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Some Scores are More Equal than Others

Posted on 10 February 2012 by Athene Donald

Having committed to sit on an EPSRC panel for the first time in many years, I had my sights set on a post about the Shared Services Centre of the Research Councils. Clearly this is a popular topic for academics to target since I was pipped to the post; just a few days ago Telescoper vented his bile on them for their inefficiencies over his P60 form Continue reading →

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Because it’s been far too sciencey around here lately

Posted on 10 February 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

The best Rube Goldberg device I’ve ever seen on the Best of YouTube podcast (and there have been a few):

and, inspired by a Twitter conversation with Richard Wintle yesterday about gnus (inspired in turn by someone at work asking me how to “do a gnat chart”), some classic Flanders and Swann (but not the gnu song, because that wou Continue reading →

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Answering searching questions

Posted on 10 February 2012 by Frank Norman

For twenty years we have had some sort of desktop access to the scientific literature. At first we only had abstracts of articles, and accessed them through fairly clunky interfaces (anyone remember BIDS?). The introduction of PubMed in 1997 improved the interface, but still had only abstracts. These days, in most research institutes and universit Continue reading →

Posted in Searching, text mining, UKPMC | Comments Off on Answering searching questions

CIHR: Canada Innovating to Help Review?

Posted on 10 February 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is this country’s major source of government funding for biomedical research – the equivalent of the US NIH. They’ve just released a document describing some proposed changes to their grant mechanism portfolio and peer review processes that I thought were worthy of discussion, sinc Continue reading →

Posted in Canada, career, current affairs, grant wrangling, Politics, science | Comments Off on CIHR: Canada Innovating to Help Review?

Mentl

Posted on 9 February 2012 by Henry Gee

I’ve been moithering about whether to write this post for some time – the reasons for such moitherment will, I hope you’ll see, become clear – but the case has become erumpent for reasons of campaigns such as this and, notwithstanding inasmuch as which, this. Until now I have as you’ll no doubt imagine always found som Continue reading →

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In which I sort it out

Posted on 9 February 2012 by Jennifer Rohn

All of my professional life, I’ve worked in affluent labs – in academic groups bolstered by multiple sources of grant money, or in a biotech setting flush with investor capital. More recently, I’ve enjoyed a generous personal consumables budget courtesy of my Wellcome Trust Fellowship.

The new lab, alive with potential

The fridges Continue reading →

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Why am I writing this?

Posted on 8 February 2012 by Sylvia McLain

On scientific publication

I have been working on some publications, you know those results-based things that scientists write, submit, are peer-reviewed and with a bit of luck get published in a fantastic journal and then with not as much luck just a journal. As Stephen Curry pointed out a few weeks ago there is sort of a love-hate relationship wi Continue reading →

Posted in George Whitesides, how to write a paper, peer review, peer-review publishing, scientific publishing | Comments Off on Why am I writing this?

Science policy – my favourite sites

Posted on 8 February 2012 by Frank Norman

In a comment on a recent post, Jamie Christie asked me to list my top ten sites on research policy.  I thought this would be a difficult task; the best sites will vary depending on your particular interests, and some sites are important but not frequently updated.  But as I looked through my list I could easily spot which sites I tend to rely on.

  1. Continue reading →
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Library Day in the Life – weekly round up

Posted on 8 February 2012 by Frank Norman

Last year I took part in Library Day in the Life (#libday7). For one week I wrote a daily post on Google+ about what I had done during the day, and an end-of-week round-up. I enjoyed the experience and the chance to stand back a little and look at what I do, reflecting on what is important in my work. Therefore I decided to join in #libday8, which Continue reading →

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How to access Open Access?

Posted on 7 February 2012 by Stephen

My train of thought is still running.

Last week, taken aback by the revelation of Elsevier’s deep support for the Research Works Act, an anti open-access piece of US legislation, I declined to review a manuscript for the publisher and wrote about my reasons for doing so. My blogpost received an unusual amount of traffic. It seemed to have cau Continue reading →

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