PLOS
clock | June 1, 2009If you read this blog even superficially, you are probably aware of everyONE, the community blog of PLoS ONE. The blog has been so successful, that our colleagues at PLoS Medicine have decided to follow our example and start their own community blog.
And, today they are ready to reveal - Speaking of Medicine. Go check it out - click on all the tabs on top for all the additional information. Bookmark and subscribed. Spread the word about it. And come back often and use it - and post comments.
clock | May 27, 2009Pete Binfield, the Managing Editor of PLoS ONE, presented a webinar about article-level metrics to NISO - see also the blog post about it:
Article-Level Metrics (at PLoS and beyond)
Tags: PLoS PLoS ONE PLoSONE ONE Journal articlelevelmetrics article level metrics binfield COUNTER onlineusage usage academicjournals academic journals journals library Public Library of Science science citations openaccess OA
clock | May 27, 2009There have been quite a few posts over the last few days about commenting, in particular about posting comments, notes and ratings on scientific papers. But this also related to commenting on blogs and social networks, commenting on newspaper online articles, the question of moderation vs. non-moderation, and the question of anonymity vs. pseudonymity vs. RL identity.
You may want to re-visit this old thread first, for introduction on commenting on blogs.
How a 1995 court case kept the newspaper industry from competing online by Robert Niles goes back into history to explain why the comments…
clock | May 26, 2009Last year in May, when I visited Belgrade, I gave interviews with Radio Belgrade, talking about science publishing, Open Access, science communication and science blogging. The podcasts of these interviews - yes, they are in Serbian! - are now up:
Part 1
Part 2
I know that this blog has some ex-Yugoslavs in its regular audience, people who can understand the language. I hope you enjoy the interviews and spread the word if you like them.
clock | May 25, 2009...until I pronounce the Blog Post Of The Month for May. Make sure your post is aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org. There are 33 entries there so far - make sure yours shows up there by May 31st at midnight EST.
clock | May 22, 2009Some 47 million years ago, Ida suffocated in the volcanic ashes. I feel the same way at the end of this week - I need to get some air. And some sleep.
But watching the media and blog coverage of the fossil around the clock for a few days was actually quite interesting, almost exhilarating - and there are probably not as many people out there who, like me, read pretty much everything anyone said about it this week. Interestingly, my own feel of the coverage was different if I assumed an angle of a scientist, an angle of an interested student of the changes in the media ecosystem, and an angle…
clock | May 19, 2009Another super-cool day at PLoS (one of those days when I wish I was not telecommuting, but sharing in the excitement with the colleagues at the Mothership) - the publication of a very exciting article describing a rarely well-preserved fossil of a prehistoric primate in a lineage to which we all belong as well:
Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology by Jens L. Franzen, Philip D. Gingerich, Jörg Habersetzer, Jørn H. Hurum, Wighart von Koenigswald and B. Holly Smith
The fossil, named Ida (the scientific name is Darwinius masillae, a…
clock | May 4, 2009Just read it here, then bookmark it for the next time you write a blog post about a PLoS paper...
clock | April 28, 2009Five years ago, PLoS Medicine, the second journal in the PLoS stable, sent its first call for submissions. It has quickly gained reputation as one of the top medical journals.
In the editorial published last night, the Editors look back at the five years so far, and also look forward into the future:
In the age of the Internet, five years can seem like an eternity. PLoS Medicine issued its first call for papers five years ago and the inaugural issue went live online five years ago this October--for those of you who are nostalgic, check out the original call for papers [1]. Anniversaries often…
clock | April 17, 2009In today's PLoS Computational Biology: Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article:
Scientific innovation depends on finding, integrating, and re-using the products of previous research. Here we explore how recent developments in Web technology, particularly those related to the publication of data and metadata, might assist that process by providing semantic enhancements to journal articles within the mainstream process of scholarly journal publishing. We exemplify this by describing semantic enhancements we have made to a recent biomedical…
clock | April 16, 2009You may be aware that PLoS ONE has started creating Collections of articles in various areas of research. Two months ago we put together the first such collection - Stress-Induced Depression and Comorbidities: From Bench to Bedside and a month later, we unveiled our second collection - the PLoS ONE Paleontology Collection.
This post overviews what our Collections are all about. It is important to keep in mind that there are two types of Collections at PLoS ONE:
The first type is a one-off, 'closed' collection, often associated with a Conference, a Consortium or a Research Center. In this case…
clock | April 9, 2009The Bay Area experienced telecoms trauma overnight. Rumors of main switch outages, fiber optic cables being cut and telephone coverage being suspended, abound. We hear that the fiber optic cable is the most likely culprit. We're trying to figure out how long it might take for these big picture issues to get fixed (could be as little as one hour) and at the same time we're planning on possibly providing another solution via Amazon EC2. Our IT team have been working on the situation since 4.00am.
All the sites that are co-located with United Layer (who are in the Bay Area) are affected, only…
clock | April 2, 2009
Look what came in the mail yesterday! The Art and Politics of Science by Harold Varmus and, since he is in some way my boss, with a very nice personal inscription inside the cover. I am excited and already started reading it.
And speaking o Varmus, he seems to be everywhere. See this article in TimesOnline:
A major investment in fighting tropical infections and chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes in poor countries would transform international perceptions of the US, according to Harold Varmus, who co-chairs the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.
In an…
clock | March 31, 2009You really need to go to a PLoS ONE paper and take a look - we have done some nifty home remodeling ;-)
What is really new and important is that there are all sorts of article-level metrics on each paper. The same goes for all the other TOPAZ-based PLoS journals (i.e., all but PLoS Biology - you may have noticed that PLoS Medicine has migrated onto TOPAZ as well).
Mark Patterson explains what and why. Pete Binfield gives you a new house tour. And Richard Cave gives the information for those interested in the technical side of the changes.
Please take a look and give us feedback at any of…
clock | March 27, 2009If you write blog posts about PLoS ONE papers, you are eligible for a prize every month! I explain in some detail here, but this is the main point:
...every month, I will read all the blog coverage aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org and pick a blog post that, in my opinion, showcases the best coverage of a PLoS ONE article. I know, there is no way to quantify the "quality" of writing, so my picks will be personal. I will be looking for the posts that do the best job at connecting the center of the [science publishing] ecosystem - the paper - to the outside world. I will announce the winner…
clock | March 24, 2009EveryONE? What's that? It is the new PLoS ONE community blog:
Why a blog and why now? As of March 2009, PLoS ONE, the peer-reviewed open-access journal for all scientific and medical research, has published over 5,000 articles, representing the work of over 30,000 authors and co-authors, and receives over 160,000 unique visitors per month. That's a good sized online community and we thought it was about time that you had a blog to call your own. This blog is for authors who have published with us and for users who haven't and it contains something for everyone.
Just launched, this blog will…