Blogging
retrospectacle | April 29, 2007Got this from UM's publishing license negotiation team. I asked for permission to publish the email, and they said sure. I removed names just in case anybody decided to be over-zealous again. :)
----------------
Hi Shelley,
I'm the Electronic Resources Officer at the University of Michigan
Library, i.e. one of the people responsible for negotiating licenses
with publishers. I just found out about the recent unpleasantness with
the Society of Chemical Industry over your use of the graphs from one of
their journals in Wiley InterScience. I'm just checking in to make sure
everything is ok and…
clock | April 28, 2007Just came back from the first Durham blogging teach-in of the year. Pam, Brian and Anton were there and we introduced some new interesting people to the wonderful world of blogging (and they started their own new wordpress blogs).
If you are in the Triangle NC area, we are doing the same thing next week - same place and time: Durham public library 10am-12noon.
aardvarchaeology | April 28, 2007Yay, Aard's finally got a Google PageRank! Instead of rising gradually over the past four months, it's been zero until it suddenly jumped to six out of ten.
The hapless porn surfers are already arriving in droves. Welcome guys! "Teeny teeny porn porn sex sex big booty", everyone!
retrospectacle | April 27, 2007Looks like the big dogs are coming out to play: Science Journal (Almost) Polices the Blogosphere
clock | April 27, 2007I am starting my BIO101 for adults course again on Monday and this time I am deteremined to use a blog in the classroom. To begin with, I copied my lecture notes here (still needs some fiddling and editing before Monday) and we'll see how it works out.
retrospectacle | April 27, 2007
Picture from Grant Robertson.
In an interesting turn of events, it was announced on Page 3.14 (the editorial blog of ScienceBlogs) that there will be an ongoing, online discussion of fair use issues here.
How do copyright and fair use laws, framed before the internet was a twinkle in the eye, apply in the world of blogging? The answer, as a case that unfolded on ScienceBlogs this week demonstrates, may be "not so clearly."
Ergo, we've asked a few experts and stakeholders to weigh in on the issue of copyright and open access. How ought fair use to be interpreted today--as the blogosphere…
retrospectacle | April 26, 2007Earlier today I noticed this blog post on a Nature Blog, (cross posted here) specifically on FnL - Euan Adie's blog, who was overly critical of the science blogosphere's response to the 'Fair Use' kerfuffle (WileyGate?). He opined that it was quite unlikely that there was any big conspiracy going on.
I agree. I think it really was a big misunderstanding, but whether or not it would have been viewed that way by Wiley perhaps has quite a lot to do with the response that the scientific blogosphere returned. Euan Adie is perhaps mistaken in that he assumes that the 'braying mob' can never…
clock | April 26, 2007Excellent article by Jeff Jarvis: The obsolete interview (hat-tip: Anton). As I've been interviewed several times this year, I agree. The world is changing: media, just like science publishing (see below) and getting a job (see further below) will change....
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2007As you may have noticed, founding father Kambiz has been very busy lately, and his brainchild the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival has not quite received the attention it needs. Now, I'm not as good as Kambiz at web design, but I'm OK at long-running repetitive administrative tasks. So I've joined the K as co-admin of the carnival.
Before I start mucking around with the carnival's site, I need some volunteer carnival hosts. Anybody with a blog and an interest in archaeology and anthropology (in the various senses of this word) is very welcome to host. Remember: submitting entries to a popular…
retrospectacle | April 26, 2007Thats what some bloggers have suggested.
Well, am I?
Some may call it cowardly, but here was my response:
Sorry, guess I'm not as brave as you.
Perhaps its is all well and good for people to try to take a confrontation stance on these issues however my first line of defense will always be trying to come to a rational agreement.
I prefer to work things out and avoid lawsuits. Not sure of your financial situation or how much time you have on your hands, but I have better things to do (like my thesis) than engage in lawsuits over blogposts. I am also a grad student (read: POOR) and in the…
purepedantry | April 26, 2007I don't know if you caught this story, but one of our fellow bloggers here at ScienceBlogs, Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle, was threatened with legal action when she reproduced a figure from a published paper in one of her blog posts. The original post is here (now with the figure removed).
She has posted her correspondence with the journal here (the journal in question is Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture owned by Wiley). Happily the issue has been resolved -- apparently one of their junior staff members was somewhat overzealous -- but the argument also resulted in staff…
retrospectacle | April 26, 2007Looks like our efforts paid off. :D
Dear Dr Batts
I'd like to introduce myself as the Director of Publications at the SCI.
There has been a general misunderstanding with this issue. Our official response is below, which we are happy for you to publish:
"We apologise for any misunderstanding. In this situation the publisher would typically grant permission on request in order to ensure that figures and extracts are properly credited. We do not think there is any need to pursue this matter further."
As this is a misunderstanding inadvertently caused by a junior member of staff, I would be…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2007OMG, how stupid! And I ain't foolin'.
The other day my SciBling Shelley at Retrospectacle got nastygrammed by Wiley InterScience for reproducing part of a figure from a paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture! Shelley had provided due reference to where she had found the figure and used it to discuss the contents of that paper. Fair use.
Wiley InterScience describe themselves as "a leading international resource for quality content promoting discovery across the spectrum of scientific, technical, medical and professional endeavors". Yeah, sure, and they apparently want to…
clock | April 26, 2007Yes, we are working on it. Anton just put up the new wiki and the first scaffolding for the program. At this point in time we certainly invite your suggestions, but mostly are looking for sponsors in order to see how ambitious we can be next year in comparison to the First Conference.
Oh, and don't forget to submit your nominations for the second edition of The Open Laboratory.
retrospectacle | April 26, 2007.....discussion. I'm not out for blood, and I'm really kinda hoping that I'll get an email in my inbox today that says "Yes, feel free to use and discuss the mentioned graphs." So far I haven't, and I think that's sad. In piling on here, and around the internet, I just want people to think about what the purpose of doing federally funded research is. Its not so it can molder away on a shelf, far from the eyes of those who paid for it and can benefit from it.
I'd like to think this knowledge is for everyone, and that the free, unfettered exchange of ideas is sometimes facilitated by visual…
clock | April 25, 2007Update: The issue has been resolved amicably and Shelley has some further thoughts. And some even more further thoughts. The discussion will continue here on Scienceblogs and elsewhere in the follwoing days....
If you read other Scienceblogs and not just me, you are likely quite aware of the "Wiley Affair", but if you are not here is a quick summary:
My esteemed colleague here at scienceblogs, Shelley Batts of the Retrospectacle blog, did what we all do all the time - what is one of the primary role of science blogs: compared what a scientific paper says to what the press releases and…
retrospectacle | April 25, 2007Tomorrow the hammer's coming down hard over the 'Fair Use' issue, at ScienceBlogs and hopefully around the blogosphere. Quite a few of my fellow SciBlings have pledged to post about this issue, as it affects us all (not only all of us, but all of you too.)
If you were thinking about writing a post or an email or a naughty-word on a Post-It-Note, please do it tonight or tomorrow.
If you do put up a post, leave a link in the comments and good karma be thine.
UPDATE: I was contacted by the head of the journal, resolution here.
clock | April 25, 2007If you have a moment, this is a useful study to participate in:
Do you blog? If yes, then please consider participating in an online survey from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. The study, Blogger Perceptions on Digital Preservation, is being conducted under the guidance of the Real Paul Jones. The study team is interested in hearing from all bloggers on their perceptions on digital preservation in relation to their own blogging activities, as well as the blogosphere in general. To hear more about this survey, please visit the study'…
aardvarchaeology | April 25, 2007I've just sheepishly realised that I did something wrong four months ago when I installed the script code for the hit counters I use for this site. Forget anything I may have said about this blog's readership. It's way, way higher than I thought. In fact, it pretty much doubled the moment I moved to Scienceblogs.
My old site had an average daily readership of 235 uniques in December. Aard currently has about 520. And the old site is still attracting about 140 uniques daily. Like, wow!