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.
More and more non-fiction authors are creating dedicated book blogs to supplement published work. So blogs may be good for science book authors, opines Scott Keir. A discussion follows on the relative usefulness of online blogs or websites as supplements to non-fiction books. Also on books, Brian Clegg draws attention to his review of Experimental Heart, a novel by scientist and Nature Network blogger Jennifer Rohn – both of which (review and book) are subsequently debated.
Xiaoli Li is calling for submissions to a special session on “Data Mining in Protein Interaction Networks” at the 2009 International Joint Conferences on Bioinformatics, Systems Biology and Intelligent Computing conference, to be held in Shanghai, China , 3-6 August. The deadline for submissions is 15 February 2009.
“I arrived a month late as I had been working in the USA that summer. I was shown a desk, handed a copy of a PhD on sintering theory and told to develop a model for diffusion bonding.” Thus reflects Brian Derby on the 30th anniversary of starting his PhD, in an evocative description of a life in science.
Nature Network online forums relevant to authors include Ask the Nature editor, Publishing in the new millennium, Citation in science, and The good paper journal club. All are welcome to join these groups and to contribute questions and discussion.
Next Friday is 26 December and is a public holiday in the UK, so the column will miss a week and return next year on Friday 2 January 2009.