There’s an awful lot of talk about “predatory open access publishers” recently. So much talk that I can’t help wondering whether the phrase is being pushed by barrier-based publishers in another attempt to smear open access.
As many of you will know, it’s now official that Elsevier has bought Mendeley, previously a force for openness in the world of reference management. There’s some good commentary at The Scholarly Kitchen. Lots of open advocates — Ross Mounce, for example — are shutting down their accounts and moving to free alternatives such as Zotero. Unequivocal good guys at Mendeley, such as William Gunn, are painting this as optimistically as they can.
I first met Wann at SVP in 1997, in Chicago. I was an undergrad, still three months away from my B.S., presenting a poster arguing that OMNH 53062 (which would eventually become the holotype of Sauroposeidon ) was a new sauropod.
{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-8217 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“8217” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2013/04/08/night-at-the-museum-lacms-camp-dino/lacm-dino-camp-3-mamenchisaurus-and-triceratops-1/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/lacm-dino-camp-3-mamenchisaurus-and-triceratops-1.jpg” orig-size=“2100,1575” comments-opened=“1”
There are probably many ways of getting a “90% complete” paper finished and ready for submission, but here’s the way that works for me. (It’s working for me right now : I’m in the middle of the process, and broke off to write this just for a a break.) You will need: A printed copy of your manuscript A red pen A CD of Dar Williams songs that you know inside out A bottle of red wine A bar of white chocolate (optional)
Because I am preparing this paper from PLOS ONE, with its stupid numbered-references system, I am finally getting to grips with a reference-management system. Specifically, Zotero, which is both free and open source, which means it can’t be taken over by Elsevier. As a complete Zotero n00b, I’ve run into a few issues that more experienced users will no doubt find laughable. Here are two of them.
Gah! No time, no time. I am overdue on some things, so this is a short pointer post, not the thorough breakdown this paper deserves. The short, short version: Schachner et al. (2013) is out in PeerJ, describing airflow in the lungs of Nile crocs, and showing how surprisingly birdlike croc lungs actually are.
Just like the last time I tried to post a comment on Richard Van Noorden’s piece on open-access economics, the comment I posted has been rejected with a fatuous “This account has been banned from commenting due to posting of comments classified as inappropriate or other violations of our Terms of Service” message. SERIOUSLY, NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP.
Folks, I am preparing a manuscript for PLOS ONE, which uses numbered references rather than author+date citations like sane journals. And I am hating it. I am taking perfectly good statements like: And reformatting them as: Which doesn’t look right at all. My question: how, when using numbered references, can I properly refer to page-range and figure number? Because there has to be a way — doesn’t there?
Long, long ago — back in 2010! — Gordon Dzemski of the University of Flensburg, Germany, sent me a copy of a miniposter that he had prepared, and invited me to share it on SV-POW!. Somehow, it fell through the cracks, and I never did so. Time to fix that!
As is now well known, Edwin Mellen Press sued librarian Dale Askey for posting a negative review of their products. Now they have threatened to sue the Scholarly Kitchen for writing about this, and also to sue one of the commenters on that site. I, of course, am not a librarian, and so have no opinion of my own regarding Edwin Mellen Press.