Blogs
One of the pleasures of aggregating blogs into a network is the wide range of experiences the community brings to bear. This week, geologist Jacqueline Floyd was able to declare: “I jumped on a plane last Friday to catch the R/V Marcus Langseth in Honolulu, Hawaii and begin a 52 day multichannel seismic reflection and refraction tomography study of the Shatsky Rise.” And hence, we read possibly the first ever NN blog post to be uploaded from a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In an utterly unrelated entry, Jennifer Rohn is invited to become a film critic for the BBC, reviewing the film Splice.
On to matters academical, and two posts this week looked at ways to improve certain aspects of publishing. Frank Norman discusses a recent report into research and copyright, while Tom Webb has ideas for ‘fixing’ the peer review process.
Much of the talk on Nature Network this week has concerned the troubles over on another network, Science Blogs, where many key bloggers have quit following controversial editorial decisions. Austin Elliott has put together a good roundup of some of the reaction, much of which has taken place on the pages of the Guardian web site and Twitter. Bob O’Hara wrote a sardonic application to join the site, with a promised first post on context-dependent dispersal strategies in maritime rodents. Richard Grant, meanwhile, pulled into discussion a few of the Science Blogs contributors, including PZ Myers, by putting odds on who would leave next. Ian Brooks also posted on the subject.
Stephen Curry covered more positive aspects of blogging. He recently attended an event on scientific blogging, which has partly inspired him to use his blog for communicating with a non-scientific audience:
It would be good if more of us could achieve that sort of reach. I was pleased beyond measure on the night of the #talkfest when several people spoke warmly about my blogging. But gratifying as they were, those comments came from a fairly narrow audience. Of course it’s important to know that you are able to communicate with the scientific and scientifically engaged community, but I’m interested to find ways to do more. The thrill of contact with the wider audience of enthusiastic school students in the recent I’m a Scientist competition is with me still and I think I need another hit. Or several. Thousand.
Forums
Science Online London is about six weeks away now, and the programme is starting to take shape. Anyone with an interest in scientific communication and collaboration online will be interested. To discuss the conference ahead of time, join the dedicated forum, where current talk centres around one of the fringe events.
Science Maps
Just a reminder that we’re looking for city maps showing scientific history and culture. We kicked things off a couple of weeks ago with this map of London. But do let us know if you’d like to put one together for your own city. We’ll be featuring all maps on Nature Network.
And Finally…
Nature Network recently conducted a Q&A session with Julian Huppert, the only member of the UK Parliament to have practiced science beyond PhD level. You can read a full interview with Julian over on the Cambridge blog.