Blogs

We’d like to draw your eye to Scientia pro Publica (science for the people), a ‘carnival’ of science blogging that appears every couple of weeks. A carnival is a curated collection of links to the best examples of science, nature and medical writing from across the blogosphere and hosted on a different blog each time. Sometimes these are themed, sometimes not. The latest carnival was hosted by Kind of Curious blog. It contains several contributions from Nature Network bloggers, including Stephen Curry on finding Jupiter, Alyssa Gilbert’s timely discussion about the merits of manned space flight, Eva Amsen’s discussion on medical writing, Cath Ennis on cancer genomics, and finally a prolific Henry Gee writing on tetrapod evolution, bare-foot running and ginger dinosaurs, forum etiquette, and belief in a god.

The next carnival will be hosted by GrrlScientist, who also coordinates the project.

If that’s not enough links for you to check out, you should also visit Steffi Suhr’s appeal for bloggers to share their positive experiences with the medium.

Forums and Groups

One of the hottest potatoes in science publishing is the establishment of some kind of unique identifier for individual authors. Such a system would enable better tracking of a scientist’s publication record and remove the current ambiguities and problems with attribution. The ORCID initiative is an independent attempt to establish an international standard for author identification. Some of its supporters (including Nature Network blogger Martin Fenner) have now started a group on Nature Network for anyone interested in this initiative. Join up here, and participate in the discussion.

And finally…

Pub meetup! Anyone in the Cambridge (UK) area with an interest in science, and networking with scientists, should join us for a few beers on Saturday 13 February, from 12 noon. The location has yet to be decided, but join the Cambridge forum to receive updates.