Monthly Archives: April 2012

Harvard: we have a problem

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Stephen

This is astonishing. Harvard is one of the best and one of the wealthiest universities in the world but last week its Faculty Advisory Council* announced that it can no longer afford to maintain its subscriptions to academic journals. The announcement … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science, Scientific Life | Tagged , , | 50 Comments

Eyes on the prize are blind to reality

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Stephen

Scientists’ quest for publication in journals with high impact factors is widely perceived as one of the more refractory barriers to the fuller adoption of open access, which I believe to be in the best interests of science. But the … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Scientific Life | Tagged , , , , | 56 Comments

What’s your favourite colour?

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Stephen

What’s your favourite colour? Anyone who has socialised with small children will have been confronted with this serious-faced interrogation at some point. It’s the sort of question that erupts as soon as young kids learn to verbalise the jumble of … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , | 54 Comments

Hawking with Dinosaurs

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Stephen

Here is a ‘paper‘ that I think would not be accepted by PLoS ONE and yet it was the subject of a report on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, arguably the nation’s premier morning news show. … Continue reading →

Posted in Science & Media | Tagged , , | 24 Comments

PLoS ONE: from the Public Library of Sloppiness?

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Stephen

I had an argument with my colleague in the tea-room the other day. Gratifyingly, I learned he had been reading my blogposts on the subject of open access, but it soon became clear he did not entirely share my enthusiasm … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science, Scientific Life | Tagged , , , | 72 Comments