Author Archives: Stephen

ICYMI No. 5: Asking universities to be open about research assessment

Posted on May 14, 2016 by Stephen

I first wrote about the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) when it was launched in May 2013. DORA is a simple statement asking the different players in the business of academic research to free themselves from the damaging … Continue reading →

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Transitory Mercury

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Stephen

I wasn’t sure I was going to get to see today’s celestial encounter. The forecast was for blanket cover by early afternoon and the blue skies of the morning had largely filled with cloud by lunchtime, when the transit was due … Continue reading →

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ICYMI No. 4: Books to read before university

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Stephen

This week’s Times Higher Education has a nice cover feature listing books recommended by various scholars to students preparing for university. More particularly, as the author of the piece, Matthew Reisz, explained to me in an email, “We are asking … Continue reading →

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ICYMI No. 3: Academic publishing on the radio

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Stephen

This is rather self-serving, even by my standards, but I made a plan with these “In Case You Missed It” posts and I’m sticking to it. I have been on the radio a couple of times in the past month … Continue reading →

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Review: Heart of the Original

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Stephen

Steve Aylett’s short book on originality, creativity and individuality may conform externally to the rectilinear format of most other books but is otherwise highly elliptical. I found it maddening. Heart of the Original – Alan Moore loved it.  It has … Continue reading →

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Review: The Many Worlds of Albie Bright

Posted on March 19, 2016 by Stephen

After publishing my round-up of the books I’d read in 2015, the author Christopher Edge got in touch via twitter to offer a review copy of his new book, The Many Worlds of Albie Bright. It’s a short novel for … Continue reading →

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ICYMI No. 2: Time for positive action on negative results

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Stephen

Today I had a short opinion piece in Chemical and Engineering News on publishing negative results, a topic that I covered about this time last year in the Guardian on the occasion of the publication my lab’s first paper on an … Continue reading →

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Meeting David Attenborough at the Royal Institution

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Stephen

On Wednesday of this past week I found myself in the presence of royalty and felt quite giddy. It happened at a Royal Institution shindig to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the first televised broadcast of their world-famous Christmas lectures. … Continue reading →

Posted in Science & Media | 3 Comments

Combining preprints and post-publication peer review: a new (big) deal?

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Stephen

Stimulated, I believe, by Ron Vale’s call to preprints last year, various luminaries from the world of science and science publishing will be gathering in Maryland at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) later this month to … Continue reading →

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Open access and public engagement: I need your help

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Stephen

Dear Reader, I would appreciate your help. I am working on a chapter for a book on openness within science (to be published by Manchester University Press). The book is part of the ‘Making Science Public’ program run by Prof … Continue reading →

Posted in Academic publishing, Science | 10 Comments

Anatomy of a blog post on the anatomy of a scientific discovery

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Stephen

At the risk of getting uber-meta, here is a blog post about writing my latest blog post at the Guardian. This was an account of a scientific discovery, albeit a minor one, that occurred during the process of shepherding the latest paper … Continue reading →

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ORCIDs set to bloom in 2016

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Stephen

Have you got an ORCID identifier yet? You should. They’re on the rise – and for good reason. An ORCID iD is a number (mine is 0000-0002-0552-8870) that unambiguously and persistently identifies you in the digital world of academia. It ensures … Continue reading →

Posted in Academic publishing | 11 Comments