A science videornal!

Just learnt about a new science journal whose standard format is video.

Incidentally, the journal’s name is Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE).

The reason why I didn’t know about this journal is of course that it’s not in my research field, indeed, it is far away, even stellarly (it is featuring mostly medical, chemical and physical research in a video format, and they write biology but I guess it is more like a molecular biochem thing –I haven’t browsed deep yet).

Interesting.

They seek to set a brand new publication standard (even if videos are part of publications since some time now, though I’ve never came to read a paper with videos in annexes.

Among the journal’s aims:

- Rapid Knowledge Transfer

- Addressing Complexity

- Lifting the Laboratory Time Sink

- Integrating Time

- Be a Part of a New Movement in Science Publishing

Sure they provide a new way to expose science, and it really looks like like they succeeded because they already have substancial amount of videos. But does the format really translate into either goals? Not if the scientist is not already a video geek I guess. And how would one give a thorough communication of evidence? We need access to analyses and estimate data quality and the like (does this format ease detailing stats enough?). How does it work this way? Unsure whether the video format would fit Ecology and Evolution studies. Oh yeah, go and browse, the videos are mounted as sections were you can make it fit the space, hopefully in substance… I can’t say more, as I actually don’t have access to this journal.

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Bioquote otw: hearing it is not reading it!

Academia once more this week, thanks to Information Culture (where you can find more of course!).

…not only is the form of the scientific paper highly ritualized and artificial, but so is published ‘criticism’, for if criticism were aired in the journals as it actually occurs in the lab, its frequency and nature, and hence that of negational citations, would be quite different from what ultimately appears in print.

And that’s true that there often is less drama when things are put down with a pen keyboard, and published. But then, even at symposia and likes people do not speak out too loud without softening bitterness with a lot of diplomacy. Often bad theories are simply ignored, or, say, laughed under the coat. Probably because among peers, collateral damage of unpleasant speak may include bad reviews. It’s a terrifying perspective sometimes. (An example from a different situation:) I remember a really bad manuscript I decided to reject, just to have mine rejected without substantific argument, just for the sake of having rejected a bad paper (I was unfortunately easily spotted as the reviewer, given too few people in that research area, and French writing is unmistakeable). This happens when one looses sight about peer review, that there’s nothing personal actually, just bad work that requires improvement.

Amazingly, or not so much depending on your perspective, the only really negative remarks I’ve noted so far are more along the lines of bashing students. That, I find easy, especially when it’s done by famous scientists. What’s the risk? Almost none. You’d better not be too sensitive as a science student. But say…

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How to decide where to publish your paper?

Troubles deciding where submitting your manuscript? The discussion was initiated from this post at Dynamic Ecology, so it’s also even more interesting to Seeds Aside in that it’s fully in the ecological sciences. Much has been said already, I have to let you read many reactions at various places and comments there.

Since I’m probably transitioning in my own takes on these points, I’ll split my take between past and possible future change.

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Bioquote otw #3

This week’s quote is not from a paper or a book, but directly from a blog post. You can find the whole text there, it is discussing the future of a recent ecological journal, Ecosphere, and it is an interesting take on a specific review process that may enroot in Academic publishing soon, “Cascade Reviews“.

Here’s the quote:

Perhaps your review process experience is always smooth sailing, but many of us are spending a lot of time revising and resubmitting papers that are technically sound but that reviewers dislike because they don’t like the topic or are uncomfortable with the take home message, or (my favorite) this isn’t the paper that they would have written themselves.

Hum, Academia. I think the quote is self explanatory. Sometimes your studies are approaching that almost* final stage, being published. But it does take many steps, the review process is not the easiest one. There are sometimes reasons for the review to derail, most of the time it has to do with uncareful reviewers, especially when they thought they could handle the review but eventually lacked time for proper appreciation of the work and ended up reading too fast or uncautiously or relied on really prime feelings about it.

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Bioquote otw #2

This is a second shoot at quotes. Not a misquote (though it may happen someday), more of a mycoquote (it’s all about funguys!).

Plant pathologists are regularly confronted with having to choose a name for their pathogen of interest and mycologists often need to decide when to recognize a new species or apply an existing name.*

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Who are you writing a manuscript with?

Just because it sounded too good not to mention it. A taxonomy of coauthor species.

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Where to publish your science, and what about uncited science?

There are blogs with strong inclinations to discuss issues in Academic Life. As a matter of fact, Seeds Aside is reading a few. Sort of a think-about process and sometimes (more often than not) wise source of career advice.

Over there at Drugmonkey, there’s this post with a great discussion about PLOS1 and how one would define dump journals, and impact factors in your field (well, somewhat). Though interested in jumping in, but being in a position of considering most scientific journals are as good as they are (of course there’s variation in impact, therefore obsession with say impact factor), most probably because my fields of research are usually published in journals with a rather low IF, and also maybe because I’ve never been publishing in scientific glamourmagz (never tried), but certainly because maybe I don’t care that much or haven’t had results so strikingly rocking that there was no use even trying.

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2013… A prediction?

I take this graph out of the SA loose rants draft listing, which I almost never go in to look at, and I see this. Oh my, I don’t remember putting this in here nor where I found it, it comes from weeks or months! But anyway, it’s here and it’s interesting. It’s a prediction for 2013, a change that probably most media will leave unnoticed. But that’s not completely devoid of consequences, it’s an important move. Whatever happens, whether it indeed happens this year or next, and of course this is just gross bean counting, one cannot dismiss the shift. And in a decade probably, the world science leading country will have changed.

This basically means that creationists can take over the USA, it won’t matter anymore to the world. It won’t matter if science education in the USA get rotten to the bone anymore. Startling perspective? Well, this would not be the first example of Golden Age past.

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Gender & publishing

Okay, I’m a bit late finding time for not much more than a link offer. It’s very interesting to go, read, follow links further and investigate raw data. Jessica at Moss plants and more, offers us a nice post about a huge dataset and gender production that you can check and explore in different fields and subfields. Makes me wonder what a biased career path I had since before landing in current position, all Labs and bosses and collaborators were primarily and heavily biased toward femaleness. That is, I certainly never had an experience of Academia as it is supposed to be, given the stats.

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Self citation is good

Take notice. Self citation is a tool to have others discover you did write some other papers on the subject. Or related subjects. And then… Just take advantage when nobody else will promote your own results.

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