Alexandre Fabre recently bought a French-language comic-book, Les Dinosaures by Plumeri and Bloz, and found this in the third volume: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-7059 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“7059” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/11/12/un-sauropode-aux-jambes-musclees/brontomerus-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/brontomerus.jpeg” orig-size=“679,364” comments-opened=“1”

I think I figured out what the core, immutable quality of science is. It’s not formal publication, it’s not peer-review, it’s not “the scientific method” (whatever that means). It’s not replicability, it’s not properly citing sources, it’s not Popperian falsification. Underlying all those things is something more fundamental. Humility. We all know that it’s good to be able to admit when you’ve been wrong about something.

One of our anatomy students this year, Tess MacFife, was inspired by the other Dr. Wedel’s skull lecture and produced this excellent anatomy-inspired jack-o-lantern: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-7042 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“7042” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/11/01/your-sphenoid-is-disturbingly-bat-like/sphenoid-pumpkin/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/sphenoid-pumpkin.jpg”

If you’ve been following Twitter or the blogs, you’ll know that this has been Open Access Week. It’s been great to see many new open-access policies announced this week [Ireland, Belgium, Hungary], to read important explanations of why fully open (CC BY) OA is the way to go, and to see discussions from people like clinicians and librarians. It all contributes to the glorious sense that the transition to OA is beyond the tipping point.

Four things: 1. From the start of 2013, the Royal Society is abandoning issues for its journals ( Proc. B , Phil. Trans. , Biology Letters and more) and moving to a continuing publishing model — as already used for their open-access journal Open Biology . Excellent news: in a post-print world, issues achieve nothing but the imposition of arbitrary delays.

Back in July I wrote an open letter to Wiley, asking them to use the Creative Common Attribution licence for their open-access activities. They sent two brief notes in response — one from Director of OA Rachel Burley, and the other from STM Publicity Manager Jennifer Beal. Both are appended to my original post. Unfortunately, I dropped the ball in following this up — my apologies to Rachel and Jennifer.

When you start a blog, the natural thing is to want to feel that you’re in control of it, and that means controlling what can be posted there.  But that’s a mistake.  Moderation means that people can’t see their own comments, which is alienating; but more importantly, it means other people can’t see them, which in turn means that all discussion grinds to a halt until such time as you happen to moderate.

Another blast from the past: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-6988 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“6988” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/10/18/2000-ads-flagrantly-plagiarised-brontosaurus/2000ad-prog-10-back-cover-flesh-card-game-brontosaur/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2000ad-prog-10-back-cover-flesh-card-game-brontosaur.jpeg” orig-size=“522,344” comments-opened=“1”

“But Mike”, you say, “What’s wrong with publishers making a profit?” Nothing is wrong with publishers making a profit. PLOS made an operating profit of 21.5% in 2011 (though they plough it back into their mission “to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication”.) BioMed Central also makes a profit, and since they are a for-profit company

As things stand there are two principal types of written communication in science: papers and blog posts. We’ve discussed the relative merits of formally published papers and more informal publications such as blog-posts a couple of times, but perhaps never really dug into what the differences are between them. Matt and I have been discussing this offline, and at one point Matt suggested that authorial intent is one of the key differences.

Last Friday I got an email from Dr Stuart Taylor, Commercial Director of the Royal Society, wanting to set up a phone-call to talk about the issue I raised about the editorial procedure on Biology Letters . I got back to him with my Skype handle, but without fixing a date or time. Then on Monday this week I was approached by Lucas Brouwers, a journalist for the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad.