I didn’t have a clever title. “PeerJ: a new kid on the block” was already taken by Bora Zivkovic. ”PeerJ: Publish there or suffer” is aggressively counterproductive. “PeerJ is awesome”. Meh. So: PeerJ. A new open access scientific journal. PeerJ is the brainchild of Peter Binfield who was the managing editor of PLoS-one, and Jason Hoyt who [...]
I can’t believe I did not realize this before. Thanks to Mickey Kosloff for enlightening me by posting this on his Facebook. Of course grants are like homework. You don’t want to do them; anything is better, really; multiple excuses why not to do them right now; anything has more priority, suddenly. BUT if [...]
Preamble: this post is inspired by a series of tweets that took place over the past couple of days. I am indebted to Luis Pedro Coelho (@LuisPedroCoelho) and to Robert Buels (@rbuels) for a stimulating, 140-char-at-a-time discussion. Finally, my thanks (and yours, hopefully) to Ben Temperton for initiating the Bioinformatics Testing Consortium. Science is messing around with [...]
ISMB 2012 was an excellent meeting. The organizers were celebrating the 20th anniversary of ISMB meetings, and have carefully chosen the keynote speakers to reflect not only the latest advances in bioinformatics, but also to talk about the past accomplishments, how they led us to where were are now, and what the future may hold. [...]
There has been quite a lot of chatter recently about different scientific publishing models. Prompted by Elsevier’s support for the Research Works Act, and the resulting proposed academic boycott. Let there be no mistake: I value the Open Access (OA )model of publication, for both moral and practical reasons that have been elaborated upon in [...]
Here is a video produced by Sally Rockey and her team showing changes in age distribution of NIH Principal Investigators and medical school faculty. Rockey is NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research, serving as the principal scientific leader and advisor to the NIH Director on the NIH extramural research program. The video compares the average [...]
With deepest apologies to the memory of Jimmy Cox. EDIT: I got a couple of concerned emails. No, this did not happen to me. Yet. Once I lived the life of a PI so rich, Research was going along without a hitch. Lab manager, four postdocs and grad students eight, My lab took up the [...]
Nearly a year ago, I posted about the Critical Assessment of Function prediction with which I am involved. The original post from July 22, 2010 is in the block quote. After that, an update about the meeting which will be held in exactly 2 weeks. The trouble with genomic sequencing, is that it is too [...]
Two funding opportunities, available worldwide. Read below and visit www.Agilent.com/lifesciences/emerginginsights for more details and application forms. Agilent’s eMerging Insights Grant Program Fostering integrated, whole-systems approaches to biological research with two $75K grants for open source data-integration tool development The different omics platforms—genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics—are generating new insights into how biological systems [...]
Some time ago an article in Linux Journal discussed the adoption of free/open course software (FOSS) by the general public. The article (I can’t seem to find it now) talked about the people that do not care about the distinction between Free as in Free Beer vs. Free as in Freedom (libre). They want software [...]
Proposal Sergeant: On your feet you hackers! Up, up up up up! What do you think this place is, one of your conferences where you can sleep in late and grab a cafe-latte on your way to the keynote lecture? NO IT IS NOT! This is a grant writing boot camp! We’re up bright and [...]
It seems like there is no institution that is more criticized in science than that of the peer-review system — an no one that is less mutable. While published paper evaluation metrics are being revised (such as the recently introduced PLoS article level metrics, or the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council abandonment of [...]
I’ve been cleaning out my Gmail from attachment-emails recently. (Why do people continue to send me video files when there’s YouTube?) Anyhow, Mickey Kosloff sent me this. In this pic, form meet function, being concise and to the point, as a good grant application should be.
One problem that I am facing is convincing colleagues of the utility of an Open Access publication. The usual arguments: more visibility, retention of the right to re-use material, the Greater Good, taxpayer access to taxpayer-funded research and so on don’t stick very well when faced with a $1500-$2500 or higher publication fee. These can [...]
Sooo… NIH and NSF started Tweeting. Nice. A good way to keep up with grant programs, funding opportunities, yadda yadda. Here’s my @ tweet : @NIH protein catalytic site evolution health implic: good for drug design. Young scientist, need $0.7M 2010-2013, 2xpostdocs+cluster+travel. Prev pubs: http://is.gd/vnPN; kthxbi I hope I won’t get killed at the renewal…
