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B – Scientific writing5 August 2009Langdon-Neuer E. Scientific writing. The Write stuff. 2009, 18 (2): 69-72 This in an editorial relating to an entire issue of The Write Stuff dedicated to scientific writing. It is an extra large issue of a valuable journal that in itself represents a reference point for editors and translators at different levels, both experienced and […]
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B – Writing an introduction to the introduction5 August 2009Harley J. Writing an introduction to the introduction. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 2009, 39, 3, 321-329. Many authors give advice to students about how to write the Introduction section of their articles. Some give examples of different ways of doing this in general, and a few discuss the opening sentence in particular. In […]
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B – Fraud, misinformation and the open culture5 August 2009Pointon, Tony. Fraud, misinformation and the open culture. Physics World 2009;22(8):20 Letter suggesting that the questions opened by the Schön case of scientific fraud are much broader than just science. The plea by Michael Nielson (Physics World 2009;22(5):30-35) for a more “open” culture on science might lead to an overload of unchecked information. He questions […]
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B – Fledgling site challenges arXiv server5 August 2009Cartwright, Jon. Fledgling site challenges arXiv server. Physics World 2009;22(8):9http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39845 A new website called viXra has been set up in the UK for sharing preprints with no restrictions on the sort of papers that can be posted, following criticisms about the way the arXiv site is moderated. The history of arXiv and its refereeing process […]
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N – UK government advises on Twitter28 July 2009The UK government has released 20 pages of advice for government departments on how to use the microblogging site Twitter, which limits messages to 140 characters, the Guardian reports. Its author, Neil Williams, recommends that tweets are edited by humans (without overuse of automation), frequent (2-10 a day with at least 30 minutes gap), timely […]
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N – Chemistry publisher goes online-only17 July 2009The American Chemical Society will be turning most of its academic journal into online-only publications, reports Nature . The move has been prompted by declining print subscriptions and diminishing financial returns from the print format. From July, most of the publisher’s journals will print two pages of reduced text sideways on each page – and […]
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B – The e-Index, Complementing the h-Index for Excess Citations15 July 2009Zhang C-T. The e-Index, Complementing the h-Index for Excess Citations. PLoS ONE 2009;4(5): e5429. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005429 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005429 A new indicator is here proposed: the e-index. It is a necessary h-index complement since it represents the ignored excess citations. Therefore, for accurate and fair comparisons, it is necessary to use the e-index together with the h-index, which […]
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N – Turkey censors evolution articles14 July 2009The Turkish government has provoked outrage by censoring magazine articles on the life and work of Charles Darwin, Nature reports. The articles were dropped from the March issue of the popular science magazine Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology; www.biltek.tubitak.gov.tr). The magazine is published by the Turkish government’s research funding and science management organisation, Tübitak. […]
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N – Comic Sans walks into a bar14 July 2009Who would have thought a typeface could cause such controversy? Comic Sans, designed by Vincent Connare, has attracted the wrath of designers, offended by its use in contexts such as restaurant signage and even medical information. “These widespread abuses of printed type threaten to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are […]
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N – China publishes more in top journals14 July 2009China has tripled its research published in leading international journals in the past decade, a study by Nature China has found, reports SciDev.Net. The study reviewed the number of mainland Chinese research papers published in Cell, the Lancet, Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Science from 2000 to 2009. It found that the […]
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N – Web 2.0 opens conferences14 July 2009Social networking is changing behaviour among conference attendees, Nature reports. Delegates can informally discuss presentations as they occur, with each other and with outside parties. Some see this collaboration as the way forward. Others think that the blurring of the line between journalists and researchers may make scientists reluctant to present unpublished data. Some conference […]
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N – Twitter meets arXiv14 July 2009“Tweprints” will eventually begin to display the most talked about scientific papers, using the largest open collection of online papers available (arXiv) and the most prolific and popular social networking tool (Twitter), hopes its creator Robert Simpson at Cardiff University. For a tweet (a post of up to 140 characters) to be detected it must […]
