Category Archives: PLoS

The HHMI/Wellcome/MPI super journal and the triumph of open access

On Monday the world’s three most prominent private funders of scientific research – the US’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the UK’s Wellcome Trust and Germany’s Max Planck Society – announced plans for a new “top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences research”. Basic features of the as of yet unnamed journal (I suggest […]

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Announcing The Batavia Open Genomic Data Licence

Prepublication release of genomic and other large-scale biological datasets is incredibly value to the research community. For the last decade big genome sequencing centers – backed by the NIH and other funders – have followed a set of principles outlined at a January 2003 meeting in Ft. Lauderdale sponsored by The Wellcome Trust. This so called […]

Also posted in open access, science | Comments closed

Press release? We don’t need no stinking press release?

I hate press releases – especially around scientific papers. They rarely explain the work clearly, almost always overstate its significance, and are often grossly dishonest. But scientists and their press offices, working in close collaboration with journals, continue churning them, hoping to earn popular press coverage of their latest findings. They go through this unseemly process […]

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Unfortunate lack of links in the NY Times

I get very frustrated every time I see an article about a PLoS article in the popular press that doesn’t include a link to the article. One of our motivations for starting PLoS was to give the public access to the primary research literature, and readers of popular news accounts of one of our articles […]

Also posted in cool science, open access | Comments closed

PLoS and Drosophila Meeting T-shirts

A lot of people have asked about getting the various t-shirts I’ve made for PLoS and the Fly Meeting. I’ve posted the images for on zazzle.com if anyone wants a t-shirt of their own (proceeds go to PLoS). create & buy custom products at Zazzle

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Herb and Marion Sandler and the Financial Crisis

I just received an email from Herb Sandler: Dear friends We are living in a benighted time. It is hard to believe that the attacks on Marion and me, and the company, are really happening. As you know, we were one of the very few companies which was monomaniacally  focused on loan quality, doing what’s […]

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Stats on Commenting in PLoS One

Euan Adie has a great post over at Nascent (Nature’s web tech blog) about commenting in PLoS One. My thoughts on it later, but it’s definitely worth checking out what he’s done.

Also posted in open access | Comments closed

Bash my brother’s paper – for the good of mankind

My brother’s lab has a new paper in PLoS One, and he wants to use it to jumpstart our efforts to get postpublication commenting rolling: I am offering up my paper as a case study. If you comment and ask questions or make critiques, I will try to respond. And if you think something in […]

Also posted in open access | Comments closed

Obama and Copyright

I haven’t been so worried about the Conyers bill to end the NIH Public Access policy because I figured even in the unlikely event it got through Congress, Obama wouldn’t sign it. But then I read this post by Seth Johnson about “stacking” of the Justice Department with veteran copyright defenders. I’m still not all […]

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PLoS NTD features in Nicholas Kristof’s Op-Ed about Guantanamo

Last year, Peter Hotez published an editorial in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases in which he proposed that rather than just close the prison at Guantonamo Bay, we instead establish a “center of excellence on the diseases of poor that … would directly address poverty and health disparities in the worst-off nations in Central and South […]

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