In Reinventing Discovery Michael Nielsen says that one of the great things about the Internet is the way it can connect problems with problem-solvers. Well, let’s see if that’s true. I have a problem with Excel, or rather, with a particular spreadsheet that I would like someone to solve elegantly. You can download a version of my spreadsheet here. The image below shows the contents.
I am fascinated by the psychology of scientific fraudsters. What drives these people? If you are smart enough to fake results, surely you have the ability to do research properly? You should also be clever enough to realise that one day you will get caught. And you should know that fabricating results is a worthless exercise that runs completely counter to the spirit of enquiry. Why would anyone pervert their science with fakery?
For those few resilient readers who have weathered the year-long storm of open access posts at Reciprocal Space and still look in here occasionally for reports of the libel reform campaign, there is good news. Within days I should be able to remove the Libel Reform Campaign button from my web-site because late yesterday afternoon the Defamation Bill had its final reading in the House of Lords.
This is a guest post by Pete Binfield and Jason Hoyt, co-founders of the open access journal PeerJ. I don’t make a habit of running posts from private companies here at Reciprocal Space but have been impressed by the innovative model of open access publishing that PeerJ represents and was glad to be able to provide them with a forum to expound on their publishing philosophy. No payment was made or requested.
It has happened. Yesterday RCUK published the revised guidelines on its new open access policy and, as requested by this blog and everyone who signed up in support, the document (PDF) now includes, on page one no less, a statement that: RCUK’s Alexandra Saxon was good enough to make particular mention of our request in her blogpost to explain the most significant revisions in the new guidelines.
Following my post of last week asking RCUK to include in the guidelines on their new open access policy a statement disavowing the use of impact factors in assessing funding applications, I wanted to thank everyone who registered their support. I also wanted to provide the text of the letter that was sent yesterday to Alexandra Saxon, RCUK’s Head of Communications. All the signatories are listed below.
If I had more time, this post would be shorter. But it explains how we have an opportunity to get UK research councils to help break the corrosive dependence of researchers on impact factors. Please at least skim all the way to the bottom to see how easy it is for you to participate. 15-3-2013: Please see update at the foot of this post for an important announcement from RCUK.
After all the excitement of open access (OA) developments last Friday, there was a chance to take stock this Monday at the Royal Society’s conference on “Open access in the UK and what it means for scientific research”. The meeting, which aimed to examine “the background to the new policy announced by David Willetts in July 2012, including the recommendations of the Finch working group, and (to) address the practical challenges of
Last Friday was a big day for open access — it felt like a kind of transition. In the morning the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords (the unelected second chamber in the UK parliament) published the report of its inquiry to the implementation of a new open access policy by Research Councils UK (RCUK) in the wake of the Finch Report.
Less than a week after the Royal Institution announced that it was contemplating the sale of its historic home in Albermarle Street, Nature published an editorial criticising the 200 year old organisation for having lost its science communication mojo in a world that had ‘moved on’. The journal went so far as to suggest that the RI should hand over its historical artefacts to the Science Museum and quit a field that is now over-run with