Sit down and shut up
Carole McGranahan describes a memorable case where academics shut down public discussion of their work: "Dialogue with the Public: Adam Yauch and Academic Snobbery". The subject of the story is the...
View ArticleThis is totally serial
Michael B. Eisen: "The solution to the ‘serials crisis’ on campus"The solution is obvious: universities must stop outsourcing vital functions to publishers. They need to shift the currency of academic...
View ArticleBig data, no access, no replication possible
The New York Times has an article by John Markoff today, pointing to several disputes over the standards for data release with scientific papers. "Troves of Personal Data, Forbidden to Researchers"....
View ArticleMouse brain mapping
This merits some attention: "Neuroscientists reach major milestone in whole-brain circuit mapping project". The data consist of gigapixel images (each close to 1 billion pixels) of whole-brain sections...
View ArticlePeerJ set to launch
PeerJ founder Peter Binfield answers questions for Publishers' Weekly: "Scholarly Publishing 2012: Meet PeerJ ".First of all, we have no intention of becoming a social network, or any kind of “Facebook...
View ArticleLive preparation of "Karabo" skeleton streaming worldwide
I'm in Java, and even though I'm ahead of most of the world's time zones, I'm behind on the news. This news from the University of Witswatersrand is an exciting and positive development: "New Sediba...
View ArticleSpreading preprints in population biology
Ewen Callaway reports on the increasing use of the arXiv preprint server by geneticists and biologists: "Geneticists eye the potential of arXiv". With the near-arrival of the PeerJ system, which...
View Article"We find it hard to see what publication would achieve at this stage"
Theoretical physicist Terry Rudolph shares a story about preprints and the editorial process at a top science journal: "Guest Post: Terry Rudolph on Nature versus Nurture". In short, there was no...
View ArticleOpen access and Creative Commons
Cameron Neylon comments interestingly in Nature on the intellectual property drawbacks of publications that are free to access but not to reuse: "Science publishing: Open access must enable open use"....
View ArticleDo citation indices count in tenure review?
Amy Brand comments on journal citation metrics and tenure and promotion, from the viewpoint of a university administrator [1]. The piece is a reaction to those who believe that publishing in open...
View ArticleWhite House policy on data access
The White House this week announced a new policy on public access to results from federally funded research. The announcement has gotten Michael Eisen comments: "No celebrations here: why the White...
View ArticleBinge learning
From Eli Dourado at The Ümlaut: "‘Binge Learning’ is Online Education’s Killer App". Binge viewing is so common that it is now beginning to affect the production of television shows. Increasingly,...
View ArticleCultural Anthropology, open access
From Brad Weiss: "Cultural Anthropology will go Open Access in 2014". The Society for Cultural Anthropology (a section of the American Anthropological Association) is excited to announce a...
View ArticleCalifornia's online imposition
This is big education news, from the California legislature: "Measure Seeks Campus Credit For Web Study".If it passes, as seems likely, it would be the first time that state legislators have instructed...
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A new high-coverage Neandertal genome
Today, Svante Pääbo's group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology released high-coverage sequence data from a toe bone from Denisova Cave. The new genome comes a year after the...
View ArticleWhat should be the shape of the science journal landscape?
Michael Eisen, one of the founders of the Public Library of Science, has thought a lot about how to make the system of scientific publishing better. He has posted the text of a presentation he recently...
View ArticleAnthropology's online ecology
Jason Antrosio has composed a short report on the "Anthropology Blogosphere 2013 – Ecology of Online Anthropology". I appreciate his kind words about my work here, and love how he has connected the new...
View ArticleOpen 3-d archive of Kromdraai
A new paper in the Journal of Human Evolution by Matthew Skinner and colleagues [1] announces the new availability of an open archive of microCT data from the site of Kromdraai, South Africa, with a...
View ArticleWhite House to recognize open science
The White House is looking to recognize people who are leading in open science efforts, either by providing free access to data or by using data that is already publicly available. I imagine that...
View ArticleMOOCs and disabilities
The Coursera blog today relates a remarkable story: "Not Impossible: The Story of Daniel, a 17 Year Old with Severe Autism & His 6 Completed Coursera Courses". He even had a moment of stardom. We...
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