Monthly Archives: September 2011

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 →

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 →

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 →

  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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →