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.
When writing your paper, or any scientific document, how inventive are you with your prose? Lapsing into the over-familiar phrase can now be easily avoided via a definitive list of scientific clichés put together by Matt Brown and many users of Nature Network. Entering hackneyed terms into Google reveals the extent of their use: ‘implications for therapy’ (230,000 hits); ‘it has not escaped our notice’ (14,200 hits); and ‘this raises more questions than it answers’ (1,030 hits) are three popular examples, but nowhere near ‘further research needed’ (520,000 hits). A fairer test of the scientific, as opposed to any other form of, literature would be to use Google Scholar. There, ‘the next ice age’ has 313 returns compared with 4,300,000 on Google itself. See plenty more suggestions at the Nature Network discussion – and for those even more interested in this type of esoterica, note Nature’s recent News feature (455, 1023-1028; 2008) ‘Disputed definitions’, containing plenty of useful tips on what not to write and how not to write it.
Moving on to the more uplifting, the 2009 Subtle Technologies Festival is currently seeking submissions for its festival on the theme of “networks”, writes Jim Ruxton. The festival takes place in Toronto from 11 to 14 June 2009. “It is time to critically discuss the network metaphor and how it affects the direction of various disciplines and our societies at large. Under this theme, we will be curating a symposium, exhibition, workshops and performances.” Biological networks, virtual worlds and social networking are three of the areas covered, but there are other science-related themes, so do check out the post.
Branwen Hide draws attention to a meeting in December ‘The journal article: what does it cost and who really pays?’, under the auspicies of the Research Information Network. The meeting is based on a report by the organization in which they examined the costs and funding mechanisms of ‘scholarly communications’ – publishers’ costs, the cost to academic libraries, and the hidden costs to researchers in producing and accesing journal articles. Branwen writes that “it would be great to get some researchers there to talk about it, and discuss the types of changes reseachers would like to see happen in the area.” It promises to be a stimulating meeting, and I hope to be there.
Two posts about scientists’ public engagement featured at Nature Network during the week. Sara Fletcher reported on a visit to Diamond, the UK’s new synchrotron facility by science minister Lord Drayson, asking whether whether Diamond (her choice) or Lewis Hamilton (Lord Drayson’s) is a better example to help demonstrate the attractions of a scientific education and career to young people. And Stephen Curry proposes a new form of ‘lay summary’ for articles and grant proposals:
“Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
No! A nonsensical hypothesis!
Your DNA sequence will show the way
And give a much truer diagnosis.”
There is, as may be imagined, plenty of discussion of this idea, but perhaps the Brian Derby Roxy music tribute is the most melodious attempt to make science accessible.
The peer-review process comes under scrutiny in a post by Mike Fowler, ‘Peering at the review process’, which addresses the question of whether peer-review is a conservative process that is biased against new ideas and paradigms, as well as various other issues about the interactions between authors, editors and peer-reviewers. There is an informative discussion at the Nature Network post.
Michael Durney calls attention to yet another social networking site for scientists, ResearchGate – which aims to help share resources and data. In the discussion to this post are links to lists of other social networking sites and brief reviews of those (see David Bradley’s, for example), as it seems that there are rather many of them in existence or almost-existence. How many repeat what already exists, and how many offer useful new services to scientists interested in online collaboration and other types of open sharing of information and ideas?