As you all have noticed, this blog has taken a rather prolonged ‘summer break’. Reasons are many. I apologize for the long silence. We are now relaunching ‘Action Potential’. Welcome back.
In case anyone is still subscribing to the RSS feed, let me warn you that I will over the next few days upload the links to all the fine papers we published in the past six months. This is necessary because the prime motivation for this blog was and is to offer a way for our readers to comment on our papers. This catch-up will make for a series of not-so-exciting blog entries…
But before I embark on this chore, here are a few bits of neuroscience and publishing news that caught my eye this spring and summer:
March: Columbia University receives a $200 million gift from an alumnus’ estate to build a new neuroscience center. Coming from Europe, I continue to be amazed at the fundraising prowess of American universties, and the philanthropic generosity. And I’m a wee bit worried that some fancy new buildings may stand half-empty as NIH funding contracts…
April: PLoS Biology drops the double-blind peer review option. Click here and scroll all the way down. But WHY did they stop it?
June: Nature starts an experiment with online open peer review. Select manuscripts that were submitted to Nature are made available for public comment here, while at the same time undergoing conventional confidential peer review. The experiment is ongoing, and is accompanied by a web discussion.
July: The European “FENS Forum” attracts over 5000 neuroscientists to Vienna. Great science and some fine entertainment. The sulky horse race of neuroscience societies presidents was unique fun. If I remember correctly, Maja Bresjanac of the Slovenian Neuroscience Association won. I’d wagered my money on the Russian, who came in ninth… The same night, Italy beat France in the soccer/football world cup on penalty shootouts. Two Nature Neuroscience papers were featured in a special “Late Breaking News” session: the identification of oncomodulin as a regeneration factor for optic nerve fibers by Yin et al., and the description of a new neuron population in the very early human fetus by Bystron et al.
August: UCLA neurobiologist Dario Ringach quits his life’s work on visual processing in macaques after months of harrassment and terror by “animal rights” groups. Inside Higher Ed has a good writeup of this sad story here.
That’s it for today – stay tuned…