments to his post at the Visualization and science forum; further suggestions are welcome.

Massimo Pinto reminds readers that 30 September is the deadline for appications for fellowships to ENEA, the Italian Institute for Research in Alternative Energies and the Environment, with many laboratories across the country. And Matt Brown draws attention to an award of up to £2000 to help with public engagement for researchers funded by one of the seven UK Research Councils. The awards are to encourage outreach work during National Science and Engineering Week, from 6 to 15 March 2009.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 26, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Heather Etchevers urges stem-cell researchers to rally their labs "to participate in the first-ever ISSCR Educational Video Contest – explain the fundamentals of stem cells by creating an engaging and educational short video suitable for a high school audience. Your lab could win three complimentary Associate Member-level registrations to the ISSCR 7th Annual Meeting, July 8-11, 2009 in Barcelona, Spain, as well as the opportunity to have your original work featured in the Public Education section of the ISSCR Web site."

Ian Brooks initiates a lively discussion about his Correspondence in Nature last week, part of which states: "according to the US National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, fewer than 20% of postdoctoral scientists in the United States find tenure-track faculty positions. This suggests that, at least in the United States, we could already have a glut of trained scientists. Perhaps the solution is not financial at its core at all. A major overhaul of the academic training pathway for life-scientists is long overdue. Issues linked to today's financial and job markets are an indicator that the time is right for a serious self-appraisal on the part of academia. Are we training too many students? And what should we do with all the postdocs?" Jennifer Rohn also scrutinizes the "mythical scientist shortage", stimulating an even longer online discourse.

Stephen Curry muses (with the use of clever illustrative examples) upon works of art that have echoes of his scientific interests: reciprocal space. He would would be glad to hear any reciprocal views of others who have made similar finds.

One of the new features in the recent code release at Nature Network is the ability to embed flash movies in forum and blog posts. Hilary Spencer writes that with the new slide viewer on Nature Precedings, it is now possible to embed presentations posted on Nature Precedings in Nature Network. An example is J-C.: Bradley et al. Open Notebook Science – Falcipain-2 Preliminary Results. Available from Nature Precedings, doi:10.1038/npre.2008.2216.1 (2008).

A discussion among members of the US National Association of Science Writers on the reduction in science coverage in major newspapers is highlighted by Pamela Ronald, who sees this trend as "a call for scientists to get active and start communicating, which of course is one of the reasons we blog." She asks her readers "how can we market science better on the public square? Clearly the public does cares about global warming (if somewhat belatedly), as well as numerous other issues such as feeding the world, finding cures for diseases and enivronmental degradation- all issues intimately associated with scientific research." Michael Nestor addresses a similar theme, asking where is our forum in the mass media to discuss real science in front of millions?

One solution, in part, may involve persuading eminent scientists to start blogging. As reported at the Science Blogging 2008 conference in London on 30 August, not many senior scientists have a blog, despite the usefulness of this communication tool for education and outreach. To help scientific blogging gain momentum, Nature Network is coordinating a challenge to increase the number of senior scientists who write online. Points will be awarded for the seniority and reputation of the blogger, their previous lack of experience with blogging, the quality and quantity of posts, the blog’s relevance to science and its demonstrable positive impact. Nominations can include self-nominations, and must be submitted by 5 January 2009.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 19, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

A senior scientist who already has a blog, Brian Derby, provides a vignette concerning publishing a paper. "Of the three referees, one is aginst us and does not believe that our mechanism can operate in both cases. Unfortunately he/she is a big shot with opinions that cannot be ignored (or so I was told by the editor). Because of this I spent all yesterday altering the paper so that we can publish our methodology in the appropriate journal. This is irritating because we will end up presenting the same stuff but have to finish it with the statement that goes something like – Although the accepted view is this, our evidence means that we might have to possibly consider the following, even though some people (i.e. the referee) might have thought otherwise. This is all very tedious but it is part of the publishing process." I hope he finds his USB drive soon.

Martin Fenner interviews Victor Henning of Mendeley research networks: "if you install Mendeley Desktop on your computer, you can manage and share research papers on your machine, but you can also upload your papers to your private account on Mendeley Web to access them online. Mendeley Web anonymously aggregates the metadata of these papers to generate statistics about the most popular authors and papers in your research discipline, and – in the future – generates recommendations for papers which you might like."

The relatively informal medium of blogging is well-suited to meeting reports (presenters and organizers permitting). For the reader, such meeting reports have an immediacy that is lacking in the more formal, published conference volumes; and for the scientist, meeting reports are a great way to hone authorship skills and reach new audiences. I was particularly struck by two examples from Nature Network this week from either end of the disciplinary spectrum, which show how a very wide ranging, or highly specialist, meeting can make an accessible, amusing and educational read. The first example is Sara Fletcher's fascinating report: "When I joined Diamond Light Source three years ago as a technical writer, I was really excited about having access to such a major physics toy, having spent seven years as a research scientist and then writer for the National Physical Laboratory. It’s been quite a surprise to find myself a whole host of other disciplines, from structural biology, geochemistry, environmental science, and the burgeoning area of cultural heritage. So today sees my first live-blogging attempt, coming to you from the UK Synchrotron Users meeting. I’m currently listening to a seminar on Gothic Alterpieces, part of a Cultural Heritage session. The subheading for this session is “How Time Also Paints”, and looks at how certain paints and pigments can change with time, on both macro- and microscopic layers. This has been studied by using infrared spectroscopy to look at lead carboxylates, present in the egg tempera based paints commonly used on Gothic alterpieces." Read on! Second, during the past week Bob O'Hara has been providing a daily series of posts reporting a workshop for ecologists on the distributions of butterflies in Europe, and how they will change in response to climate variations. The information "can be used for conservation planning: for endangered species: dynamic planning can even be tried, where habitat is created at times when it is needed by a species to survive, and not before when it would not be able to live on the site anyway, e.g. because it is too cold." See here for Bob's five (at time of writing this post) excellent reports of this focused workshop.

The Good Paper Journal Club discusses Liz Wager's linguistic perspective on the week's most (?) important science event, the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider: the use of qualifying adjectives in scientific papers, specifically about the subtle differences between big and large. The Journal Club is also discussing Linda Cooper's article on the quality of scientific writing. Linda writes in the discussion: "I really do believe that it’s possible to write for specialist and non-specialist audiences. It’s much more difficult to do this of course, and most researchers aren’t sure how to even try. A good place to start is with close and careful revising which certainly helps to eliminate useless words and phrases. When writers get rid of the clutter, they have more space to explain complex concepts. As well, over and over again in my classes I find that graduate students need help identifying the real focus of their papers. Once they can do that, they also figure how to tell a logical story about their important findings. And more importantly, readers – both those familiar with the field and those outside it – can more easily understand what the author is trying to communicate."

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 12, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Steffi Suhr, Editor of the journal Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics , invites scientists and science writers to submit a manuscript for a planned theme section on the ’Ethics of science journalism’ . Further details can be found here: the aim is for the theme section to bring together all viewpoints of those involved in bringing science to the ‘public’ – writers (freelance and staff), editors, publishers, and – not least – scientists themselves.

One of the stimulating views expressed at last week's Science Blogging 2008 conference (a collection of photographs is here) was that scientists do a far better job than science journalists (and other professional communicators) at describing science accurately to a wide audience. Brian Clegg begs to disagree, citing some pertinent counter-examples to those provided at the conference, which were from the area of medical "quackery" . What do you think? Although it is far too sweeping to dismiss as a group either scientists themselves or "science communicators", there is plenty of scope for development of effective communication skills, as well as ensuring accuracy without hype.

Also stimulated by the Science Blogging conference, Martin Fenner summarizes where we are today with science blogging, pointing to several evolving subdisciplines which are being refined in the online discussion to his post:
-conference blogging (also includes event blogging)
-edublogging (education of students or users, careers advice, academic culture)
-metablogging (blogging about blogging, by far the largest discipline)
-research blogging (blogging about scientific experiments)
-investigational blogging (exposing incorrect or misleading science)
- issue (or 'political') blogging (for example evolution, climate change, vaccines)
-news blogging (blogging about science news)
-watercooler (or 'fun') blogging (small pieces of interesting or funny thoughts/pictures)
-summary (or 'meta') blogging (summarizing other blog posts and linking to them)
-diary blogging (blogging as a personal diary of self-expression).

See also David Bradley's post on improving science blogging, which asks for reactions to his idea of a "plug-in" to "monitor your latest blog post, and on the basis of the names and keywords it sees as you type suggest likely literature references. It would be a straightforward matter to display the titles of all relevant papers and as you blog you could add a star to the main paper about which you’re righting and tick any others that might be worth citing in the post."

In a discussion about information and reference management online, Frank Norman writes that Karen Blakeman and Phil Bradley run expert internet courses on search tools and resources. He writes: "Karen comes up with some amazing tips at her talks at IOLIM each December. Try browsing her blog for internet search tips".

The next talk on "Science 2.0: the future of online tools for scientists" will take place this Sunday, 7 September, in the form of a panel and discussion with Timo Hannay, Cameron Neylon, and Michael Nielsen, hosted by Nature Network Toronto. What does the future hold for the way we do science? Are online repositories such as GenBank and the physics preprint ArXiv, or social tools such as Nature Network, about to change science profoundly? To find out, join Nature Network Toronto for an interactive panel discussion over drinks at the pub (see Jen Dodd's Nature Network post for more details of the panellists and the venue).

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 05, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

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

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

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

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

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 29, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

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

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

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

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

Previous Nature Network columns.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previous Nature Network columns.

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

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

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

Previous Nature Network columns.

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

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

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

Previous Nature Network columns.

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

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

The field of metabolic engineering and systems biology is rapidly growing; Jose Manuel Otero has started a forum as a resource for young and experienced scientists and engineers alike.

What was your first-ever scientific experiment? Anna Kushnir's was "designed by myself and another student (Hi Aisha!), who to this day remains a very close friend as part of a biotechnology class. We chose to assess the effect of antioxidants on the growth of cloned African violets." Read the illustrated protocol at Anna's blog, and if you can remember the momentous occasion, contribute your own first-time attempt at being a scientist.

Engaging with the public is much in the news, so here is Jennifer Rohn on judging her first science fair: "But what I and the other three judges found most interesting was the fact the projects split clearly into two camps: those that were merely descriptive and literature-research based (“What is acid rain?”) and those that actually tested a hypothesis (“Do different kinds of music affect heart-rate differently?”). We judges especially favored those that sought to answer a question, but even as I felt strongly that this should be the case, I couldn’t help remembering my own long ago blue-ribbon effort: a diorama of the solar system made out of paper mâché. It was only much later that I must have learned that science wasn’t actually about demonstrating what was already known to be there, but was about adding some new knowledge to the world."

The Science Blogging 2008 conference now has an official website. Here you can find the programme, a list of who is attending, location and accommodation advice, and, of course, register. If you want to attend, please register soon, as at time of writing the conference (which is free) is rapidly reaching capacity.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 25, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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. The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Deanne Taylor asks what are the most important questions and problems in our respective fields? If we’re not working on them—why not? She draws attention to the transcript of a talk, ‘You and Your Research’, given by Richard Hamming at Bell Labs in 1986, who writes: "I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don’t succeed are: they don’t work on important problems, they don’t become emotionally involved, they don’t try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don’t. They keep saying that it is a matter of luck. I’ve told you how easy it is; furthermore I’ve told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!" Deanne interprets the important questions as those "that ‘go somewhere’ and address fundamental issues in the field of choice. I don’t think they all have to be ‘big questions’. I can give some good examples (bet we all could) of papers that made an impact but addressed basic research questions. " She goes on to provide an example, and the discussion continues.

How to be a success in science is another big question being discussed this week, initiated by Alexei Poliakov at the NatureJobs forum. Dr Poliakov disagrees with the position of Jonathan W. Yewdell's articles in the May and June issues of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, opining that they advocate an adaptation strategy to preserve the status quo, rather than encouraging a more philosophical approach. Some of the scientists who have responded to Dr Poliakov enthusiastically endorse Dr Yewdell's points, whereas others are less keen on them. The conversation continues, containing some pertinent opinions about survival and success for early-career scientists.

How many languages do you need for your job? Ai-Lin Chun, an editor at Nature Nanotechnology, writes: "Actually I do not speak 7 languages. I speak a total of 7 languages and dialects. So, it’s not as impressive as it sounds. I consider Cantonese a dialect but others might think otherwise. While language is not a requirement of a Nature journal editor (apart from being proficient in English of course), positions based in Asia or other offices where English is not the native language, it is a requirement and/or desirable to have these language skills. Almost everyone in our Tokyo office is minimally bilingual but most can speak more than 2 languages. These range from Korean, Japanese, Malay, Cantonese, Taiwanese to French, German and Spanish. It is indeed very enjoyable to be able to speak and understand a number of languages. For example, I’ve been able to translate questions from the audience into English during my seminars. In some cultures where English is not their first language, people tend to be a little shy. Being able to bridge this is very fulfilling for both them and myself." Comments are welcome at the Nature Nanotechnology: Asia-Pacific and beyond forum.

Richard Grant initiates a lively debate about online videos: when they are useful, and when superfluous. Is it helpful to have video "tutorials" about basic techniques, such as cell culture, or is there no substitute for personal training? Opinions differ, as can be seen. One of the comments is by Moshe Pritsker, Editor of JoVe (Journal of Visualized Experiments): "is there anything in biology today that can be considered “basic”? Biological research is becoming more and more fragmented, and researchers become more and more focused on their specific areas. Typically, as I observed in many labs, a neurobiologist would not know how to do a Western blot, and a biochemist would not know how to perform a simple cell staining. These are very “basic” techniques."

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 18, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Michael Nestor writes the first of two posts on what he calls 'casual collectivism', which looks at the trend for scientific information used by students and researchers to be more commonly obtained via online resources than via conferences. Although the online Wikipedia model is that errors can be corrected and updates made quickly, there is a period of time in which information contained in the encyclopaedia is wrong. "When is casual scientific collectivism a problem?", writes Michael. "When it involves a convergence of mass distributed networks of people, being channeled and bottlenecked into faceless, anonymous, and editor-free depositories of information." For more of this fascinating argument, please visit Michael's blog. (There is a related Peer to Peer post here, about various online encyclopaedias and models of accuracy.)

John Wilbanks writes a considered post on the business models of open-access publishing. The post, together with the comment thread, provides some perspectives on the business models that can be applied to "open access" publishing, whether profit or non-profit. See also a related post about publishers' business models at Nascent, by Timo Hannay, and What is fair play in the blogo/commetosphere?, a post by Corie Lok, Nature Network Editor.

Following on from a post about technology-enabled communication between scientists, Richard Grant turns to the question of networking theories and results. This topic is also discussed at great and stimulating length, with a short diversion or two, by Jennifer Rohn and commenters, from the perspective of nomenclature and why it is important in enabling the innovative processes described by Richard.

Nature Precedings reached a milestone yesterday (9 July): the 500th document has been uploaded to the site. Read all about it in this post from Hilary Spencer.

"A lot of people seem to think that editors make a decision based on just reading the abstract and/or the covering letter, so I’d like to take this opportunity to say: THIS IS NOT TRUE!" Nature Neuroscience editor Charvy Narain takes her turn to describe her day job, at the Ask the Nature Editor forum.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 11, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

For those interested in consistency of nomenclature, Jennifer Rohn (Mind the Gap) posts about some of the challenges, after discoverinng that a particular "gene’s ‘official’ symbol was ZNF265 according to OMIM, but ZRANB2 according to NCBI Entrez and HGNC." As well as the challenge of researchers agreeing on common nomenclatures for entities such as genes and viruses with many variants (subtypes, polymorphisms and so on) and depositing the information in an appropriate database, the databases themselves sometimes do not update frequently. It does not get better, as Jennifer writes: "Looking up your new gene of interest in PubMed is not an easy way to grasp a coherent idea of what’s been published in the literature. Abstracts are littered with synonyms (and some pairs of different genes have the same synonym), but there is no unique gene identifier, as far as I can see, associated with the abstracts." And, as Euan Adie remarks in the comment thread: "even if you used database identifiers instead of HGNC names you could run into trouble – in the abstract did you mean the gene as we knew it in 2000, or in 2002, after we discovered those extra exons? In the position it was in on the initial genome assembly, or a million basepairs further down in the latest version? The same gene in different contexts needs different identifiers (or at least version numbers), but you still need to be able to pull all that together somehow and pull out the information you need." Further discussion continues, to which you are welcome to contribute. Views from authors (past, present and future) on topics such as this one are invaluable to journals in helping them to shape their policies.

So you use Nature Network, but what do you really think of the impact of Web 2.0 (the 'social' web) on research? The TalkScience team at the British Library has set up a group Scientific researchers and Web 2.0, posing a few questions about why busy scientists should invest in Web 2.0; using the web to share data and preprints; whether concern about confientiality will lead groups to set up "gated communities"; relevance of taxonomies, folksonomies, semantic web and other Web 3.0 concepts; and user-participation, necessary to keep these new web services alive. There are already discussions on scientific method in the era of big data, advertising by stealth, open notebook science, Web 2.0 in neuroscience, and more. Please join the group, which will be providing details of the TalkScience evening at the British Library in London in September, where some of these issues will be debated. Keep an eye out for the notice on this group to attend this free event.

The official programme for Science Blogging 2008 is now up. Whether you are a blogger and regular user of the Internet, or whether you have never written an online comment but are interested to learn more, this meeting is for you, so please head on over to the Nature Network group to find out more about the programme, contribute to the make-up of the sessions, discover where to find cheap accommodation, and sign up for some science-themed outings. As a taster, here is the abstract for one panel: "Mistrust of scientists is common, and misinterpretation of scientific results rampant. Science blogs can serve as a bridge between scientists and the general public. Blogs build a community of scientists in which they can discuss the peculiarities of their jobs, their work, and their results. More than that, science blogs have the power to demystify the scientific process for the public and to reverse deeply held stereotypes of scientists. In this session, we will discuss how science blogs can change the public’s perception of scientists and provide a support framework for scientists themselves."

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 04, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

During his first year as a graduate student, Nuruddeen Lewis at his Lab Daze blog was advised by a mentor to read at least one journal article every day. Reading a paper every day is tough, but keeping up to date with recent publications is an essential part of scientific research, writes Nuruddeen. Is the key to read as much as you can? Is there an optimal way to read the scientific literature? Nuruddeen would be interested to know your views, at Lab Daze blog.

The rENNISance woman, Cath Ennis, proposes that online networking tools such as Nature Network could be used for forge links with biologists "whose proteins of interest interact with our own". She cites a case of two people who met, discovered that one worked on an enzyme and the other on its substrate. They are now married.

Appealing to the emotion is a fundamental aspect of successful writing, says Brian Clegg at his blog PopSci. What he does not like, however, is the use of a term such as "pornography" as a substitute for this emotion. "When someone refers to a property show or a book on the impact of climate change as pornography, what they really are doing is demonstrating their own emotional insecurity, and diluting and corrupting the English language to boot", he writes. Thirty comments (at time of writing) follow, as the scientists on Nature Network respond to the concept.

Research integrity is a hotly debated topic this week, as the discussion of last week's Nature Commentary and Editorial continue at the News and Opinion forum. But "Photoshopped gels are nothing", writes Euan Adie , in a fascinating historical post about Sir John Herschel and a newspaper's stunt with bipedal beavers.

Martin Fenner continues his quest for his "paper-writing dream machine" by turning to reference management software and providing a useful brief review of what is available. "Not quite there yet", is the verdict of the post and the commenters.

Bob O'Hara describes how he is outdone by misprints. He investigates a classic paper in his field, and finds that the number of its mis-citations result in an h-index of 12, a level that the inventor of the metric, Hirsch, suggested might be a typical value for advancement to tenure.

The world's first internet balloon race is taking place, reported by Scott Keir at Mixed Miscellanies blog. In the competition, websites can be recommended by users and balloons representing subject areas race across a world map (disclaimer: I may have misunderstood the details). Scott points out that science, in the shape of Charles Darwin, is not doing very well, so nominations of science websites are required to assist. Charles Darwin himself, of course, is blogging at Nature Network, commenting on science as it is reported in the popular "prints". This week he is none too impressed at the latest genome sequencing project -- chocolate.

Finally, for those interested in how journal editors spend their days, here is an account by Henry Gee, A day in the life of a senior editor. It is impossible to summarise this eclectic account, but it is engrossing, as well as very funny, so do read it.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 27, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

The Science Blogging 2008 conference, to be held in London on 30 August, is taking shape, not least in the form of this logo, created by Euan Adie. Further updates about the meeting can be seen in the forum; where you can sign up for poster sessions or talks, and book for a science walking tour of London with Nature Network London Editor Matt Brown on Friday 29 August.

Should laptops be banned from conferences during presentations, asks Andrew Hudson-Smith of Urban Nature blog? When presenting his work, he finds it disheartening to look up "only to view a sea of laptops and people typing", using their laptops to check email, surf the web or write blog posts rather than listen to the presentation.

As part of her job, scientist and rENNISance woman Cath Ennis is receiving more and more requests from colleagues to provide lay summaries of research projects for grant submissions and websites. What bothers her is the trend towards making nouns and adjectives into verbs, for example: “please can you lay this language for me”, and “if you could just laymanise this technical abstract”. She asks Network users to suggest a better term than "lay".

The latest paper for discussion in the Good Paper Journal Club is up: Dynamics of fat cell turnover in humans. Martin Fenner's view: "What I like about this paper? The authors try to address an important problem (obesity) by asking a number of simple questions. Instead of using the traditional IMRAD format (introduction, methods, results and discussion), the different structure of the paper allows the reader to easily follow the experiments. A lot of the experimental details are put into the supplementary information and don’t distract from the key research findings."

Karesh Narasimhan, in the structural biology group, suggests that the raw data underlying experiments reported in peer-reviewed work is published online by the authors, at their institution's or laboratory's website, allowing others to "reconstruct the pieces of experiments done by a lab – the biggest beneficiaries would be graduate students – who can learn many subtler aspects of data processing and manipulation that is of publication quality."

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 20, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Barbara Axt, at her blog Baxt, asks how Internet videos can be used in science communication and science journalism. The subseqent discussion ranges over podcasts, movies of protocols, and videos of experiments as training aids.

In the good paper journal club, Neil Blair Christensen describes his journal's new project, Journal of Diabetes Forum, in which an editorial team offers to help researchers formulate their study designs before they submit manuscripts to journals for peer review, providing "no strings" editorial feedback on study designs. The service aims to help a growing group of new researchers get some good paper basics right and optimize their chances of surviving triage and peer review once they do submit to a journal. After feedback, researchers are free to submit to any journal they wish. For more details, please see the Nature Network forum.

A discussion at Richard Grant's blog The Scientist has blossomed into an example of how networking using the Internet, and Nature Network in particular, can help scientists. Sebastian Gonzalez, a Masters' student from Chile, "a little country at the end of the world" containing not many scientists, entered the conversation because he is interested in web-based collaboration but thinks it doesn’t work for some stated reasons. Some inches later, he has changed his position, thanks to a Chile-Australia-UK-Finland-Switzerland five-way sharing of information and ideas.

"A paper came across my virtual desk the other day that’s got Instant Classic written all over it." Nature editor Henry Gee reacts to a rather special submission: "Without giving anything away, it’s a genuinely new and startlingly simple insight into a problem that’s been perplexing people for ages; backed up by a novel, simple and apocalyptically powerful new technique; written like a dream; and from (now get this) a single author. I’m bound not to say any more. Indeed, I might have said too much. But this is one of those papers that gave me gooseflesh and threw my editorial spidey sense into fibrillation; one of those lightning-from-a-clear-sky manuscripts that as an editor I have the opportunity and privilege to be able to read and review perhaps once in a decade, and make me feel glad to be able to do the job I do. When I look at a manuscript and can’t decide whether I should send it to review or not, I ask myself one question, in particular: does this manuscript have the potential to make me see the world in a completely new way? This one does. Oh boy, it does."

In the wake of the annual Society for Scholarly Publishing, Nature Network editor Corie Lok asks whether it is the role of a scholarly society to be setting up and running groups on Nature Network or Facebook, or even building their own networking site?

Meandering Scholar (Ian Brooks) tells us what it is really like to be a mentor, and raises a toast to a first data point.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 13, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

A necessarily brief round-up this week, due to lack of time.

Ai Lin Chun, at Nature Nanotechnology: Asia-Pacific and beyond, explains how the journal's Research Highlights come into being . "Every week, each editor reads a list of journals in their area. We scan through all the articles published within the past week and pick out the most interesting two articles. A picking session occurs mid-week and we spend about 1-2 hours to read and write about the selected article. The criteria for Research Highlights are not as stringent as selecting papers for publication. They are meant to highlight a new idea or interesting preliminary findings published in other journals. Sometimes they are papers that we would publish and sometimes they are not. So, if you want to get into our radar, post your most recent publication on our network group. We will most definitely see it!"

Why would a researcher who has access to most journals himself be bothered to submit a paper to an open access journal and pay the publication costs when there are similarly ranked “closed” journals that are supported by subscriptions and cheaper to submit to? So asks Eva Amsen at Expression Patterns blog. The question has led, inevitably, to a lively comment thread.

Andrew Hudson-Smith, one of the newer bloggers at Nature Network, writes at his blog Urban Nature: "Blogging research thoughts and outcomes to me at least seems the most natural thing in the world, after all the current buzz around universities is outreach and breaking down silos. As such, Web 2.0, with its shared videos via services such as YouTube; its virtual environments such as Second Life; and real-time research updates via Twitter have all been welcomed and indeed become central to my work. The embracing of Web 2.0 by academics is not however universal and by many it can be viewed as trivialising research." (Some pros and cons have been discussed recently at Peer to Peer.)

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 06, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

The citation in science group's discussion is continuing after the meeting at the British Library last Tuesday (27 May), which was attended by a range of scientists, publishers, funders and others. Please join this group to provide your views on the use and misuse of citations in assessing research output. Forum topics include Metrics: the art of counting, a useful summary by Ian Mulvany of how metrics such as the Impact Factor and the H-index are calcluated. Ian concludes: "David Colquhoun’s admonition that we should just read the papers to determine the quality of the work is a great ideal, and it is certainly the only way that scientists can determine the value of the contributions of their peers in the published literature. However there remain many of us who are interested in what is happening in science who are not conversant with the details of particular fields, and we depend on derivitave indicators. Beyond the published literature there are many growing areas of contribution that at present are almost totally ignored." (See also Turning web traffic into citations, a post by Noah Gray at Action Potential, the Nature Neuroscience blog.)
In another discussion on the forum, David Colquhoun asks whether publication metrics are appropriate for assessing people and/or institutes? "There are three separate problems that need to be kept distinct.
(1) Are any sort of publications metrics suitable for assessing people?
(2) Are any sort of publications metrics suitable for assessing institutions?
(3) How accurately can each sort of metric can be measured.
There is little point in discussing (3) unless the answer to (1) or (2) is yes. It is very easy to see that the answer to (1) is no, simply by applying the proposed measure to someone who commands universal respect in you own field. The answer to (2) is perhaps more difficult. The argument against using methods like that is partly their undemonstrated worth, but also the distortion of science that their imposition will undoubtedly produce. The pressure to produce cheap headline-grabbing work will be enormous. The long-term reputation of science will surely be damaged by this sort of bean-counting approach."

In brief, some other Nature Network news:
From the recently re-named Lo Scienziato blog of Richard Grant, a conversation on the nature of networking, on the ways in which scientists communicate to collaborate (and other, unsummarizable topics).
William Burns asks "Are presubmission enquiries useful?" I have replied on behalf of the Nature journal editors, the short answer from our perspective being "not really": the editors prefer to read a full paper at initial submission, rather than just an abstract, for the reasons provided in my reply.
In a forum post, James Millington highlights an article A Young Scientist's Guide To Gainful Employment, containing "wise words for any junior researcher starting out on their academic career. It’s written with ecologists and biologists in mind but much of the advice is likely to apply to other fields."
Bob O'Hara draws attention to a paper on "turning tables into graphs" and asks readers whether they think it helpful to create figures instead of presenting data as tables in their papers.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 30, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Today, the National Portrait Gallery in London unveils a portrait of Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse, who shared the prize for Medicine in 2001 for his work on cell division. Matt Brown asks Network readers to nominate their suggestions for whose portrait they would like to see in the gallery.
Good news for crystallographers: Hariharan Jayaram reports how a new generation of wikis, mostly based on the mediawiki platform, are being "constantly updated with crystallographic tips and tricks and plain old documentation by everyone from the creators of these powerful packages to seasoned users and even beginners."
In the Good Paper journal club, William Burns writes: "Perhaps we’re trying to be too scientific about defining what is good and bad writing? I think as scientists we hear about “a rule of writing”, and our eyes light up as if we have been given the keys to getting in Nature every week. We like to have some certainty, some “laws of physics” in the writing game. But I do feel a lot of the “rules” are snake oil." Bob O'Hara had addressed a similar theme in his blog post 'The hierarchical structure of bad writing', to which several people have made their suggestions about constructing (rather than the process of writing) a scientific paper, including Brian Derby, who writes "is no correct way to write a paper because the context is important." But, as Martin Fenner warns, "irony is a dangerous rhetorical device, because it can confuse the readers." (Examples provided.)
Allan Sudlow alerts readers to a debate called Citation in Science, to be held next week, 27 May, at the British Library in London (all welcome, but register in advance via this link), and proposes continuing the debate at Nature Network. He suggests a few topics to get started, including: ‘Tools for the Job’: does use of a single-citation search tool (PubMed, UKPMC, Google Scholar, Web of Science) bias the results? Is there a call for the use of mutiple tools?; and ‘Don’t Quote Me on That’: Even when the “original” paper is cited it is often misquoted. Do those citing not always fully understand the meaning behind a paper? Is this form of mis-citation more a case of misinterpretation rather than misrepresentation? For more on these and other similar, pertinent topics, visit the Citation in Science forum.
Senkei Umehara asks Nature Nanotechnology editor Ai Lin Chun: "Based on your experience, do you agree that there is a certain degree of “seasonality” in the number of submitted manuscripts? Could the acceptance rate differ between high and low seasons, if any?" See the editor's reply here.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 23, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Ennio Tasciotti writes a delightful account in the Nature Nanotechnology forum of the journey of his paper, from the experiments to final publication. I think it is a lovely account, one point of interest (among others) being that the author is not a native English-speaker.
In response to a discussion started by Cath Ennis about the obligation of authors to answer (sometimes frivolous) questions and comments from readers, Charles Darwin responds, helpfully: "take it from one who spent many years worrying about the questions and sensitivities of one’s correspondents and critics that they are rarely completely satisfied. By answering in detail you do them a great courtesy: some may be enlightened and informed, some may be grateful, some, I remember will then write a poisonous review of your work.
I wrote some years ago that ‘he who wastes an hour does not know the value of life’. Are the questions about which you fret worth an hour of your life or are there other waters to be – I ask this to a fellow seafarer – paddled?
These days I would have written ‘he or she’, of course."
At the Good Paper Journal Club, Martin Fenner starts a discussion of good papers about scientific writing. His first pick is Me write pretty one day: how to write a good scientific paper by W. A. Wells (J Cell Biol. 165, 757-758; 2004). "The paper starts by discussing the most important point: clearly state the take-home message of a paper", writes Martin. "The rest of the short text deals with the structure of a paper and with specific style issues." Half a dozen further articles and books are referenced, linked and discussed by forum contributors.
Cover letters are dissected at The Scientist, Richard Grant's blog. Richard writes that a well-written covering letter shows respect for the editor and might be useful in persuading them to send the manuscript out to review. "But — just like writing papers and giving seminars — cover-letter writing is one of those things that we are, as far as I can tell, supposed to acquire by osmosis. I wondered if you have hints or advice you’d like to share. If so, you should leave a comment." Twenty-seven comments follow, providing various degrees of detailed advice as well as a link to some humorous examples for those needing light refreshment.
The Science Blogging conference (London, 30 August 2008) plans are beginning to form, so if you are interested in coming along, whether you have a blog or are just interested in the topic, see here for suggestions about accommodation; volunteer to give a talk here; see here to offer a poster or a short presentation; and go here to make your suggestions for topics you'd like to be included on the agenda.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 16, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

An early collaboration between academics and industry is revealed in Scott Keir's news article. In a unique collaboration between crystallographers and designers, the story of Festival of Britain's Pattern Group is told for the first time at the Wellcome Collection’s London exhibition From Atoms to Patterns, which runs till 10 August. All but one of the contemporary (1950s) crystallographers took part anonymously and are unmasked here for the first time. “It does seem to have been perceived as a risk to venture outside academia—and to associate with trade and commerce”, comments co-curator Emily Jo Sargent.
Charles Darwin continues his assessment of science as discussed in the media, this time turning his attention to television. So far as the UK terrestrial channels are concerned, he found one factual science programme in 6 days, stimulating some acerbic comments, for "what now appears is – if I may coin a phrase – parascience. It does not deal with the raw work of our noble trade, but its applied results in society and the environment."
The University of Rockefeller Press, publisher of Journal of Cell Biology and other journals, has joined the publishers who no longer ask authors of research papers for copyright. The new policy is highlighted by Richard Grant at his blog The Scientist, and there is a comment thread that includes clarification of Nature Publishing Group's licence to publsh policies. And at Nature Precedings forum, the discussion of search, self-archiving, citations and "findability" started last week, continues apace.
Some journals apparently send unsolicited emails to authors asking them to submit their manuscripts. This practice is discussed at Gobbledygook blog, particularly in relation to open-access journals. The blog's author, Martin Fenner, advises potential authors so approached to "first check whether the journal (if it is a biomedical journal) is indexed in Medline and either has a reasonable impact factor or (for new journals) receives enough citations" before deciding whether to submit a manuscript.
Many journals do not approach potential authors in this way. Senior Nature editor Henry Gee addresses the question of Editors and the Research Agenda at his blog End of the Pier Show, in a post stimulated by Pedro Belatro's comment: "I also would like to see editors having a stronger say in the research agenda. They spend so much time reading, researching and deciding what should be interesting for a certain community, why not be more vocal about their ideas?" Henry writes: "What editors don’t do is go on the stump, making general statements about the specific subjects they’d like to see papers cover, and what they don’t like. There are many good reasons for this. The first is that all papers are welcome, simply because some of the most important papers are the most unexpected. Another, I think, is that to be too specific about what sort of things we like is to throw the game of science: editors aren’t in the business of shaping science, they are there to select the best papers for their journals. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are distinct."
In a previous post, Henry tackles another topic of perennial interest: science careers and sexism. In commissioning a series of scientific profiles for Nature, Henry writes: "I scrupulously invited as many women as men to participate, so it was a surprise to me to learn (as perhaps it should not have been) that women featured disproportionately rarely in the published result." He goes on to question why this should be.
While on the subject of careers and training, debate continues at the News and Opinion forum on education: are we training too many scientists? ; and what's the value of molecular evolution training? Michael Thain, a UK biology school teacher writes: I have long lamented the almost complete lack of any developmental biology, certainly of non-human animals, in school biology. Indeed, as my colleagues are keen to complain, it is difficult at present to see how any school biology student can appreciate from their studies that there is a biosphere filled with non-humans. Extraordinary, isn’t it? And disgraceful." Please join us there to provide your views on these provocative Nature Commentaries.
Finally, at the Good Paper Journal club group, now numbering more than 100 members, the topic of definition of error bars is currently under the microscope.

Previous Nature Network columns

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 09, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Who gets most credit when publication of two (or more) papers is simultaneous? Hilary Spencer asks this question in the Nature Precedings forum. Is credit correlated with being the first (even if by a few days)? And is the most cited paper the one with the most impact? Opinions about visibility, findability, impact and citation practice vary among those participating in the online discussion.
Many people feel that visualization began with Charles Minard’s 1861 map/graph of Napoleon’s march to Moscow and back, writes Rob Cogan in the Visualization and Science forum. He asks readers if they have any favourites milestones and highlights of visualization that were conceptually advanced for their times. Some attractive pictures have been posted in response.
Brian Derby has just "read and assessed (we don’t use such 20th Century termas as marking any more) a number of 1st year student projects. I am sick to the core of seeing an axel of a car.... Why can't students spell?", he asks. Referring to an article in the New York Times on mobile text language making its way into the class assignment paper, one commenter asks: "What’s the science paper of the future titled? afawk, amygdala activation assoc w/ alol, rotfl, and rotflmao" (a translation is subsequently provided).
On a similar theme, in her post 'In which I deconstruct the publication process', Jennifer Rohn initiates a discussion on stock phrases in manuscripts. "Why is it, for example, that adverbs like ‘interestingly’ seem always to be deployed for the most boring results?" Various words, phrases, use of abbreviations and aspects of grammar are deconstructed in the comment thread. Meanwhile, Charles Darwin continues his entertaining analyses of how science is reported in a different forum from the peer-reviewed literature: today's newspapers.
New blog of the week on Nature Network is A Meandering Scholar, in which Ian Brooks writes: "I hope to document the path of change: The continuing evolution of the Postdoctoral Fellow within academia."
Volunteers are needed for the 2008 World Science Festival in New York from 28 May to 1 June. Chris Wiggins writes that 4-hour volunteer shifts are available each day, at various locations throughout New York City. Volunteers will receive a festival T-shirt and free entrance to some festival events. The group for planning the Science Blogging 2008 conference Science Blogging 2008, set up a few days ago, already has 36 members. If you are interested in blogging and the social web, or if you have a blog about science, please join the group and help to shape the form of the conference, which will take place in London on 30 August. You can also enter the competition to design a logo.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 02, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

With his experience of writing about NIH policy for Nature, Paul Smaglik writes at the Nature Jobs careers forum, " I believe a fair peer-review grant system is the best way to distribute funds to the most-deserving science. Having said that, one must wonder how some senior investigators are six, or ten or 22 times more deserving of merit than promising young investigators, or the extent of the problem, as seen by the young investigators...... Please let me know if you are the victim of what appears to be an imbalance in the system—or if you have suggestions on how to either fix it (beyond an unprecedented NIH budgetary boost) or deal with it."

Discussion about clear writing style continues at the Good Paper Journal Club. Linda Cooper's view: "I know scientists are capable of writing clearly about highly complex research. Students in my classes do this all the time once they have the tools to transform their original confused drafts into articles that both the specialist and non- specialist can understand." Hawley Rigsby describes how rewriting a "long, obscure, and jargon-filled" account allows the reader to find the point even though some detail is missed; yet how courses in science writing can provide too much focus on simplifying concepts, and so over-simplify complex ideas. He asks whether it is possible for an article to be at the same time well-written and incomprehensible outside of a small sphere of specialists. In another discussion thread, Heather Etchevers contrasts readers of review articles, who may follow up threads and delve into new areas, with readers of research articles, who need precise technical information, quickly.

Further views on the publication process, as practised by Nature, are provided by senior editor Henry Gee at his blog End of the Pier Show, where he opines that "a purpose of the Nature Network.... is to make the whole publication process less mysterious and less frustrating for authors whose years of painstaking research are met with a form letter that says ‘no’, albeit with great politeness and much circumlocution. We know from experience that many authors see Nature as a Black Box and crave some human interaction, hence the frustration and anger when the Black Box is all they get......the Network has been adorned with many interesting discussions about editorial policies, accessibility and publication, in which editors and scientists have all taken part."

And finally, a bittersweet post from Anna Kushnir of Lab Life, about finishing her dissertation and why she won't be returning to the lab (for now).

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 25, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

In the longest-yet comment thread on Nature Network, part of the conversation has turned to open science. Jean-Claude Bradley writes: "For my research group, switching to Open Notebook Science has been extremely beneficial for finding some great collaborators (and friends). We’re working on making anti-malarial compounds so I would be quite happy if someone branched off from our ongoing results to do something useful or even point out another interpretation or error." Jason Kelly, on the other hand, is of the view that "in “open science” discussions is that there are going to be people who think it doesn’t make sense in their (‘very competitive’) field to be open about their work. However, there are many, many scientists whose principle problem isn’t being scooped—it’s that no one notices their work. This is especially true among younger scientists still making a name for themselves or folks in smaller fields. I think there is already significant incentive for young scientists to publicize what they are doing as openly and early as possible. This open group will either be scooped out of existence, or will be more successful thanks to all the unintended benefits of making your work accessible early." These are but two small samples of a broad discussion on "open science", its desirability, and tools to achieve it (as well as tools to achieve plain old archiving). There's further discussion at Deep Thoughts and Silliness blog about the financial viability of open access publishing models.

Ai-Lin Chun describes a day in the life of a Nature journal editor in Tokyo: how she handles manuscripts submitted to the journal Nature Nanotechnology and other important matters.

The news feature from last week’s Nature about how collaborations can go bad, ending up in disputes about data ownership, is followed up by Corie Lok. Would you sign a ‘pre-nuptial’ agreement to try to avoid potential conflicts?, she asks. Further discussion on drawing up an "agreement template" for international collaborations is taking place at the News and Opinion forum.

Structural resolution is under the microscope at The Scientist blog, in a post and discussion about metrics to judge crystal structures.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 18, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Jennifer Rohn has once again sparked a vivacious discussion, this time about how to document an ever-expanding plethora of files, information and notes -- on paper and, as mostly described in the long comment thread, electronically. There is much to note here about the practical problems of date-stamps, peer-review, wikis, plagiarism and data sharing - from and for those at the sharp end.

The theme of electronic and web-based research and teaching is taken up in a blog post by Bob O'Hara. The pros and cons of online tools for collaborative research are discussed, both in the post and in the comment thread, with links to several services that are currently available.

Philipp Selenko reports on the Nature Network Berlin group's evening with Alison Abbott of Nature, and urges local students to join. "The basic idea of Nature Network Berlin is to also give students the opportunity to participate in activities that they would otherwise not have access to (like talking to a senior Nature editor over a glass of beer, for example)."

On 2-3 June, there will be a Royal Society meeting (free to attend) on synthetic biology, a field covering the design and construction of novel artificial biological pathways, organisms or devices, and the redesign of existing natural biological systems. Synthetic biology has developed from the convergence of other disciplines such as systems biology, genetic engineering, engineering, information theory, physics, nanotechnologies and computer modelling. Advances and applications of this exciting technology will be discussed at the meeting.

Jose Manuel Otero gets stuck into another myth of industrial (as opposed to academic) research, that "if you join an industrial research center, you can kiss good-bye the exciting days of the pursuit of knowledge, teaching students, working on large consortium projects, or in fact, having individual impact. Essentially, you will be relegated to a number inside what are often large organizations, and find moments of happiness reading the Dilbert Comic Series, only to realize you are Dilbert." Among many other points, he discusses the lack of training in management and human resources in the academic community, and the rights of the individual in large-team collaborations.

Some useful advice to the scientist who has never submitted to an international journal is provided by the ever-engaging Paul Smaglik, emeritus Editor of NatureJobs.

Finally, an historical note. On Monday (14 April) a meeting at King’s College will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Rosalind Franklin. Molecular geneticist Noreen Murray will discuss Franklin’s inspiring role for women in science (also celebrated by the Rosalind Franklin Award), Ellen Solomon will speak on Franklin’s legacy for genetics and medicine, and Franklin’s co-worker Ray Gosling will recall their work in elucidating the structure of DNA. Read more about Franklin's work at Nature Network London News.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 11, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

If you are in Berlin on 8 April, join Alison Abbott from the Nature office in Munich at an informal gathering to discuss your ideas about scientific publishing, Nature’s activities in Germany, catch up with fellow scientists from Berlin and take the opportunity to meet the people behind the Nature Network Berlin Group (further details at the link).

Here are some thoughts about how to use the tagging options at Nature Network to encourage new scientific collaborations.

Joanna Scott, Nature Publishing Group's expert on all matters Second Life, announces a new nature.com website: Second Nature. Second Nature is also the name of Nature's home on Second Life: Joanna describes how the new Second Nature at nature.com website is a starting point for newcomers, an introduction to what Second Life’s all about and what we’re doing there, as well as providing listings of all our upcoming events and guides to the best science-related places to see in Second Life,to make it easier for people who have heard of Second Life to see what it can be used for and to help experienced users follow activity.

Read here, in the good paper journal club, how some recent papers fared on a test that correlates with the US school-grade level that can follow the text.

New group of the week is NYC, a Nature Network hub for scientists and engineers in the New York City area interested in sharing protocols, interesting publications, ideas and possibly beer. The goal of the group "is to become loud enough so that we get out own tab right next to Boston” - that's right, to become the next Nature Network official hub. The first non-virtual meeting will take place at Lucky Jack's on 9 April (details at the link). In the same group, Chris Wiggins draws attention to the five-day World Science Festival in New York City from 28 May to 1 June 2008 -- list of speakers here, including many eminent scientists, prominent media figures and others.

While on the topic of conferences, Matt Brown in his Editor's blog draws attention to the British Association's scientific communication conference on 19-10 May, in a post that offers bursaries to allow 32 scientists to attend free. To qualify, you need to fall into one of the following categories: UK science communication students; freelancers/microbusiness (fewer than 10 employees); campaigning groups; or scientists/engineers involved in public engagement. For further details of how to apply, see Matt's blog post.

Finally, Brian Clegg on his blog PopSci reveals the answers to his challenge to recognize the opening lines of five famous novels after being "babelized". (Here is one: No relation of transformation of the point, in the name of the station of the work, of that that not worried, the end still to call it, one gentleman did not live between little hour, one, of one entrerrosca and the old sample in small fine squeezes of a cremagliera of the horse and have more and more to lévier more for the packing.) There are some further challenges in the comment thread.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 04, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | 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. The Nature Network week column is archived here.

In the science writers' group, Angela Saini asks what science stories would be great for television, given that her non-scientist friends frequently tell her that "there is not enough science on TV". Among the responses so far are suggestions about heirloom tomatoes, better science for children, fun science and a magazine show. Matt Brown , who provides a weekly round-up of UK science TV on the network, comments that his favourite science programme on TV is "the recent BBC4 documentary about the lead singer of Eels discovering his father’s pioneering work on parallel universe theory. In other words, rock star learns extreme physics." Read on, and add your suggestions, at the Network forum.

At the NatureJobs careers forum, Paul Smaglik provides advice on roles in clinical trial programmes and starting a research career.

At the good paper journal club, Linda Cooper asks why so many scientific articles are difficult to read, and Heather Etchevers encourages more suggestions of well-written papers for dissection. Continuing the theme, Richard Grant at his blog The Scientist asks why most scientific papers are so boring. There is a very nice blog post by Mico Tatalovic, providing a student's perspective on students' science-writing skills -- including a round-up of undergraduate science journals.

Anna Kushnir initiates what has turned out to be a very informative debate about PubMed searches, at her blog Lab Life. There are plenty of tips and links in the long comment thread. You can also read an article on Partial Immortalization blog, "How to filter and read PubMed articles through RSS feeds", complete with screen shots, by Attila Csordas.

Jose Manuel Otero has started a Nature Network blog to discuss the difference and similarities between academic and industrial research. He is setting out to destroy some common myths. One such is that industrial research environments are not focused on problem understanding, but instead exclusively concerned with project milestones and product delivery, and therefore, will punish any type of mechanism-based efforts towards enhanced and deeper understanding. Wrong! Unsurprisingly, this blog is attacting stimulating discussion, which doubtless will continue.

John Willbanks writes about creative works, copyrights and publishing, providing some further thoughts after his talk at MIT on the question of how to extricate the “non-creative facts” from the creative, copyrighted work.

Perhaps the most intense and long comment thread for the week is Jennifer Rohn's post and discussion on Mind the Gap, "In which I utterly fail to conceptualize". Initially on the use of Excel spreadsheets to analyse genome-wide screens, the discussion becomes a full-blown debate on the contributions of bioinformaticans and "wet" (laboratory) biologists. And perhaps the most significant Nature Network group that started this week is called Collaboration: bringing Nature Network members together, set up by Bob O'Hara in direct response to this discussion. Can Nature Network create collaborations between its members? How can NN facilitate this process? Here you can discuss these details, and look for other people who are interested in working on the same topics as you are. I encourage you to sign up.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 28, 2008
Categories: Communication, Nature Network round-up, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Corie Lok, Nature Network's Editor, was in Toronto over the weekend attending the world’s first Scibarcamp, where 120 scientists, writers, artists, technologists and business people discussed topics ranging from science '2.0'; science and art; and whether can technology can make us happy. Corie highlights a session led by Eva Amsen on '10 things everyone should know about science'. Eva asked conference-goers to write down their ideas for what everyone should know about science on a board, which is photographed at Corie's blog, together with a list of her favourites.

In a post called The condition of Denmark, Nature editor Henry Gee writes on scientific literacy and how "Selecting papers for publication in Nature is rather like standing in front of a firehose and picking out a few choice drops of water. Even then, Nature’s subeditors remain hardpressed, given that papers these days contain volumes (volumes) of accessory and supplementary material—none of which existed a decade ago. Online publication means that papers are published round the clock, rather than just once a week. And things are unlikely to get any easier."

The Fiction Lab, coming soon to the newly refurbished Royal Institution, will be a reading group dedicated to lab lit and other science-related or inspired literary fiction, introduced by Jennifer Rohn at her blog Mind the Gap. The first book to be discussed is The Sun and Moon Corrupted by Philip Ball, who will also be making a personal appearance.

In response to a question at the NatureJobs career forum from a Network user who has a medical degree and wants to start a job in research, Paul Smaglik advises that "it’s perfectly acceptable to start as a technician, learn a few skills, decide whether or not you like what you’re doing, and, if you do, seek further training. That’s perhaps a more rational approach than in investing seven years in a PhD, a few more in a postdoc, then learning you despise benchwork."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 21, 2008
Categories: Communication, Nature Network round-up, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)