I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for research libraries to judge the relative merits of journals when allocating their subscription budgets, the impact factor is calculated annually as the mean number of citations to articles published in any given journal in the two preceding years.

Well this is nice. Today Occam’s Typewriter opens a new cornershop, so to speak, at the Guardian. For me, this closes a social media circle that started over four years ago because I can trace my entry to the scientific blogosphere to the time I heard someone called Jennifer Rohn talking about ‘Lablit’ – literature threaded with science and scientists – on the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast.

Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games spread a warm glow through liberal hearts. His imaginative sweep over British history and culture, which managed to be both reverent and irreverent, was filled with a human chaos that constituted a nicely judged response to the shock and awe of the massed ranks who launched the Beijing games.

I said the open access debate had been torrid. And it continues apace in the wake of last week’s announcements from the UK government and RCUK, the organisation that represents the common interests of Britain’s Research Councils.

Well that was quick. Less than a month after the Finch working group published its recommendations on the future of open access, UK science minister David Willetts has responded, saying in effect “Let’s go for it.” The government has taken essentially all of the recommendations on board and has committed the country to making all its publicly-funded research available for free online by 2014. Except that it’s not quite that simple.

Don’t be misled by the title: this is a book about love. Love for life, love for family and love for curiosity, which leads — circularly — to a love affair with books. Don’t be misled by the title: this is not a handbook.

This is not new since Mariana Mazzucato’s breezy pamphlet, The Entrepreneurial State , was published a year ago, but it was new to me. I’ve just finishing reading it, having snagged one of the copies that she brought to June’s fascinating Science Question Time on economic growth.

There has been a fairly torrid debate over open access over the last six months (even longer for aficionados). For people who look in only occasionally it must seem like a storm that swirls around the same arguments time and again.

My article on open access in the New Scientist provoked an email from copy-editor Miranda Potter.

I have the feeling that there have been too many words on this blog of late. I need a break and wonder if the beleaguered reader does too. Since I happened to be in the sunshine on London’s South Bank yesterday and have a soft spot for the London Eye, rather than torment you with yet more words, I thought I’d give you an Eye-ful.

Last week, having quickly digested the executive summary of the Finch Report on open access (OA), I told you it was complicated. I’ve now read the report in its entirety, along with a large swathes of blogospheric commentary. I’m still decidedly of the view that it’s complicated but I wanted to think through some of the initial responses. In particular, I’d like to try to address the vexed issue of costs.