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.

Google Publish or Perish is a new science writing tool that facilitates paper submissions. The tool was field-tested at the NIH and should be particularly valuable for open access and public access journals. Accepted papers are automatically added to your Researcher ID account. For more information, read this forum post by Matt Brown.

Last week I received email invitations from three different journals to submit a research article. I should have felt flattered, but it is unclear why it is me that received invitations to the journals Biomarker Insights , Genomics Insights and International Journal of Medical Sciences . All three journals already exist for a few years, and I wouldn't say that the focus of my research is biomarkers or genomics.

Our recent discussion on public access made me have a closer look on the options I have for my own papers. The results aren't pretty.Most journals allow posting post-prints on a university website The copyright agreement with the journal is the easy part. Most publishers allow posting of post-prints (after peer-review, but not the journal PDF) in a non-commercial repository, usually the repository of your institution.

A real Web 2.0 application needs a serious mashup (web_application_hybrid). At least the folks at ResearcherID thought so. You might remember that ResearcherID creates a unique author ID for each interested scientist and was launched by Thomson Scientific (recently renamed Thomson Reuters) earlier this year. The new ResearcherID features include a mashup with Yahoo Maps that shows the location of your collaborators.

The legal disputes following the withdrawal from the market of two drugs for the treatment of pain (the COX-2 inhibitors rofecoxib and valdecoxib) have led to another critical examination of the paper publishing process. I have written in February about the drug company Pfizer trying to obtain confidential peer review documents from the journals JAMA and NEJM. Courts in Chicago and Boston have denied such requests.

The new NIH Public Access policy started this past Monday. Fellow Nature Networker Graham Steel has summarized this week's reaction of the blogosphere. I would like to highlight some of the discussions we had here on Nature Network. Bob O'Hara wonders about the cost of publishing in Open Access: Show us the Money!. He argues that shifting the costs from reader to author can create problems.

I did a little experiment to figure out whether the full-text versions of my last 15 papers (published between 1997-2008) are available online. The result:3 papers available for everybody10 papers only available from within my institution (Journal subscription required)2 papers only available for purchase Interestingly, the papers in the two journals with the highest impact factor are both available as full-text.

Starting this week, papers submitted from NIH-funded research have to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after publication. But what is the current situation in Germany, especially mandatory Open Access?

Around Christmas, mandatory open access for NIH-funded research was signed into law: Starting April 7, the new NIH Public Access Policy implementing this law will take effect for most NIH grantees. The NIH is soliciting comments until May 1st for this new policy. Open Access and this new policy are complicated topics that simply can't be covered in a single blog post.

Erythropoietin is an effective drug to increase your number of red blood cells. It is primarily used in anemic patients with cancer and on dialysis, but it is also popular with athletes that want to (illegally) increase their endurance performance, most notably cyclists and cross country skiers.