Monthly Archives: September 2011

Access to scientific publications should be a fundamental right

In my last post I reviewed a paper in Nature and gave a précis for the “scholarly poor” the internet citizens who are not employed by rich universities. (Universities have an arrogant attitude that access to the literature only matters … Continue reading

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Revamping the funding system (Ioannidis)

In this week’s Nature (not sure whether the scholarly poor have to pay for this so I précis a bit) there’s a useful review More time for research: Fund people not projects John P. A. Ioannidis Nature 477, 529–531 (29 … Continue reading

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Comments on the Bourne plot and other EPSRC matters

For whatever reason I get very few comments on this blog (note: I try to be courteous to posters). Comments normally come when I upset people and overstep a line (“turning up the outrage knob”). I don’t generally do this … Continue reading

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EPSRC will eventually have to disclose where the Bourne Incredulity comes from, so please do it now

  I blogged yesterday (/pmr/2011/09/27/the-clarke-bourne-discontinuity/ ) about Paul Clarke’s exposure (http://shear-lunacy.blogspot.com/2011/09/bourne-incredulity.html ) of the EPSRC “decision making” process which appears to use a 2-plot of “quality” vs “importance”. It has now seriously upset me. It needs the spotlight of Openness … Continue reading

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Europe says (scientific) data should be Open. Neelie gets it! Do publishers?

Even in the burgeoning era of Openness it’s great to see the strong stance from many political leaders. Here’s European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes Brussels, 22 September 2011 (by Ton Zijlstra) http://epsiplatform.eu/news/news/ec_vp_kroes_on_standardization_and_open_data (I have edited savagely) Speaking at the Open Forum … Continue reading

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The Clarke-Bourne discontinuity

I have (regrettably) only just discovered Paul Clarke’s blog http://shear-lunacy.blogspot.com/2011/09/bourne-incredulity.html . Paul is a synthetic chemist and over this year has challenged science policy funding, especially by the UK’s EPSRC. He has mobilised opinion by collecting signatories to letters to … Continue reading

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Am. Chem. Soc. Skolnik Award 2012 (Henry Rzepa + PMR) and some future thoughts

Henry Rzepa and I have been honoured by the Herman Skolnik award of the Chemical Information Division (CINF) of the American Chemical Society. Details (from Phil McHale) can be found here: http://www.ccl.net/cgi-bin/ccl/message-new?2011+09+26+014 Other than – naturally – feeling pleased for … Continue reading

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Open APIS; My attempts to be Openly Open

Having argued that we need to define Open APIs better I’ll share my experiences as a contributor to Open Knowledge and the challenges that this poses. The first message: Openness takes effort Creating copyrighted works costs no effort. Every keystroke, … Continue reading

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Open APIs: fundamentals and the cases of KEGG and Wikipedia

It is now urgent and vital that we define what is an “Open API”. The phrase is widely used, usually without any indication of what it offers and what – if any restrictions – it imposes. This blog is a … Continue reading

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Why do we continue to use Citations?

I have just got the following mail from Biomed Central about an article we published earlier this year (edited to remove marketing spiel, etc.) Dear Dr Murray-Rust, We thought you might be interested to know how many people have read … Continue reading

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