Joe D » publishing

Journalology: What is the scientific paper?

Joe — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:41:55 +0000

A year ago, the discussions at the Science Online conference inspired me to explore the question “what is the scientific paper?” — and specifically, what is wrong with the scientific paper and what its future might be. In time for this year’s conference, I’ve been reposting the the blogs on Journalology:

And perhaps one day there will be more, when I’ve processed the information from this year’s Science Online.

Journalology: Incentivising academic fraud

Joe — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:26:36 +0000

Over at Journalology I discuss the issue of academic fraud in China, again. Academic fraud is an issue that few take seriously enough anywhere, and while China has a particularly big fraud problem, I worry that people allow that to distract them from the fraud problem at home. Read it here.

Broadcast

Joe — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 13:11:40 +0000

This is an archival re-post of something written last summer on the old blog.

Any Questions, one half of BBC Radio 4′s weekly foray into the realm of mindless US-style talk radio bigotry, this week invited a panel of historians, novelists, and journalists to share their poorly considered thoughts on current affairs with the nation. A question regarding the situation in Iran was asked, and after ten minutes of the panelists tediously repeating what they had read that week from real foreign affairs experts, somebody mentioned twitter. I’ll pass on wordsmith Will Self’s clumsy attempt at a joke (“the only circumstances in which I would twitter is if a songbird flew into my mouth”), which somehow prompted screeches of delight from the audience of children and mental subnormals, and go straight to the comments of Rod Liddle.

Rod Liddle, left-of-centre columnist for right-of-centre newsmagazine Spectator and former editor of Radio 4′s flagship Today Programme, joked about the use of twitter by celebrities and politicians being all about what they ate in the restaurant last night (oh, by the way, Rod, I’ve got 2008 on the phone — they said something about wanting their joke back?). Even if that were true, so what? I’ve never read the Spectator, but I learn from their website that if it were my wish to do so, I could enjoy such features and columns as boring woman has lunch — sorry, splendid lunch; some guy gets his hair cut; and painfully arsenumbingly pointless woman pours her heart out over the uniquely middle class problem of “how to start a letter to your sponsored child”. My God, Spectator, don’t you realise? I don’t care. I don’t care about these irksome morons, I don’t care about their lunch, their haircut, or their sponsored child, and I don’t know why you’re telling us about them. You have taken three retards, stapled them together, and are asking people to pay £3 to read this crap.

For God’s sake, traditional media, take a step back and look at what you’re doing. You look ridiculous. Radio 4 is broadcasting Anne Widdecombe’s considered views on designer shoes, and you wonder why we’re all off reading the science minister’s twitter feed? You don’t see the connection between the Spectator‘s bizarre dogmatic belief that the raving troll Melanie Philips somehow has something worth printing, and our mass defection to the blogs of professors? Channel 4 broadcasts Rod Liddle’s spectacularly moronic comments on atheism and eugenics, and you still don’t get why we’ve all gone to watch YouTube and TED talks?

Of course there are some tedious twitterers. Of course there are plenty of people who couldn’t give a crap about my thoughts, or the thoughts of those bloggers and twitterers that I follow religiously. And of course there are plenty of people who, like me, could not care less what Rod Liddle thinks about anything, let alone the catalogue of topics that he mistakenly thinks he is qualified to comment on. This is the nature of broadcast media, and it always has been. And that is not a problem. It doesn’t matter if I am not interested in somebody’s restaurant-related tweets, because I can ignore them. It doesn’t matter if somebody blogs on a topic that I do not care for, because I can scroll on past. It doesn’t matter if Channel 4 makes poorly-researched documentaries , because I can switch channel. It doesn’t matter if my newspaper prints columns on haircuts and sponsored children, because I don’t have to read those if I don’t want to. Just because something is published in a broadcast medium, does not mean that you are the target audience, and the author is seeking your approval. The difference, as I’m sure you will have noticed, is that if nobody wants to read my tweet or blog post, I will have wasted the few seconds or minutes I put into crafting it. If nobody reads your column or listens to your radio programme, your publisher goes bankrupt and you loose your house.

One comment made on twitter is not going to change the situation in Iran. Nor is a comment made by a novelist on Any Questions. The difference is that the twitterers are aware of these facts.

Journalology: Against green open access

Joe — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:17:45 +0000

Every time I blog about the future of science publishing and the opportunities for radical changes to the way science is conducted and disseminated, somebody comes along and leaves a comment telling me that the state of science publishing is perfect but one thing: the lack of “green” open access. At Journalology I explain what green open access is, and why it’s a mundane distraction from the real problems and opportunities in science publishing. Read it here.

Journalology: PubMed searches by RSS

Joe — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:11:06 +0000

One really shouldn’t have to explain the advantages of RSS over email as a system for keeping up with new things to read. But you know how academics are. So the latest Journalology Literature Hack does just that — introducing RSS PubMed searches as an alternative to the increasingly inappropriate single journal table-of-contents email. Read it here.

Journalology: Why you can’t copy abstracts into Wikipedia

Joe — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:13:11 +0000

I am not a lawyer, but I do have six years experience of Wikipedia, was once a very prolific Wikipedian, and, despite my lack of activity there in more recent years, am apparently still an “admin” on the English language Wikipedia. This, coupled with working for an open-access publisher, means that I have also picked up a little knowledge of (mostly US & UK) copyright over the years. Since I can’t boil all that down to just 250 characters (or whatever the limit is), this post serves to answer this question, raised at FriendFeed: ‘Does an article in pubmed belong to the “legal public domain”, can I copy and paste it in wikipedia?’

Continue reading at Journalology.

Journalology: Peer review in the dock

Joe — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:21:52 +0000

Academic publishing, and peer review in particular, was headline news in February — from stem cell researchers claiming that their work was being sabotaged by reviewers with conflicts of interest, to mainstream news noticing the absurdity of the impact factor situation. BBC Radio 4 must have decided that now was a good time to air an unedited repeat of 2008′s documentary Peer Review in the Dock. So now certainly seems like a good time to post an unedited repeat of my comments from the time.

Continue reading at Journalology…

Journalology: Article-level metrics

Joe — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:25:12 +0000

One of the great recent developments in science publishing is the first hints of article-level metrics: for the first time researchers can get a good idea of how many people are reading and talking about their work. But there is a history of abuse of metrics in academia, with a still widespread problem of funding committees relying on such inappropriate metrics as the impact factor — that is, they are judging you by a number that tells you how much interest was sparked by research published by other people, years ago. Today at Journalology, therefore, I urge caution and vigilance when it comes to article-level metrics.

Journalology: A piece of peer review history

Joe — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:55:16 +0000

Over at Journalology I dive into the free archive of biomedical literature — PubMed Central — and stumble upon a piece of publishing archaeology: an early example of open-peer review. Read on to find out what it’s all about.

I get mail

Joe — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:00:32 +0000

Babylon in all its desolation is a sight not so awful as that of a surgeon with lawyer envy.

from: Dr. Christian V. Zalai
to: joe@cotch.net
cc: info-en-c@wikimedia.org, Alexandra Lucas
date: Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 5:44 PM
subject: Potential copyright infringement

Hello Mr. Dunckley!

While studying, I happened to stumble upon a page on Wikipedia published by you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coagulation

I just wanted to let you know that the thrombosis cascade figure you posted, modified, then claimed as your own was actually designed and drawn by me and published in my book chapter. Here is the reference: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a732987966?words=cardiovascular*|plaque*

Officially, this represents a copyright violation. Unofficially, I really don’t mind you publishing that figure (I’d like to think the simplicity of the drawing is what makes it a good figure) and I truly appreciate everything wikipedia stands for. But I would like to be credited for that image with the hours of work that went into it, and really disapprove of you publishing that figure as if it were your own. Please give credit where credit is due.

Thanks very much,
Christian Zalai

Christian V. Zalai, MDCM, MSc
General Surgery, McGill University
paeon2010@yahoo.ca

(I don’t actually publish Wikipedia, you know. I think it’s published by some non-profit org somewhere. I’m not entirely sure that Wikipedia would fit on my server, actually — I heard it’s quite big.)

from: Joe Dunckley
to: “Dr. Christian V. Zalai”
date: Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 6:10 PM
subject: Re: Potential copyright infringement

hi Christian,

could you clarify, are you claiming that you *drew* the diagram, or
that the diagram is based on your figure. the source you give is
closed access, so it’s not clear from your message.

cheers,
joe

…

from: Dr. Christian V. Zalai
to: Joe Dunckley
date: Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 6:40 PM
subject: Re: Potential copyright infringement

hi Joe,

I did actually draw the diagram myself, using corel draw. The link was to the publisher.
The ebook version is accessible online, usually through your university library and only if they bought it.

Just out of curiosity, where DID you find this image?

Chris

…

from: Joe Dunckley
to: “Dr. Christian V. Zalai”
date: Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 10:27 PM
subject: Re: Potential copyright infringement

hi Chris,

thanks for clarifying that you drew this exact diagram. not being at
an academic inst these days, i can’t get closed access pubs. you
presumably have a copy of your own though — perhaps you would like to
take another look at it yourself, have another think about the claim
you have made, and get back to me. let me know what you find, and
i’ll choose my response from there.

cheers,
joe

…

from: Dr. Christian V. Zalai
to: Joe Dunckley
date: Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 9:34 PM
subject: Re: Potential copyright infringement

hi Joe,
The original version of the figure you are claiming as your own is published in Cardiovascular Plaque Rupture, ed. D.L Brown. I am waiting for a .pdf version from the publisher since the original files and manuscript are with another coauthor. Once I get the .pdf, I’ll be able to confirm my claim.

Chris

…

from: Joe Dunckley
to: “Dr. Christian V. Zalai”
date: Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 10:58 PM
subject: Re: Potential copyright infringement

you could always see if you can find it in google book search…

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=5Jd0teC3byIC&dq=Cardiovascular+Plaque+Rupture&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=KZxpsA4Dgk&sig=lY21_-oXWdxpsETg5o_7PiVtIoY&ei=s7OQSbaLKJ6z-QaY74SHCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA448,M1

There ended our exchange. (Playing the Google card was rather spontaneous, and perhaps had I thought it through first, I would have saved it and seen where the thread went.) It has been a year, and I’m still waiting for Dr Zalai to get back to me with confirmation of his claim.

Here then are a few tips for anybody who is thinking of making spurious legal-chill threats and who wants to avoid making the same schoolboy errors that Christian here made:

Avoid making a claim that concerns basic uncopyrightable facts about how biology works.
Don’t make your claim too outrageous: claiming something that is impossible — that somebody stole a scalable vector graphic with a transparent background straight from a book, say — makes you look just the tiniest bit silly.
Try to avoid sending your threats to somebody who is passionate about open science, copyright reform, and keeping lawyers out of science.

If you fail to follow this simple advice, you might just find yourself being mocked in public.