On religion - Confessions of a (former) Lab Rat Blog | Nature Publishing Group We are social creatures. No doubt there are evolutionary reasons why this is so and why it persists, although I’m not qualified to do more than speculate. However, it seems self evident that there are advantages to acting as a group, from care and feeding of young all the way up to coping with environmental challenges and defending against predators, meteorites and space aliens. Being social has its own challenges. Those who for whatever reason fail to learn these mores can not only fail to fit in but also become actively excluded. People with Aspergers, who find it difficult to pick up on and interpret cultural osmosis cues, can end up incredibly isolated and vulnerable. Unfortunately, while this family brought a sense of belonging, much of the instructional imperative of a more immediate, physical family was lost. The sort of example I mean? I’ve been exchanging DMs with somebody with professional psychological experience. Don’t misunderstand me. Bullshit. We knew, didn’t we?
Open High is a school built entirely on open source | NetworkWorld.com Community The term "open source" is being stretched pretty broad these days. Even the Tea Party wants a piece of it. But when a Utah high school named itself Open High, it deserved the moniker. Not only does the school rely heavily on open source technologies, but it is one of the first secondary education schools worldwide crafting an entirely open source curriculum to be shared freely with others. Meaning: you want to rip that page out of the textbook and give it someone else? Go on. Because everything is open source, the school is eager to modify lessons to the individual student's needs, reports Mike Esser on Red Hat's OpenSource.com site. Open High School is a public charter school. As the parent of a high school kid, I think this video is inspiring.
Why do we still publish research (via) papers?Research cycle research Mind the bugs in the system: papers. Photo: Jenn Forman Orth When I lost a WiFi connection recently, I was left with the usual error message, which led me to look more attentively at the URL than I am used to. When the connection was back a few moments later, it turned out that this was a case of URL chopping, as is commonly implemented on blogging platforms — the title of the post was actually “ Let’s Stop Publishing Research Papers “, which is not only more probable as a title but also, as a conclusion, well in line with my thoughts on the matter . No more comments, so I clicked through to the abstract , hit the paywall for the full text, bookmarked the blog post and went on to the next item on my reading list. First, let’s take a look at “epistemic vigilance”, which was at the heart of my not fully understanding the paper’s title. Internal vigilance. External vigilance. The central question of the paper is “Why Do We Still Publish Research Papers?”. version after the feedback.
Has Oracle been a disaster for Sun's open source? On Criticism of ACS and C&EN | Terra Sigillata September 28th, 2010 • 08:09 I put up a version of this post up a few days ago at my other blog, Take As Directed , on the new Public Library of Science (PLoS) network, PLoS Blogs . There, the post netted a total of one comment . That one was not from a chemist but rather from my respected library information scientist colleague, Christina Pikas , formerly with me at ScienceBlogs and now at the vibrant Scientopia blogger collective . Before I was offered that slot at PLoS to write among a group of truly lofty science journalists, editors, book authors, and bloggers, I had made arrangement for my long-time blog, Terra Sigillata, to move here to CENtral Science . I’ve held forth extensively how deeply satisfying it is for me to be here with another group of lofty journalists and editors, many of whom hold PhDs in chemistry and chemistry-related sciences and/or degrees from some of the top science journalism programs in the US. But back to science. Uh, yeah.
Eight criteria for a Journal of the FutureResearch cycle research The concept of the scientific journal is in dare need of adapting to the times we live in. To the long stream of observations in this direction ( my favourite ), Heinz Pampel and Lambert Heller have now added a set of eight criteria that they deem to be important “für ein informationswissenschaftliches Journal der Zukunft”. I basically agree with all they state in there (indeed, some of the phrasings could have been mine), so my criticism focuses on the format: The criteria were posted only in a version that is not editable by anyone else. The criteria were developed with information science in mind. We can of course imagine a future in which translation tools are good enough for everyone to write in their preferred language(s), but this is not mentioned, so I find it a bit strange to put these thoughts out in German only . The use of XML by publishers is laudable at present but perhaps less so in the future. Transparenz: Die Offenlegung eigener Interessen schafft Transparenz.
11 Open Source Projects that Make Free Information Rock Photo via Todd Huffman via Flickr Creative Commons What happens when data is available for anyone to access and use? What happens when projects are open source so people can contribute their skills to improve it? Screengrab via Encyclopedia of LifeEncyclopedia of LifeA partnership between scientists and the general public, the goal of Encyclopedia of Life is to catalog information about every living thing on earth, and make that information freely available to every human being. Avoiding Mass Extinction Engine (AMEE)The goal of AMEE is to assign an energy identity to everything on earth -- and they mean everything -- by pulling together the most accurate and reliable information available about the carbon and energy footprints of products from businesses, organizations and governments. PLoS One JournalAccess to published scientific research is vital to improving current research. Image via AppleTimeTreeHow are humans linked to prehistoric bacteria?
ReaderMeter: researcher-level metrics based on readership In a blog post last week, Dario Taraborelli officially announced ReaderMeter. ReaderMeter takes the usage data from reference managers (starting with Mendeley) to analyze the impact of publications by a particular author. ReaderMeter is a welcome addition to other metrics of researcher impact, most of which are citation-based. And ReaderMeter was hacked together in a few nights, so the service should improve over time. Dario mentions some of the current limitations in his blog post: Usage data only from Mendeley. ReaderMeter is visually pleasing and fun to use. Technical Lead Article-Level Metrics and Product Manager, PLOS