This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.
Catherine Mavriplis of the US National Science Foundation is part of a group researching the situation of women in career breaks (voluntary or not), and which aims to provide resources for these highly trained scientists to re-enter research. She is looking for women to interview to gather data and trends that will serve for a larger survey later this year. If you would like to contribute your own experiences, please visit the Mind the Gap website, where there is more information about the project as well as contact details.
At the Nature Jobs careers forum, Paul Smaglik has been watching an NIH Powerpoint presentation (link in the forum post) which asks for “best practices for predoc and postdoc training.” Paul writes: “As far as I know (and according to the extramural NIH officials I interviewed for the policy piece) this has not yet formally happened. So, I am wondering what readers think should be “best practices”? Please share! Meanwhile, I will search PDA recommendations nationwide, and throw in my own 2 cents (tuppence, in England) about what SHOULD constitute best practices. Also, ”https://network.nature.com/groups/naturejobs/forum/topics/3011">please let us know if universities with ‘best practices’ practice what they preach."
Nature has just published a special issue on the US elections (free to access until the election date). News Editor Alex Witze draws attention to the question asked by Nature’s book review editor, Joanne Baker, to several leading thinkers to recommend the single science book the next president should read. Check out their suggestions here. What book would you recommend? Let us know at the Nature Network forum.
With Nobel prize season upon us (the first prize, in physiology or medicine, is announced on Monday), Anna Kushnir suggests that Nature Network and other science bloggers all write related posts. Topics she suggests inlclude choosing a scientist who you think deserves the award; predictions of winners; or descriptions of how the work of Nobel prize winners affected your own work and influenced you. If you’d like to participate, start today! Posts on the topic during the next week from today should be tagged “Nobel prize” for aggregation purposes. Simon Frantz , who runs the Nobelprize.org site, draws attention to the Nobel organization’s Q&A each prize announcement, in which people can submit questions to each prize-awarding committee, and to newly awarded Nobel laureates. Anna is collecting questions from Nature Network users, who can then vote on which to submit to the committee after the award announcements are made. Please visit this forum link to submit your question(s).
Nature Network users discuss David Crotty‘s post ‘Digital intimacy’ at his blog Bench Marks, on topics such as reporting (blogging) at conferences and ’scooping’ via internet posting. The post also discusses the benefits and disadvantages to scientists of online forums such as Nature Network and FriendFeed. From the discussion at Bench Marks, David comments “open networks should currently be viewed somewhat skeptically–do they represent the mainstream of science? Or are they instead skewed toward certain personality types, or people with their own agendas (such as personal promotion and/or promotion of a cause) and those with a fondness for new technologies?” Plenty to discuss.
Martin Fenner provides a very useful round-up post ‘New ways to look at your presentation’, including various tips and advice about using PowerPoint, and describing some newer ways to present your results. Well worth a read, and there are plenty of useful references in the post for those who want further details and interactive examples.
In a separate post, Martin interviews Alexander Griekspoor about Papers, a Mac-based solution to the problem of storing and organizing your PDF article collection. Alexander’s description of what Papers does: it “provides a complete workflow for finding new articles using built-in search engines, browsing the publisher’s website using the built-in Safari web browser, downloading, archiving and renaming the PDF files, and organising and indexing these articles. Finally, it allows you to easily read the papers and share them with colleagues.”