The idea is that you add a icon to your literature review posts and have them show up in a directory of literature posts. Being a clicque-ish but rather non-techy group, the bloggers at Scienceblogs.com are no doubt going to jump all over this, but have they really thought about how it’s going to scale?
Hot on the heels of my Pubmed MSC roundup, Nature Reports has a Stem Cell Edition out, and because, you know, they’re a huge multinational publishing company staffed with professional journalists, it contains some fascinating stuff, while covering most of the recent research-related news as well.
I’m subscribed to some search feeds at Pubmed. Here’s what caught my eye this week:
Since I wrote that last post, it has become apparent that there’s a lot of confusion regarding citing material on the internet, which isn’t surprising given that there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the internet itself. Put your mind at ease, gentle reader, for clarity awaits.
The NLM has published a comprehensive set of guidelines for citing email, usenet, websites. It’s great that they’re attempting to come up with some standard rules, but one has to wonder if the group coming up with the proposed rules has ever used our fine series of tubes.
There’s a number of issues with their recommendations, some egregiously bad, some just kinda funny. For example, they have one set of rules for citing websites, and a different set of rules for citing electronic mail and discussion forums. This, in itself isn’t so strange, but look at the subcategories in each case:
For example, while one might cite a part of a website with the full URL to the cited page, the rules for blogs call for only citing the front page. Never mind that blogging is responsible for the invention of the permalink as we know it today. Mention of URIs or DOIs is nowhere to be found.
That’s the seriously wrong stuff, but as I said, there’s some humor to be found as well. The content type of these sources is given as “blog on the internet” or “discussion list on the internet“.
This is the last site I ever thought I’d be linking to, but everyone should go read Mrs. Clinton’s speech on Scientific Integrity and Innovation. It’s not surprising that Mrs. Clinton is courting the progressive vote in science and education, but what struck me was the bullet point in the attached press release:
Restores expert-driven, evidence-based agency decision-making.
Hillary will reverse President Bush’s new directive that political appointees exert total control over the development of agency rules.
Making policy based upon evidence, instead of ideology. What a wonderful idea.
My colleague, Attila, asked me months ago what are the components of a good laboratory website. However, my thoughts remained incomplete until I read David Crotty’s post at the CSHL blog that I was able to form an answer, and even then it took me two long comments to get my thoughts straight.