In the last couple of days, the House of Lords (the upper house of the UK government) has issued a call for evidence for a short inquiry into the Government’s open access policy and its implementation by the Research Councils UK (RCUK). The inquiry will cover four main areas: Support for universities through funds to cover article processing charges; Embargo periods for articles published under open access;

I’ve measured a few necks in my time, including the neck of a baby giraffe. I can tell you from experience that necks are awkward things to measure, even if they have been conveniently divested of their heads and torsos. They have a tendency to curl up, which impedes attempts to find the straight-line length.

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-7373 attachment-id=“7373” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2013/01/08/this-is-awesome/kioga/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/kioga.jpg” orig-size=“361,600” comments-opened=“1” image-meta=“{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"HP Scanjet djf300","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}” image-title=“Kioga”

A few weeks ago, we were considering the bizarre Umbaran Starfighter from The Clone Wars , and its extraordinary similarity to an Apatosaurus cervical: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-7368 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“7368” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2013/01/04/umbaran-starfighter-update/1322344262m_splash/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1322344262m_splash.jpeg” orig-size=“500,355”

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-7360 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“7360” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/12/31/ending-on-a-high-note/dicraeosaurus-by-brian-engh/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/dicraeosaurus-by-brian-engh.jpg” orig-size=“960,653” comments-opened=“1”

After the authors’ own work, the biggest contribution to a published paper is the reviews provided, gratis, by peers. When peer-review works as it’s supposed to, they add significant value to the final paper. But the actual reviews are never seen by anyone except the authors and the handling editor. This is bad for several reasons.

A couple of days ago, a paper by Tschopp and Mateus (2012) described and named a new diplodocine from the Morrison Formation, Kaatedocus siberi , based on a beautifully preserved specimen consisting of a complete skull and the first fourteen cervical vertebrae.

I happened to be browsing Gerald L. Woods superb Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats (3rd edition) this morning, and happened across this fragment on page 76: The wording struck me as strange: highest of any living warm-blooded animal? Is Wood just being redundant here, or is he implying that there are cold-blooded animals with a higher mass-specific metabolic rate? The idea seems inherently contradictory, doesn’t it?

Just sayin’: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-7333 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“7333” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/12/16/umbaran-starfighter-vs-apatosaurus-cervical-round-3/gallery151/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/gallery151.jpg” orig-size=“1280,720” comments-opened=“1”

Yesterday, Matt showed you this starship from the Star Wars universe: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-7306 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“7306” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/12/13/was-the-umbaran-starfighter-from-clone-wars-inspired-by-an-apatosaurus-vertebra/umbaranstarfighter-swe/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/umbaranstarfighter-swe.png” orig-size=“462,482” comments-opened=“1”

[Originally written as a comment on Martin Coward’s blog, but I thought the point was worth making as its own post.] Here’s my take on the widely used Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) in contrast to more restrictive CC licences such as the Non-Commercial variant (CC BY-NC). It may be true, as Martin suggests, that CC BY-NC is better for the author than CC BY. But authors are part of a community, and it’s unquestionably