Author Archives: Stephen

Henry Gee’s top ten reads of 2015

Posted on January 2, 2016 by Stephen

At the tail end of 2015 I reviewed the 23 books that had entertained and enlightened me over the course of the year. My friend Henry Gee, formerly of this parish, managed nearly twice that number. In a guest post full of his … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Review, Science & Art | 3 Comments

ICYMI No.1: Preprints for biologists

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Stephen

Since I have developed a habit of writing elsewhere, which necessarily takes time and words away from the blog here at Reciprocal Space, I thought I would try to make amends by developing the habit of linking to the pieces … Continue reading →

Posted in ICYMI, Open Access, Science | Tagged , , | Comments Off on ICYMI No.1: Preprints for biologists

Jolly good fellows: Royal Society publishes journal citation distributions

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Stephen

Full marks and a side order of brownie points for the Royal Society: they have started publishing the citation distributions for all their journals. This might seem like an unusual and rather technical move to celebrate but it matters. It … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science | 4 Comments

Structural Biology: a beginner’s guide?

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Stephen

I got impatient waiting for my latest review article to come out, so here it is. The scheduled publication date has slipped twice now without the publisher getting in touch to explain why. The latest I’ve heard, after querying the … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Lunacy and sanity

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Stephen

It’s less than 24 hours, so this still counts as a timely post. I guess I had been primed because I had been thinking about it. But although I hadn’t set my alarm I found myself awake at 02:52 on … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Comments Off on Lunacy and sanity

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Stephen

There’s a very real chance this could turn out to be an actual blogpost. In the original sense of the word: a web-log of what’s been happening. Posts have been rather sparse on Reciprocal Space of late. That’s not for … Continue reading →

Posted in Scientific Life | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Pre-prints: just do it?

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Stephen

There is momentum building behind the adoption of pre-print servers in the life sciences. Ron Vale, a professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at UCSF and Lasker Award winner, has just added a further powerful impulse to this movement in … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science, Scientific Life | 16 Comments

Data not shown: time to distribute some common sense about impact factors

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Stephen

It’s that time of year when all clear-thinking people die a little inside: the latest set of journal impact factors has just been released. Although there was an initial flurry of activity on Twitter last week when the 2015 Journal … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access | 10 Comments

Can we amend the laws of scholarly publication?

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Stephen

As part of its celebrations to mark the 350th anniversary of the publication of Philosophical Transactions, the world’s longest-running scientific journal, the Royal Society has organised a conference to examine ‘The Future of Scholarly Scientific Communication’. The first half of the meeting, held over … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Scientific Life | 16 Comments

Open access: a national licence is not the answer

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Stephen

“Open Access: Is a national licence the answer?” is a proposal by David Price and Sarah Chaytor of University College London for a mechanism to provide full access to everyone within the UK to all published research. It was published on 31 … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Open letter to the Publishers Association: please amend your open access decision tree

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Stephen

Dear Publishers Association I ask that you amend the open access decision tree you created for incorporation into the guidance notes accompanying the Open Access (OA) policy announced by Research Councils UK (RCUK) in 2013. It may seem odd to … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Being mortal and being Crick

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Stephen

Two more book reviews from my reading list for this year. On several occasions while reading Being Mortal, surgeon Atul Gawande’s book about end-of-life care, I could feel a lump swelling in my throat and tears behind my eyes pressing … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Review | Tagged , | 1 Comment