It’s no big secret that the scientific journal system, originally created to share scientific information, now operates mainly by restricting access to that information. The spring, in “Free Science, One Paper at a Time,” I wrote about what that walled garden feels like from the inside, as evolutionary biologist and extremophile microbiolgist Jonathan Eisen tried […]
Continue reading →A little slow compiling last month’s best-of, as I was traveling first to the World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha, Qatar, and then to Cairo, where I helped with a science writing workshop and saw Egypt’s past (the Egyptian Museum) and future (Tahrir Square). More on those later. Meantime, a quick look back at June’s […]
Continue reading →In a touching post at his blog, The Tree of Life, evo biologist and microbug master Jonathan Eisen reports that he has substantially completed the mission I described last week in my article Free Science, One Paper at a Time: finding and re-publishing his deceased father’s papers. Yesterday marked a major achievement in my goal […]
Continue reading →On Father’s Day three years ago, biologist Jonathan Eisen decided he’d like to republish all his father’s papers. His father, Howard Eisen, a biologist and a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, had published 40-some-odd papers by the time that he died by suicide at age 45. That had been in Febuary 1987, while […]
Continue reading →Despite ‘open science‘ getting a lot of play lately, many people don’t quite get what it is. That’s understandable, because people use it to mean many things — open access to science publications; open sharing of data; open protocols of communication; open everything. Can get a little fuzzy. It takes a good story to pull […]
Continue reading →What’s Keeping Us from Open Science? Is It the Powers That Be, Or Is It… Us? from Smartley-Dunn on Vimeo. Despite all its wonders, science today operates under some enormous constraints, many of them concentrated around the academic paper, which started as a way to spread science faster and wider, but now often serves more […]
Continue reading →Robert Darnton rips into the journal system: In 2007 I became director of the Harvard University Library, a strategic position from which to take the full measure of the business constraints on academic life. Although economic conditions had worsened, the faculty’s understanding of them had not improved. How many professors in chemistry can give you […]
Continue reading →A NASA spokesperson has dismissed a major critique of the Science arsenic bug paper based not on the criticism’s merits, but on its venue — it appeared in a blog rather than a peer-reviewed journal. Apparently ideas are valid (or not) based not on their content, or even the reputation of the author, but on […]
Continue reading →Recent favorites, notables, and retweets: Down on the Body Farm: Inside the Dirty World of Forensic Science A good read from the Atlantic. History of Female Madness in the APA Monitor A bit unsettling, which is probably why it’s an important reminder. . The dark side of oxytocin, much more than just a “love hormone” […]
Continue reading →This shouldn’t be something that flu experts feel compelled to discuss sotto voce. If the journal has good reasons to sit on the paper for now, it should declare them. If not, it should get the paper out in the open so the data and findings can be examined and vetted openly.
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