PLOS
clock | January 7, 2008
I had no time to read this in detail and write a really decent overview here, perhaps I will do it later, but for now, here are the links and key excerpts from a pair of exciting new papers in PLoS Biology and PLoS ONE, which describe the patterns of expression of a second type of cryptochrome gene in Monarch butterflies.
This cryptochrome (Cry) is more similar to the vertebrate Cry than the insect Cry, also present in this butterfly. The temporal and spatial patterns of expression of the two types of Cry suggest that they may be involved in the transfer of time-information from the…
clock | January 6, 2008If you are a doctor, or a post doctoral researcher in a relevant area, and you want to spend 6 months to a year working at a medical journal, this is a great opportunity for you - PLoS Medicine is looking for an intern:
PLoS Medicine, the flagship medical journal of the Public Library of Science, is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for its first editorial intern.
We are looking for someone with a keen interest in medical publishing and open access who wants to join the PLoS Medicine editorial team.
You'll need to be a medical graduate with a minimum of 3-4 years post…
clock | December 20, 2007On This Day In History:
The very first article in then brand-new journal PLoS ONE was published on December 20th, 2006. And the Earth trembled (literally - there was an earthquake in San Francisco on that day). And the world of scientific publishing was never the same since.
You can imagine the celebratory mood at the mothership ;-)
And there is a lot to celebrate: more than 1300 articles have been published during the first year, attracting more and more fans, more and more (and more famous) authors, more and more community commentary that the TOPAZ tools allow, the birth of the first Hub,…
clock | December 4, 2007Zotero is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to manage and cite research papers. They just announced that Zotero now works with PLoS papers. If you have no idea what I am talking about, Rich Cave explains.
clock | November 21, 2007It's been a while since I came back from Boston, but the big dinosaur story kept me busy all last week so I never managed to find time and energy to write my own recap of the Harvard Conference.
Anna Kushnir, Corie Lok, Evie Brown, Kaitlin Thaney (Part 2 and Part 3) and
Alex Palazzo have written about it much better than I could recall from my own "hot seat". Elizabeth Cooney of Boston Globe has a write-up as well. Read them all.
So, here is my story, in brief....and pictorial, just like the first part (under the fold).
The Keynote
About an hour or so before the conference, we started…
clock | November 15, 2007
Today is a super-exciting day for me and I hope you will find it exciting as well. Why?
Because today PLoS ONE published a paper I am very hyped about - Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur by Sereno PC, Wilson JA, Witmer LM, Whitlock JA, Maga A, et al.
Simultaneously with the publication of the paper at 10:30am EST today (and such perfect synchrony took a LOT of work, sweat and nail-biting!), the fossil itself will be unveiled at the National Geographic in Washington D.C. (and you'll see some snippets from there on TV tonight - more information on channels and times later).
First,…
clock | November 12, 2007I just noticed there are six ads on the PLoS Jobs page. I thought that my vast blog readership (sic!) may include people suited for and interested in such jobs. Perhaps you would like to work as a Web Producer, or Javascript Developer, or Senior Java Programmer, for instance?
You get to live in the Bay Area where everyone is on Facebook (is that good or bad?) and never have to wear a tie to work (or whatever is the formal equivalent for female employees). And everyone there, regardless of the actual job, is a big proponent of Open Access and loves working for a forward-looking, cutting-…
clock | November 12, 2007If you look over to you right (you may have to refresh your page or click on internal links and thus raise my pageviews to see it) you will see an ad on the right side-bar that takes you to PLoS ONE. The first 50 readers of scienceblogs who click on that ad and complete registration will receive a Free PLoS ONE T-shirt. And then, once registered, use that registration to rate, annotate and comment on articles there.
If you looked around Scienceblogs.com over the last couple of days (I think it is gone now), you could also see the ad for Colbert Report on the top of the page. So, with some…
clock | November 11, 2007What with all the traveling, I am behind with all the PLoS-related news. So, let me put it all together in one post here.
In the Media
There is a very nice article in New York Times about the launch of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and a nice article about Open Access in The Journal Times (hat-tip: Jonathan).
Also see commentary from the blogosphere: Introduction at The Modest Proposal blog and The End of Advertising as we know it on Elearnspace.
PLoS ONE
Last week, when I made my picks, I forgot to point out a very interesting paper from the Ross lab: Molecular Variation at a Candidate…
clock | November 3, 2007Yup, Chris Surridge, Managing Editor of PLoS ONE (and the author of the legendary comment) swung by the Chapel Hill office last night. Since my initial stint was in the San Francisco office, and Chris is working in the Cambridge UK office, this was the first time we met in person. Much fun was had by all. The pictorial story under the fold:
After I picked Chris up from the airport and let him drop his stuff off at myplace, we went to my office in the wonderful La Vita Dolce, where Chris went wild with the camera taking pictures of me sitting at my table pretending to work:
Then we…
clock | October 31, 2007These last couple of days were very exciting here at PLoS. After months of preparation and hard work, PLoS presents the latest addition to its collection of top-notch scientific journals. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases went live yesterday at 6:42pm EDT. This journal will be
...the first open-access journal devoted to the world's most neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), such as elephantiasis, river blindness, leprosy, hookworm, schistosomiasis, and African sleeping sickness. The journal publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed research on all scientific, medical, and public-health aspects…
clock | October 30, 2007Another Tuesday night, another embarrassment of riches on PLoS ONE (yeah, yeah, I work there, OK). There are 35 new articles published today and it is hard for me to pick and choose as so many are interesting to me, including a couple I may have to write separate posts about (and test the new BPR3 icon). If any of these, or any of older ONE articles (or any of yet-to-be-published articles - ask me by e-mail) are in your area of interest/expertise and you would like to volunteer your group (research lab group, graduate seminar, honors class, whatever counts as a "group" of scientists) for a…
clock | October 30, 2007Last week's PLoS ONE paper, Analysis of the Trajectory of Drosophila melanogaster in a Circular Open Field Arena, is the subject of the newest Journal Club. It is an interesting methods paper, showing the way a camera and some math can be used for a much more sophisticated analysis of animal behavior than it has traditionally been done.
The Journal Club this week is being led by Bjoern Brembs from the Institute of Biology - Neurobiology, Freie Universitat Berlin. You may be familiar with his name because Bjoern also writes a science blog.
The group has now posted some initial commentary, in…
clock | October 24, 2007Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development (which I mentioned a few days ago here) was a great success. You can see all the articles associated with it here.
PLoS has collected all the poverty-related articles from its Journals on this nifty collections page.
A PLoS Medicine article - Food Insufficiency Is Associated with High-Risk Sexual Behavior among Women in Botswana and Swaziland - was one of the few that were highlighted at the event at NIH. Gavin has the details. Nick Anthis gives his angle.
clock | October 24, 2007My brain is fried. My flight home was horrifying - the pilot warned us before we even left the gate that the weather is nasty and that he ordered the stewardess to remain seated at least the first 30 minutes of the flight. Did the warning make the experience more or less frightening? I think it made it more so. Yes, the wind played with our airplane as if it was a toy, but knowing that the pilot thought it was nasty made it less comforting that he is confident himself in his abilities to keep us afloat. The scariest was the landing - we were kicked around throughout the descent until the…
clock | October 17, 2007Everyone at PLoS has been so busy lately, that we all forgot to check our calendars and note some important anniversaries!
PLoS is turning 5 in December.
PLoS Biology turned 4 last Saturday.
PLoS Medicine is turning 3 this Friday.
PLoS ONE passed the 1000-article mark last week.
PLoS ONE will be one year old in December.
We found this out from a blogger - thanks John for the reminder (I told you those "this day in history" posts were useful!).
[image source]
clock | October 16, 2007As last week's Journal Club on PLoS ONE has been a success (and no, that does not mean it's over - feel free to add your commentary there), we are introducing a new one this week!
Members of the Potsdam Eye-Movement Group have now posted their comments and annotations on the article Parts, Wholes, and Context in Reading: A Triple Dissociation.
You know your duty: go there, read the paper, read what the group has already posted in their commentary, register, and add your own comments and questions. Rate the article. If you blog about it, send your readers to do the same. If your blogging…
clock | October 9, 2007The recent return of Journal Clubs on PLoS ONE has been quite a success so far. People are watching from outside and they like what they see.
The first Journal Club article, on microbial metagenomics, has already, in just one week, gathered 3 ratings, each accompanied with a short comment, one trackback (this will be the second) and 7 annotations and 4 discussions eliciting further 14 responses in the comment threads. The 12-comment-and-growing thread on the usefulness of the term 'Prokaryote' is quite exciting, showing that it is not so hard to comment on PLoS ONE after all, once you get…
clock | October 8, 2007Some good, thought-provoking reads about the Web, social networking, publishing and blogging:
Aggregating scientific activity
Social Networks at Work Promise Bottom-Line Results
Would limiting career publication number revamp scientific publishing?
The Public Library of Science group
The Seven Principles of Community Building
clock | October 2, 2007Journal Clubs are a popular feature on PLoS ONE papers. There were several of them in the spring. Now, after a brief summer break, the Journal Clubs are going live again and they will happen on a regular basis, perhaps as frequently as one per week.
What does it mean - a Journal Club? In short, a lab group volunteers to discuss one of the more recent (or even upcoming, not yet published) PLoS ONE papers and to post their discussion as a series of comments, annotations and ratings on the paper itself, triggering a discussion within a broader scientific community.
The first group that will…