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B – Are international co-publications an indicator for quality of scientific research?20 June 2008Schmoch U, Schubert T. Are international co-publications an indicator for quality of scientific research? Scientometrics 2008;74(3):361-377 The article deals with the role of internationally co-authored papers, or co-publications. Specifically, the authors compare, within a data-set of German research units, citation and co-publication indicators as proxies for scientific research quality assessment. They also address the issue […]
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N – Free access boosts science in poor countries17 June 2008Low cost access to research in poor countries has been accompanied by an advance in scientific discovery, an analysis by the publisher Elsevier suggests. The Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), run by the World Health Organization, subsidises access to Elsevier journals. Between 2002 and 2006, in 105 countries with HINARI access papers published […]
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B – How to give away your birthright for what?17 June 2008Unruh, W.G. 2008 Physicists and copyright – How to give away your birthright for what?. APS News 17(6)8. Draws attention to the consequences of some journals’ copyright transfer agreements which mean that “derivative works” which “depend on” the original need the permission of the copyright holders and urging authors to scrutinize such agreements before signing […]
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N – The power of n=113 June 2008Two new journals hope to harness the evidence in medical case reports. Cases Journal (www.casesjournal.com), launched by BioMed Central in May, is open access and peer reviewed and authors must pay £99 per report. BMJ Case Reports (http://casereports.bmj.com) is a free online journal launched in June. It charges authors an annual fee of £95, and […]
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N – Government dismisses simplified spellings9 June 2008The UK schools secretary, Ed Balls, has dismissed as “nonsense” claims that tricky English spellings hinder children’s education. The literacy researcher Masha Bell said that by the age of 11 children face 800 words with difficult spellings, such as monkey, spinach, caterpillar, dwarf, soldiers, and stomach, at a recent conference of the Spelling Society (www.spellingsociety.org). […]
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B – How Do US Journalists Cover Treatments, Tests, Products, and Procedures? An Evaluation of 500 Stories8 June 2008Schwitzer G. How Do US Journalists Cover Treatments, Tests, Products, and Procedures? An Evaluation of 500 Stories. PLoS Med 2008;5(5): e95 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050095 Starting from the premise that the daily delivery of news stories about new treatments, tests, products, and procedures may have a profound, and perhaps harmful, impact on health care consumers, a new US […]
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N – XML extra for Word helps editors3 June 2008An extension to Word 2007 allows science journal editors to create article templates, tailored for their individual requirements. These templates can encourage authors to write articles with greater consistency and to include semantic information, which is essential for the search of articles in digital form. Microsoft has released the enhancement, which supports the use of […]
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N – Nature rallies for evolution16 May 2008Between now and the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth on 12 February 2009 science academies and societies should summarise evidence for evolution on their websites and take every opportunity to promote it, a Nature editorial says. Resources to help include the US National Academy of Sciences’ updated booklet Science, Evolution, and Creationism (www.nap.edu/sec). And […]
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N – Medline has 121 000 duplicate articles16 May 2008Researchers estimate that the Medline database contains 121 000 duplicate articles. They analysed more than 62 213 abstracts indexed in Medline and found that 421 (1.4%) were duplicates with the same authors. They extrapolated this to the entire database, they write in a commentary in Nature (2008;451:397-9; doi: 10.1038/451397a). The detection of duplicate papers has […]
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B – Weighted impact factor proposal13 May 2008Habibzadeh F, Yadollahie M. Journal weighted impact factor: A proposal. Journal of Informetrics 2008;2(2):164-72 The authors consider the sole impact factor not adequate enough to measure journal quality. Therefore they propose to improve the calculation of the journal impact factor by taking into account both the number of citations and a factor concerning the prestige […]
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B – Mind the hack5 May 2008Cartwright, Jon. 2008 Mind the hack. Physics World 21(5)14-15 Two of the worl’s biggest science journals (Nature and Science) control their news coverage by giving sneak previews of research under embargo while limiting how scientists can interact with journalists. The author looks at whether the system benefits, or hinders, science communication. This article is also […]
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N – WHO renames bird flu viruses29 April 2008The World Health Organisation has standardised the nomenclature for H5N1 avian influenza viruses. The group of “Fujian-like” viruses should be referred to as “clade 2.3.4,” for example. WHO says the reason for the change is scientific and that it was already in progress when China complained that the name stigmatises its province. Clade 2.3.4 viruses […]
