Filipa Paciencia
Humility and success in science are closely linked, Alaina G Levine discovers at the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.
Alaina G Levine with Dan Shechtman at at the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting.{credit}Alaina G Levine{/credit}
Nerd Heaven, aka the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, provides an intellectual gymnasium for nerds of the world. The youngsters who attend can partake of 29 lectures by Nobel Laureates on topics as tantalising as the Joy of Discovery given by synthetic organic chemist Bernard Feringa, to the rousing Aromatic Ring Flips in Protein Dynamics presented by chemist/biophysicist Kurt Wuthrich, all of which contributes to a flipping good time. Continue reading
{credit}Asonlobo/Wikipedia; CC-BY-SA-4.0{/credit}
The landscape of scholarly communication falls into two main categories: a paid access business model, where journals require readers to pay for access to an article or a subscription to the entire journal itself; or open access journals, which charge authors to publish but make content available free of charge and without restrictions to readers. The rise in popularity of open access journals has resulted in more than 50 per cent of new research now being made available free online. Legitimate open access journals such as PLOS and BioMed Central have been essential in allowing greater access to science, a higher volume of published work, improved education and a greater scope for scientists to publish negative results.
Jeffrey Beall{credit}Kevin Moloney/The New York Times/Redux/eyevine {/credit}
Alaina G Levine blogs from “Nerd Heaven,” aka The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.
The 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting{credit} Julia Nimke/Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Opening Ceremony{/credit}
What exactly is this Nerd Heaven, as I love to refer to it? It’s a conference where you’ll find only just a legion of Nobel Laureates (around 30) mingling with 400 or so young scientists from like 80 countries across the non-flat Earth. The official name for this geeky conference is the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting and it is an annual affair that takes place in Lindau, Germany. Each year it focuses on a different subject and this year its concentration is on chemistry. Continue reading
Thomas Prigg is a brain cell circuitry researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. Now he’s using his science skills to fuel his campaign for Congress in 2018. He talks to Nikki Forrester. Continue reading
This photo was taken during field work in Sabah, Malaysia where Prof. Menno Schilthuizen, his PhD student Mohd Zacaery bin Khalik and I went to explore caves and hunt for new species of cave invertebrates. We spent many days around a small village on the Kinabatangan River, trying to locate caves in numerous limestone hills and gather information about the organisms that live there. Continue reading
An article published under a pseudonym in Science in October 2016 brought to light yet another alleged incident of bullying and harassment in the academic sciences. The type and extent of psychological abuse in academia is systemic across institutions and as varied as the disciplines and personalities inhabiting it, says Juan Pablo Ruiz.
Juan Pablo Ruiz{credit}Juan Pablo Ruiz{/credit}
It has been shown that research articles receive more citations when they have their underlying data openly linked to them. With this in mind, it’s time to consider not just the ideological reasons for making research data open, but the selfish benefits of openly sharing data that all researchers can (and should) be taking advantage of.
This infographic can be downloaded under a CC-BY licence here
And as an increasing number of funders mandate data sharing, and publishers start implementing more consistent data policies at their journals, it is worth seriously considering how and why you should make the research data you generate more openly available. Continue reading