I have just sent this letter to the Editorial Office of the brand new open-access journal Biology Open, which has just published its very first issue. I feel like a bit of a jerk sending a criticism when they’re just up and running, but I think it’s the best thing in the long run.  I will let you know what they say if/when they reply. Update (28 March 2012). They did: read all about it.

I read an article on the Times Higher Education website: Research intelligence – The emeriti seizing a late licence to roam .  It’s about how many retired academics are finding that, freed from the administrative responsibilities of their university jobs, they are able to be more fruitful in their research after retirement. Interesting stuff, so I wanted to read the paper that the article is based on: Thody, Angela. 2011.

Here’s an excerpt from a Google chat conversation that Mike and I had last May. I’m posting it now as a break from the OA Wars, and because it’s annoying to have to keep track of stuff that we know about but haven’t talked about publicly. Matt: Something occurred to me the other day, and I can’t remember whether I’ve discussed it with you or not. So sorry in advance if it’s a dupe. Mike: np.

I’m very aware that I’ve been whining incessantly on this blog recently: RWA this, Elsevier that, moan whine complain.  So I’m delighted to be able to bring some good news.  Mike Keesey’s site PhyloPic.org is back up, in new and improved form, and providing free silhouettes of organisms extincts and extant.

Like many scholarly publishers that work primarily on the subscription model, Elsevier allows authors to opt in to open access by paying a fee, currently $3000.  (While that’s more than twice the $1350 that PLoS ONE charges, it’s comparable to the $2900 that PLoS Biology charges, identical to Springer’s $3000 fee, and slightly less than Taylor &

A short one this time, honestly. I’ve written plenty about the Research Works Act, both on this blog and in The Guardian .  Those writings have mostly focussed on the practical implications of the bill.  But those aren’t the real reasons that it invokes such rage in me.  That comes from this definition (from the text of the bill): So if Randy Irmis gets an NIH grant to research some subject;

I know that I’ve tended to be very critical of Elsevier on these pages [peer review, economics, PLoS clone, RWA, profits].  I’ve sometimes wondered whether that’s really fair: after all, Elsevier are just one among many exploitative for-profit non-open scholarly publishers, right?  Shouldn’t I be equally harsh on Springer, Wiley, Informa and the rest? I’m not alone in this, of course.

Isn’t it ironic?

Sorry to have written so much about publishing politics recently, and so little about sauropod vertebrae!  That stuff is important, and I give you fair warning I will be returning to it soon.

Original Research Article Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, Volume 6, Issue 8, January 2012, Pages 1-7. Michael P. Taylor, Mathew J. Wedel, Darren Naish.

I’ve had it up to here with this misconception.  I just read it yet again, this time in a letter to the editor of the New York Times in response to Michael Eisen’s recent piece in that paper on the RWA.  The letter says some good things, but then right in the middle we have this: This is just one more example of a pernicious and persistent assumption.