Nautilus

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

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

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 21, 2008
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Via Knowledgespeak press release:
Two years after a meeting calling for urgent action to preserve scholarly e-journals, the results of a survey of 1,371 library directors of four-year colleges and universities in the United States have been released.
Most library directors who responded believe their own institution has a responsibility to take action to prevent intolerable loss of scholarly records. But although larger libraries support one or more e-journal preservation initiatives, most respondents from smaller libraries are yet to support any preservation effort and secure permanent access to e-journals for their institutions.
The survey, conducted by Portico and Ithaca, raises questions about how the responsibility for preservation of critical electronic resources should be supported by the community, even as electronic resources expenditures expand substantially at libraries across the spectrum. The organizers hope that the report will be a catalyst for leaders of libraries, consortia, and other organizations to provide a mechanism for digital preservation. The full report is available for download as a PDF. (A summary is available here.) Readers are also invited to share comments and reactions in the provided online discussion space.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 18, 2008
Categories: Data availability, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Steven Inchcoombe, who became Managing Director of Nature Publishing Group (NPG) last October, is interviewed in the June/July issue of Research Information. He answers questions about the main information needs of researchers, the role of peer-review, NPG's position on open access, and provides some predictions for the future.

Open access means that authors or their funders may have to pay to publish papers and I think this will make them demand a higher level of service from publishers. They will want more visibility about what is happening in the publishing process. And once papers are published, authors will want to know who has accessed them as they might want to approach them about possible collaborations. In addition, self-archiving mandates require authors to do more work. If publishers are clever they will offer authors more help to do this. Also, as more authors are not native English speakers, publishers may have to help them more in how they express themselves in their papers. There are more and more versions of content available to readers. To justify their versions, publishers must offer serious value such as in forward and backwards citation linking. Another big challenge will be bringing in rich media such as audio and video.

See the Research Information website for the full article.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 16, 2008
Categories: Access, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (5)

Jérôme Murienne, Alexander Ziegler & Bernhard Ruthensteiner write in a Correspondence to Nature (453, 450; 2008):
Since the release of Adobe Systems' Portable Document Format (PDF) version 1.6 in 2004, it has become possible to view interactively three-dimensional models that are embedded into PDF files. This attribute will dramatically increase information content as well as data transparency in scientific papers. Additionally, replacing multiple two-dimensional figures of a three-dimensional structure with one integrated interactive three-dimensional model will reduce the need for supplementary material.
The potential of this technological advance for all science is obvious. Because of the foreseeable rise in demand by the scientific community, publishers and scientific institutions need to work hand in hand to support the implementation of this highly desirable technique.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 03, 2008
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The Editorial in the June issue of Nature Chemical Biology (4, 323; 2008) discusses Correspondence, an essential mechanism for mediating scientific debates, and the ways to foster scientific communication offered by the Internet. The primary aim of the journal's Correspondence section is to provide a forum for readers to engage in scholarly debate about original research papers that have appeared in Nature Chemical Biology. From the Editorial:

We believe that correspondence serves an essential purpose in the advancement of science, and so the question becomes how new web technologies can further enhance scientific interaction and debate. We are interested in what Nature Chemical Biology readers think. What types of correspondence warrant publication in print? Would you value the ability to comment on or 'rate' papers online? Should we create a chemical biology blog? What is the best use of online social networking to foster scientific discussion? We invite you to join us at the Nature Publishing Group chemistry blog The Sceptical Chymist to discuss these and other questions related to correspondence and the future of online scientific communication.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 28, 2008
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A few useful links and some weekend light reading suggestions via Nature Network:

Who's got an opinion on public engagement with science? asks Nature Network London editor Matt Brown.

An overview of science-related "stuff" at Second Life, by T. Troy McGonaghy of Science in the Metaverse. Via the link, you can see the slides and a video of Troy's presentation at the recent Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums conference.

On the Visualization and Science forum, Hilary Spencer posts what she calls a "rant" about powerpoint, public speaking and blog posts. I'd define it as a strongly opinionated article: it contains her reactions to presentations at a recent conference she attended, and provides some useful advice about how to make and how not to make helpful slides. In a post with a related theme, Nuruddeen Lewis at his blog Lab Daze provides a very useful primer about how to give a talk: 'Tips for nailing your next presentation'.

Martin Fenner on his excellent blog Gobbledygook writes on the "complicated" aspects of paper writing: all those policy and format requirements, ethical bodies' requirements, and international nomenclature committees' pronouncements. And Richard Grant, at The Scientist blog, hosts a discussion on writing style: 'On the care and training of students, especially the training.'

Stew at Flags and Lollipops picks up on various recent posts and articles about the lack of take-up among scientists of the online commenting facilities often offered by journals on the papers they publish. Stew takes previous suggestions with a pinch of salt, homing in on the two main reasons he believes inhibit people from writing comments on published papers.

LabLit publishes the first installment of Private Investigations, a four-part story about the adventures of a very special scientist-for-hire. The author? He or she is not unknown to Nature Network, as a small amount of detective work will reveal.

What is the best way forward for Eastern Europe's science? asks Mico Tatalovic at Cambridge Student blog, in an article featuring the new life-sciences institutue MedILS at Split, Croatia.

If you are in reach of London, there are some unusual science-related events coming up, listed by Li-Kim Lee (see links for further details): Elizabethan Sea Charts and Maps (behind the scenes); Francis Crick - DNA and beyond; Leonardo's philosophical anatomies; and my favourite, Prince Rupert, Cavalier and Scientist.

Today (14 March, which in the US style is 3.14) is Pi day; see Gobbledygook for links to the Pi day website, but also to some music, including the American Pi song -- as Martin points out, best listened to at 1:59 today.

And finally, again from Matt Brown, Nature Network's ten most prolific bloggers over the past six months, with links to the blogs concerned. They'll give you a good taste of the lively discussion on the network - do join us there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 14, 2008
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Frank Gannon in his EMBO Reports editorial this month (9, 207; 2008), Language barriers, writes about the stark contrast between his own ability to write in English and "the difficulties faced by scientists for whom English is a second language, and who have to cope with the much more restricted style of a scientific report." Dr Gannon goes on to discuss the differences between standard English language and the arcane, depersonalised style favoured by (or taught to) many when writing scientific reports, quoting the view that "the public would not bother to read scientific papers even if the journals were lying around for free, simply because scientific prose is largely unreadable for the non-expert—and often only barely readable for the expert."
Although English seems set to be the main language of science for the foreseeable future, it is worth noting that the Nature journals do encourage authors to use direct, plain prose. Our subeditors and copyeditors help authors of accepted manuscripts who are not native English speakers, and we provide advice on our website which we hope will be useful to scientists preparing a paper before submission to one of our journals. Advice is also available at Nature Network, for example at Linda Cooper's excellent advice blog Time for a change, and Ai Lin Chun's forum Nature Nanotechnology -- Asia Pacific and beyond.

See related article in the same issue of EMBO Reports as the Editorial discussed here:
Six senses in the literature: the bleak sensory landscape of biomedical texts by Raul Rodriguez-Esteban and Andrey Rzhetsky (EMBO R. 9, 212–215; 2008).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 11, 2008
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Zeba Wunderlich and Kishore Kuchibhotla of Harvard University write in Nature's Correspondence page (451, 887; 2008):
The paramount importance of publishing in biology dissuades many young scientists from making non-traditional choices with regard to where and how we publish our work. My colleagues and I believe it is in our own interests to identify the shortcomings of traditional publishing and to explore other publishing possibilities that are free of those problems.
What can we do? First, learn about our options. There are several innovative developments poised to change the publishing landscape dramatically. Video publications, preprint archives and high-throughput online journals are but a few that have recently surfaced (for a discussion, see Nature Network's Publishing in the New Millennium forum).The onus is on all of us to investigate these resources and to consider how they might enrich our science.
To make a difference, we also need to contribute. Frustrated by technical difficulties in reproducing published experiments? Then publish a video protocol in the Journal of Visualized Experiments. Have you benefited from a colleague's comments at a conference? Then extend the experience, and comment on articles published by PLoS One and posted on Nature Precedings. These initiatives will take hold and achieve their full potential only with strong support from the scientific community.
If we collectively embrace these ideas, publishing will become more effective. Although the psychological and social barriers to submitting a contribution initially are surprisingly high, becoming involved has proved to be rewarding. Ultimately, scientific progress and the published record have a symbiotic relationship — improved communication will enhance the pace, progress and efficiency of research.
[Note added by Maxine: In addition to the resources mentioned above, Nature Protocols is an online resource which welcomes the upload of protocols, in video or written form, and provides users with an interactive network for comments and additions.]

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 06, 2008
Categories: Data availability, Pre-publicity, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

The International Society for Nephrology (ISN) Nephrology Gateway is being completely redesigned this month (March 2008), with many new interactive features. Since its initial launch in 2005, the gateway has become an important online resource for nephrologists worldwide, including many educational projects, and providing links to news and literature, ISN contact information and membership highlights, a conference centre with announcements, and career resource links. The ISN is one of Nature Publishing Group’s valued society partners, with more than 8,000 members worldwide. The gateway also supports the ISN's membership service activities, connecting nephrologists with information and each other to improve patient care.
The latest addition to the site is the ISN Network, where nephrologists can log in, create a profile, set up discussion groups and participate in online forums. There is already a special discussion group on the ISN Network for all those involved in editing and publishing the journal Kidney International.
More enhanced search features within the gateway will soon follow these initial features.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 03, 2008
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Chinese authors are publishing more and more papers, but are they receiving due credit and recognition for their work? Not if their names get confused along the way. Jane Qiu investigates these, and other questions, in a Nature news feature in the current issue of the journal (Nature 451, 766-767; 2008). The article covers the huge problem of how to distinguish between Asian researchers, given the vast numbers of people sharing relatively few surnames. The problem is particularly challenging in the publishing sphere, not only in identifying an author correctly in citation databases and other indeces, but for editors in choosing appropriate peer-reviewers. Asian researchers suffer in being hampered from full participation in the international scientific community, for example they are less likely to be invited to contribute to conferences, to be successful in grant applications or to win awards.
The news feature provides a clear overview of these issues, and more, from a range of perspectives. Some journals have begun to provide author names in original (not Latin) characters, and there are various initiatives to provide unique author identifiers. At this stage, however, there is no consensus as to the best way to proceed: there are problems of technical compatibility between publishing, database and indexing systems, of agreement on universal standards, and other challenges, such as the high mobility of scientists, making it difficult to track the author of several publications.
Nature Network has a forum "What's in an Asian name?", in which several Asian and other researchers provide their perspective of this challenging issue for publishers and database curators. A Nautilus post last year highlighted the efforts of the Human Frontiers Program to help Japanese and other Asian scientists to improve their international visibility.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 19, 2008
Categories: Authorship, Format, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Martijn J. Schuemie and Jan A. Kors (Bioinformatics doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn006 ) have created a freely available web-based application that, on the basis of a sample text, can suggest "journals and experts who have published similar articles". Their aim is to help scientists to determine which journal is most appropriate for publishing their results, and which other scientists can be called upon to review their work. The application is called Jane (for journal/author name estimator).
I inputted some sample text to Jane, and was told that the Saudi Medical Journal was my top choice. No disrespect to that journal, but I know (because I am a person and not a computer) that this journal would be inappropriate for my test sample in at least two ways.
I would not primarily recommend an automatic selector to authors trying to decide where to submit their articles. When someone is ready to submit a paper, she or he will have given talks about the work and circulated drafts for comments from others in the field. That is a good time to ask for suggestions and advice about journals in which to publish. The scientist is then well-advised to read the author guidance on a few journals' websites, to find out about editorial scope, impact factor and so on.
I think it is possibly counter-productive to use this kind of text-based comparison system on its own for making decisions about journal submission. At Nature, for example, we are looking for novel results, not something similar to what we have just published. Other journals are the same – most of them are looking for distinctive articles, not incremental repeats.
Rather than relying on computer searches to choose where to submit, I highly recommend looking at our free Author and Reviewers’ website for writing and submission advice. From there one can go straight to a great set of articles written by professional journal editors about how, where and why to submit and publish at the free science-information website SciDev.Net.
In addition, scientists can upload a draft manuscript into a community preprint server, where others in the field can comment and suggest. (Nature Precedings is one such, which provides meta-features such as alerting people in the field when new preprints have been uploaded, but many others. ArXiv is another, for the physical sciences.)
I think it will be a sad day when science journals publish “articles selected for us by computer”.
(I first read about Jane at Nature Network in a post by Graham Steel.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 31, 2008
Categories: Author services, Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of the longest, and longest-lasting, Nature Network discussions in which I have participated is called "High Impact made by famous ones", started in October 2007 by a graduate student known as "Universal research" as part of the "Ask the Nature editor" forum.
The forum, incidentally, is hosted by the editors of Nature Network, and is for scientists who want to learn more about getting their work published in Nature and the Nature journals, and about careers in scientific editing, straight from the editors of these journals. You are welcome to join the group and post your questions.
Returning to the discussion thread about those "famous ones". The Nature and Nature journal editors who regularly handle manuscript submissions provide their answers to a wide range of questions, including whether being well-known or having a stellar track-record is more likely to get your mansucript sent for peer-review or published (answer: no); blinding of the peer-review process (double-blinding gets an airing, but Nature journal editors explain why they feel the system of single-blinding is best for scientists); duplicate publication (or "salami slicing" as it is often known); and independence of editors from those whose work is being considered.
This thread may not be the longest or the oldest that I have ever seen, but it is certainly among the most focused and useful for authors, and I highly recommend you read it for a unique insight into the editors' thought-processes. If you are at the start of your publishing career as a scientist, you are likely to find this forum very helpful. We welcome you there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Author services, Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fundamental research can yield unforeseen benefits of great value for society, but often this happens only many years after the initial breakthroughs have been made. Can society find a way to pay back this debt?
In a Commentary in this month's issue of Nature Physics (3, 824-825; 2007), Leon N. Cooper of Brown University, writes that "Money is required to do science and as systems become more complex, more people, equipment, and therefore more money is required for each new result. Naturally, people hark back with sentimentality to the good old days when results could be obtained on a tabletop. In fact, some results are still obtained on tabletops, but the tables are getting larger and the tops more expensive. More and more results come from huge collaborations demanding enormous resources. And this brings us inevitably to the questions of who pays, how and why."
After outlining some of the problems in supporting the fundamental research necessary for science to progress, Professor Cooper suggests three measures to improve the current system, involving investment, distribution, and a clear distinction between fundamental and applied research. Referring to the breakthroughs in superconductivity research, he writes: "No single method can solve all of our problems, but the measures outlined above would substantially improve our present system. I would hope that they would make it easier for some current gifted program officer to reach as wise a decision as was made in the Army Ordnance Office fifty years ago."
Read the full article, entitled "The unpaid debt", in the December issue of Nature Physics.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 05, 2007
Categories: Careers, Publishing, Support | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tim O’Reilly, head of the company bearing his name that, since 1978, has been a “chronicler and catalyst of leading-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future”, recently visited Nature Publishing Group’s London offices. Rosamund Daw, a senior editor in Nature’s physical sciences team, attended his talk, and here reports her impressions.

Tim O'Reilly's talk was a fascinating insight into the mind of someone who thinks about new ways of getting people together in real life and on the internet to generate new stuff (ideas, information, products). His presentation was a Q+A forum, which he kicked off by introducing the concept of “Web 2.0” as the phoenix rising from the ashes of the dot-com bust of the early 2000s. The concept of Web 2.0 seems to be based around harnessing the interactive networking power of the internet to provide new functionality and information.
Topics discussed in the forum included concerns with privacy on networking websites. O'Reilly believes that attitudes to privacy more generally are changing: that privacy is something that people are prepared to compromise if they can clearly see the benefits – one of his examples was surveillance cameras, and another is the relaxed attitude that can be seen at the social networking site Facebook.
Another topic was open access. When asked whether making content free led to mediocrity in publication quality online, O'Reilly responded he didn't believe that this had to be the case, giving Wikipedia as an example.
Anther question concerned what's at the "edge" of Web 2.0 ? O'Reilly discussed the idea of sensing: generating, for example, new information content through combining imagery posted on the internet. Imagine wandering through the streets of Paris on a virtual site generated from thousands of images of Paris posted on the internet from different people!
O'Reilly was exceptionally kind about NPG's efforts at the frontline of web developments. He and his colleagues blog at O’Reilly Radar , and you can find out more about his company’s activities here .
You can read another account of Tim O’Reilly’s talk, including a picture, over at Nascent, NPG’s web publishing blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 02, 2007
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Via Seven Stones blog:
Molecular Systems Biology (published by a partnership of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and Nature Publishing Group) has changed its publishing licence for all articles accepted after 1 October 2007 (see updated instruction to authors). The new procedure allows the journal's authors to choose between two Creative Commons licences: one that allows the work to be adapted by users ("attribution-noncommerical-share": by-nc-sa), the other that does not allow the work to be modified ("attribution-noncommercial-no derivative": by-nc-nd). The first articles to be published under the new licence are appearing online at the beginning of this month. The journal's content is therefore not only freely available to all, but also authors can decide to make their research fully open for reuse and adaptation.

Thomas Lemberger, EMBO editor of Molecular Systems Biology, who runs the Seven Stones blog, notes that he initially wanted to make this announcement only after the first paper published under the new licence (accepted after 1 October) had appeared online, but in light of a recent Editorial in PLoS Biology (“When Is Open Access Not Open Access?”), reviewing in detail the subtleties of publishing licenses and the concept of “open access”, he bought forward the announcement of Molecular Systems Biology's new policy. "Unfortunately, this Editorial, at the time of its publication (16 October), included erroneous information on Molecular Systems Biology, given that we had updated our policy on 1 October.", Thomas writes. "In any case, it is somewhat ironic that MacCallum chose to stigmatize Molecular Systems Biology as an example of a journal that “promulgates” confusion about open access. As it turns out, Molecular Systems Biology is dedicated to the concept of making research freely available and to engage authors themselves in decisions that would achieve this goal with their own research. It is in this spirit of openness and respect for authors that we have recently adapted our license to publish."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 02, 2007
Categories: Access, Policies, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Ask the Nature Editor forum on Nature Network is now taking questions on careers in science publishing. Moderator Corie Lok (also Editor of Nature Network) writes: "Have you ever wondered about careers in scientific publishing? What is it like being a manuscript editor, a science writer, or a copy editor? You can find out by posting your careers question here. Editors at Nature, including ones who hire editors here, will answer your queries."
If you have questions about publishing in the Nature journals, peer review, writing your paper, and so on, you can still post them in the Ask the Nature Editor forum, and they will be answered by Nature editors, including me (Maxine), Karl Ziemelis (Chief Physical Sciences Editor), Ritu Dhand (Chief Biology Editor), Natalie De Witt (senior biology editor), Chris Gunter (senior biology editor) and Linda Miller (US Executive Editor), and Nature journal editors, including Laurie Dempsey (senior editor, Nature Immunology). We are receiving some interesting questions, and are enoying answering them and interacting with you.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 19, 2007
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Have you ever seen something in Nature — be it a research paper, news story or an editorial — that you thought deserved far more attention that it received? We value your opinion, so we've launched a website, 'Best of Nature ', that allows readers to nominate, vote for and discuss content from Nature's past. Please vist, and tell us what we may have missed while compiling the 'History of the Journal Nature ', a newly launched website which explores Nature's history back to the first issue in 1869, and of which more later.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 18, 2007
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What’s the impact of the “impact factor”? Are you satisfied with the current scientific publishing process? Will the internet revolutionize publishing? What are your thoughts on open access publishing and how it will affect the future of scientific publishing? If you are interested in these questions, join the Nature Network forum "Publishing in the New Millennium" , which is linked to a conference on Friday 9 November 2007, 1:00 – 6:00 p.m., at Harvard Medical School.
The conference is organized by students, and will convene experts from across the world to discuss the state of publishing in the biological sciences. The keynote address will be by Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, former director of the NIH, now head of the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The State of Publishing will critically assess the impact that scientific publishing has on scientific research, with panellists including Robert Kiley, head of e-Strategy of the Wellcome Library; Isaac Kohane, director of the Countway Library at Harvard University; Emilie Marcus, Editor-in-Chief of Cell Press and Editor of Cell; and professor Stuart Shieber of Harvard University. Publishing 2.0 will examine the future of publishing in an increasingly digital world. Panelists include Moshe Pritsker, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Visualized Experiments; Hilary Spencer of Nature Precedings; John Wilbanks, executive director of Science Commons; and Bora Zivkovic of PLoS ONE.
By joining the Nature Network forum, you can discuss topics before the meeting, receive updates, suggest topics, and see who else is going.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 18, 2007
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"What would you do if you could publish only 20 papers throughout your career?" asks Juan-Carlos Lopez on Spoonful of Medicine blog, referring to this month's Nature Medicine editorial (free access at Nat. Med. 13, 1121; 2007). If scientists would agree to limit their output to 20 papers over a career, would this clean up the scientific literature and improve on the peer-review process? Juan-Carlos writes: "many articles reporting incremental advances would no longer be written, and many specialized journals would disappear. And with far fewer papers to read, each one reporting a much more complete piece of research, search committees or funding bodies could directly evaluate the work of a given scientist, instead of leaning on surrogate indicators such as a journal's impact factor or number of citations, "evil" numbers that many researchers love to hate."
See the Nature Medicine editorial for further details of this radical proposal.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 11, 2007
Categories: Publishing, Quality measures | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those interested in following biotechnology publishing trends, there is a useful resource in the September issue of Nature Biotechnology: Trends in biotech literature 2006. Andrew Marshall and Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg write: "unsurprisingly, microRNAs dominate the list of highest cited papers, and the area is witnessing rapid growth. The number of papers in other fields, such as proteomics, nanotech and RNA interference, also continues to expand; 80% of the publications specifically reporting cancer stem cells were published in the past two years. China and India continue to increase their output of biotech papers; France fell behind Spain and Italy; Switzerland entered the top 15 for the first time." For futher details, see:
Number of biotechnology articles per region.
Historical trends in biotechnology fields.
Biotechnology journal impact.
Most cited institutions in pharmacology and toxicology.
Top cited papers by field.
(Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg is Editor of the Nature journals' special pharmacology projects; Andrew Marshall is Chief Editor of Nature Biotechnology.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 25, 2007
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Nature Methods' September Editorial, A 'rough guide' to publication (Nature Methods 4, 675; 2007) describes the process of submitting or resubmitting a manuscript—some important steps and decisions along the way.

The path to publication is a well-beaten one for some scientists but seems more like a dark, unmarked road to others. It helps to know what to expect from peer review (see our May 2006 editorial), but a number of other procedural steps often cause disorientation as well. Here are some trail blazes and travel advice.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 19, 2007
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Larry Benson of the Chief Arid Regions Climate Project in Boulder, Colorado, writes in this week's Correspondence in Nature 449, 24 (6 September 2007):
Until the past few years, both Nature and Science confined their articles and letters to a rather small number of words. This was both good and bad; good in that the articles were short and to the point; bad in that it eliminated studies that were complex. I first thought that the Supplementary Information sections were a great idea. Here was a way to place at the readers' disposal important data (tables or figures) that were necessary background to the work, but not necessary to the reading and understanding of the paper.
However, some recent articles refute my thinking. One or two have contained tens of pages of this supplementary material, essential to the reading and understanding of the article. Ten pages of Supplementary Information are not unusual, and the average for Nature is about five pages.
I suggest either that you either publish hard-copy papers whole and integrated in a long form, or publish them whole and integrated on the web, as you now do with Methods sections.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 05, 2007
Categories: Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (14)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG)'s Chief Technology Officer, Howard Ratner, has posted an update on Nascent (NPG's web publishing blog) about Microsoft Word 2007 (DOC X) for authors writing for science, technology and medicine (STM) publications.
Howard hosted a meeting on 25 July 2007 at the NPG office in New York for staff from Microsoft, the American Institute of Physics, the American Geophysical Union, Science, Inera (producers of the eXtyles automatic editing tool), Aries (in this context, producers of manuscript tracking systems) and NPG. The publishing participants provided a high-level overview of the various stages involved in a typical journal's publication process, from the author writing the manuscript, through submission to publication, including a quick overview of the types of software systems and standards used to aid in these workflows. This was then followed up by presentations from Inera and Aries detailing the problems Word 2007 is causing for editing tools and manuscript tracking systems.
In his Nascent post, Howard details some of the outcomes of this fruitful meeting:
--Microsoft will establish a page on one of its websites with more advanced details on how to best use Word 2007 in a publishing environment. (For example, an image of an equation created when saving a Word 2007 file to Word 2003 carries semantic information that can be reused when reopening in Word 2007 file.)
--Microsoft will consider adding text to its help file with Word 2007 especially about its Math Markup Language Support.
--Microsoft will educate publishers by more frequent presentations at publisher events.
Howard also provides links to more information of use to authors, including this summary by Bruce Rosenblum of Inera, and this set of Connotea bookmarks on DOC X , to which you can add.
Nature is currently testing Word 2007 manuscripts in its editorial production system. If you are using Word 2007 and have a sample manuscript (created from scratch in Word 2007) that you can send us, please do so, as an attachment, to the authors' email address. We are particularly interested in equation-heavy manuscripts, as our experience is that equations and symbols (Greek letters and so on) provide the most stringent test.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 05, 2007
Categories: Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nature, the leading international journal of science in print and online, seeks a full-time Books & Arts Editor to play a key role in the development of its growing Opinion section.
The Books & Arts Editor will be responsible for producing timely, authoritative, urbane, informative, useful, competitive, entertaining, opinionated and engaging culture coverage in print and online, from commissioning to publication. Their section must review, preview and reflect upon the most important developments and trends in books, media, film, theatre, dance, music and visual art of interest to a broad, literate, global audience of working scientists and science-interested opinion leaders.
The ideal candidate will be passionate about science, books, the arts and the internet, educated to Masters level or beyond, with exemplary scientific and cultural contacts and at least 3 years editing experience, preferably in running a similar magazine section. S/he will thrive on ideas, deadlines, collaboration and innovation. The post is London based, but may involve some travel to Nature's overseas offices.
All candidates must demonstrate the right to live and work in the UK to be considered for the vacancy.
Contact Details:
Applicants should email a covering letter, 3 clips of their writing and editing, a CV of no more than 2 pages, and an outline of no more than 400 words of how they would cover Autumn 2007's biggest books and arts stories, quoting reference number NPG/LON/694, to Geetika Juneja at londonpersonnel@macmillan.co.uk by 29 August 2007.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 15, 2007
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