Last night we had the first in a series of Nature Network Berlin dinners scheduled around the International Congress of Genetics.

We have been talking a lot about Web 2.0 approaches for scientific papers. Now Elsevier announced an Article 2.0 Contest: Demonstrate your best ideas for how scientific research articles should be presented on the web and compete to win great prizes! The contest runs from September 1st until December 31st.

For my Paper Writing Dream Machine I obviously need a reference manager. My list of required features includes:Easy addition of references by integration with Pubmed, Google Scholar and other online databases.

I’ve written a similar post before , put I would like to talk about some of the features that I would like to see in an ideal paper writing application. Intelligent Formatting Content and formatting should be separated from each other.

As I said before on this blog, I do like poster sessions. The poster sessions at the just finished American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting didn't offer food and drink, but were otherwise very enjoyable. The meeting is probably special because a lot of high quality research will be presented as poster, as there is just not enough time for enough oral sessions. Many of the poster presenters were senior faculty.

I'm currently in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). This is a large meeting on clinical cancer research with about 30.000 people attending. Rather than writing about the specific research presented and discussed at the meeting, I would like to talk about how (web) technology can help in having a better conference.

Microsoft yesterday announced on the Live Search Blog that their Academic Search will be closed next week. And Google Scholar still has shortcomings, including the lack of special limitation features that are found in PubMed. A more detailed comparison of PubMed and Google Scholar can be found in this paper.

Earlier this week Matt Brown announced important changes to the Nature Network software: The first step towards new local hubs. Most importantly, it is now possible to set your location and hub. The hub can be the same as the location, or a city or region nearby (as in my case Berlin). Later this year, Nature Network will add new hubs to the existing London and Boston.

In one of my first blog posts (before I joined Nature Network) about a year ago I wrote about the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2007 Meeting. I was surprised that only a handful of blogs reported about the event, one of the largest and most important meetings for clinical cancer research. One would think that blogging and scientific meetings would be a natural combination.

In the last issue of Nature, a news feature and research highlight look at two recent high-profile paper retractions. The two papers by biochemist Homme Hellinga delt with rational enzyme design. A second group couldn't reproduce the results, ultimately leading to the paper retractions. Then a third group was able to demonstrate that rational enzyme design is indeed possible.

The success or failure of Web 2.0 efforts for scientists depends to a large extend on the availability of cool applications that make the everyday life of a scientist easier. Many of these applications of course already exist, but I would argue that there is a lot of room for improvement.