Blogs

Following the recent general election here in the UK, there has been much commenting on how this will affect science policy. Sara Fletcher’s thoughtful post considers Dr Evan Harris, the Lib Dem science spokesman, who narrowly lost his seat last week.

Steffi Suhr recently attended BibCamp3 (as did Martin Fenner) which prompted her to get thinking about library design and what the perfect library of the future would look like.

Last but not least, Mike Fowler presents a simple suggestion to improve the peer-review system.

And a little reminder: We’ve been continuing our series of posts that guide you through the various new features on Nature Network and this week we offered some tips on how to network using Network which should include all you need to know about joining the community and keeping up with the conversations.

Groups and Forums

Over in the ever popular Women in Science forum, the Forbes List of 10 best paid jobs for women sees pharmacist beat lawyer for the number 2 spot, while more people have their say on the greatest challenges for a woman in science.

Continuing the peer review theme in the Ask the Nature Editor forum, Bill asks for advice on how to suggest reviewers for his paper. This forum is open to anyone to put questions to the Nature editors, so if you’ve got a burning question do feel free to head over and ask.

Other active forums this week include Biodiversity Informatics, Nature Middle East and the new forum for the upcoming meeting Science Online London 2010, so if you’re interested in any of those topics, do drop in and say hello.

Q&A

Got a burning science question that you’d like the community to answer? Have you tried the new Q&A section yet? This week, conversations included favourite popular science books and the science toys or experiments that got you interested in science as a child.

Do keep an eye out for some exciting events focused around the Q&A section in the coming weeks – we hope this is going to become a vibrant area of the new site. More details soon.

And finally…Updates on bug fixes

Next Tuesday will see the deployment of a range of fixed to resolve some of the niggles we’ve been seeing with new Nature Network. These we include improvements to editing your profile such as adding publications and adding tags.

The Feedback on the new blogging platform now also contains a weekly summary of our efforts to resolve any remaining problems following our transition to MT4.

Have a great weekend!