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Borrowing, debt, and plagiarism7 December 2008This piece, in the Guardian’s review section, starts with borrowing as the source of current economic woes, then moves on to the experiences of debt of authors and characters, before engaging with the history of borrowing the ideas and words of writers who have gone before us. By courteous acknowledgement the ancient Romans kept those […]
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B – Free for all5 December 2008Harnad, John. 2008 Free for all Physics World 21(12)16-17 Discusses open access journals and the danger of lowering standards of refereeing because of financial pressure. It also discusses the formation of large common-interest groups such as SCOAP (the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing) in high-energy physics which has negotiated terms for its member organisations […]
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B – The price of free papers5 December 2008Banks, Michael. 2008 The price of free papers Physics World 21(12)12-13 Discusses the present state of open access journals and the economics of their publication. The preprint server arXiv and its relation to journals is also discused. A third option is Springer’s “open choice” database; the journal is subscription based but offers authors the option […]
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N – Christmas lunch not dinner3 December 2008Most Daily Telegraph readers eat “Christmas lunch” rather than “Christmas dinner,” said Simon Heffer, the paper’s associate editor, in an angry email to staff. “This is not the Daily Star,” he said. “I have exhorted you all to read carefully what you write. I think some of you are now doing this, but not always […]
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B – Open data: the elephant in the room?30 November 2008Morgan P. Open data: the elephant in the room? Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries.20084(4): 4-6 Scientific research is based on data and the Open Access movement now incorporates the need for open access to research data, or Open Data. Research funding bodies are mandating the release and re-use of data, […]
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B – Publishing should help research30 November 2008Inchoombe I. Publishing should help research. Research Information.June/July 2008 The managing director of Nature Publishing Group (NPG) expresses his views on STM publishing. In his opioiob, there is an expectation that there will be more and more information out there and researchers want to be able to filter the information. There is an increasing demand […]
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B – Beyond English: Accessing the global epidemiological literature29 November 2008Beyond English: Accessing the global epidemiological literatureEdited by Mr. Isaac Fung Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2008, 5:21 doi:10.1186/1742-7622-5-21 The thematic series ‘Beyond English: Accessing the global epidemiological literature’ in Emerging Themes in Epidemiology highlights the wealth of epidemiological and public health literature in the major languages of the world, and the bibliographic databases through which […]
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B – Finding open access articles using Google, Google Scholar, OAIster and OpenDOAR29 November 2008Norris M, Oppenheim C, Rowland F. Finding open access articles using Google, Google Scholar, OAIster and OpenDOAR. Online Information Review. 2008 (32)6:709-15 DOI: 10.1108/14684520810923881 The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relative effectiveness of a range of search tools in finding open access (OA) versions of peer reviewed academic articles on the world […]
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B – Peer Review Isn’t Perfect…But it’s not a conspiracy28 November 2008Wiley S. Peer Review Isn’t Perfect…But it’s not a conspiracy designed to maintain the status quo. The Scientists 2008 (11):31 When peer review is negative, it is counterproductive to consider it as a personal assaults. The author, a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Fellow and director of PNNL’s Biomolecular Systems Initiativere, recalls personal experiences and suggests […]
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B – Publication is positively skewed20 November 2008Bjorn G. Publication is positively skewed. Nature Medicine 2008;14:1133doi:10.1038/nm1108-1133b The article reports the results of some investigations showing that positive results of clinical trials for drugs or devices have a higher chance of getting published in the medical literature than negative trials. This leads to a phenomenon called ‘positive publication bias’, a serious problem that […]
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B – Bubble fusion scientist disciplined20 November 2008Levi B G. Bubble fusion scientist disciplined. Physics Today 2008;61(11):28-30 Reports the results of a third investigation by Purdue Unuversity into alleged scientific misconduct by Rusi Taleyarkhan in connection with claims to have produced nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment. The committee considered 12 allegations and found sufficient evidence to cite Taleyarkhan with research misconduct […]
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B – Enhancing the h-index to score total publication output13 November 2008Anderson TR, Hankin RKS, Killworth PD. Beyond the Durfee square: Enhancing the h-index to score total publication output. Scientometrics 2008;76(3):577-78. In this article, the authors propose a new bibliometric index, that is the “tapered h-index”. It is known that the h-index of an individual scientist corresponds to the number h of his/her papers that each […]
