Cameron and Shirley have just published a paper on article level metrics, in our old favourite PLoS Biology. (Aside: why PLoS Biology? I guess no one would have found it in PLoS One…) They make the point that because of the sheer volume of scientific literature (PubMed alone, which covers just a subset of the…
Scientists can sometimes be unfairly labeled as not caring about anything apart from their lab, grant applications and drug patents. So it’s heartening that one of our important causes – offering free subscriptions to institutions in developing countries – gains such a positive response from Faculty Members and the recipients of free subscriptions. Faculty Members…
Over on another planet blog Darren Saunders asks what is an Associate Faculty Member (AFM). There was some sales training on this subject last week and I sat in, so I should know. I’ve also been re-writing the FAQs for the new f1000 website and have just realized that there isn’t an FAQ relating to…
I often run updates on the news stories we put out from f1000 that are picked up in the media. Most of the time it’s good coverage, occasionally (as the mainstream news media is wont to do) they misinterpret the research and then some poor reporting is cut-and-pasted on blogs around the world. In the…
I finally conquered the beast that is Youtube this morning, managing to upload a Flash video that was rejected more than 20 times previously due to some unknown error and proved to be too large for our Vimeo or Metacafe channels to handle. It feels something close to winning £10 in the lottery after spending…
Michael Faraday, the British chemist and physicist who discovered electromagnetic induction, may have completed his historic findings in the 19th century but he had the same problem as many modern researchers: too many academic papers, not enough time to read them all. ‘It is certainly impossible for any person … to read all the books…
We have added more videos from the Society for Neuroscience meeting and anyone who heard about it would know it was in Chicago. Our dedicated camera crew of 1 managed to get some great footage which we’re still sorting through and, as previously mentioned, some of the videos just don’t seem to mesh with the…
I’m reposting an article sent to me by the Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), who essentially fight for equal rights for scientists in the animal research debate (previously mentioned on our blog) which is often dominated by PETA and headline-grabbing extremist groups. AMP, like their UK cousins Understanding Animal Research and Pro-Test, face difficulties even…
In a previous post I mentioned the lovely Darlene Cavalier, the former cheerleader turned science boffin who, among many other projects, is bringing science concepts to the people in a way they can always understand, ie by having Philadelphia 76ers cheerleaders give sciency facts while looking pretty and shaking their pom poms. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u6oDP7GYt4&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1] Darlene (also…
Once again the death of the impact factor has been announced and as usual I wonder whether Mark Twain would mind his famous quote being misappropriated once again, that is, another death being greatly exaggerated. While F1000 has always held the view that impact factor is not the best gauge of a paper’s worth, Richard…
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