Comments for petermr's blog

Comment on Mon cher enfant, j by March | The Cut and Fold

March | The Cut and Fold — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 18:51:15 +0000

[…] of chirality in chemistry, and how it deeply moved the old professor Biot. The story is given here, and the scientific story in great detail here. The pop-up structures took several drafts to get […]

Comment on A commentary on Sci-hub: 1. Scholarly publishing is broken by BB

BB — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 10:38:26 +0000

Just wanted to share a personal experience (as a sci-hub user) here to complement the post. Why am I Sci-hub user? Because I come from a developing country, from an university with limited access to major scientific papers databases, and I do research with almost no funding.
I've recently published a paper in one of high-end journals, despite all the institutional limitations me and co-authors have faced. How did we managed that? Simply because Sci-hub gave us access to latest theoretical advance in the field, and rest of the Internet gave us access to bunch of free tools for doing our work.
So I joked with my co-authors- should we mention Sci-hub in the list of acknowledgments next time (where now stands that the research is conducted with no funding)?
This would be highly disliked by the publishers but would reflect the current situation. Internet pirates helped me more than my institution and academic system.

Comment on I've been invited to speak at Wikimania London 2014. Huge honour and opportunity to contribute to the Digital Enlightenment by Wikipedia and the Digital Enlightenment | the Wikimedia UK blog!

Wikipedia and the Digital Enlightenment | the Wikimedia UK blog! — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 12:27:51 +0000

[…] Foundation “to make a real difference to the world”. The following is adapted from a post on his personal blog and is reproduced under its CC-BY […]

Comment on Taxi Ken and I discuss the UK's negotiations with Elsevier by LibMoose

LibMoose — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 09:16:29 +0000

'The worst possible thing would be an announcement on 2017-01-01: "The UK and Elsevier have concluded a 40 M agreement about purchase of Elsevier publications and services. The details are commercially sensitive but [some important person] says: 'This is a good deal for the UK ...'"' Well that's what has just happened, only in November rather than January.

Comment on "Dialogue" with Elsevier - story-2 ("Despicable" Legal Weasel Words) by loupgarous

loupgarous — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 23:39:14 +0000

Why Elsevier when their reputation for publishing academic fraud and fringe science is massive? For that money, I'm sure Taylor & Francis would welcome the business.

Comment on Beall's criticism of MDPI lacks evidence and is irresponsible by Hugo van den Berg

Hugo van den Berg — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 13:45:44 +0000

Sorry mate, but Beall is right about this one.

Comment on Beall's criticism of MDPI lacks evidence and is irresponsible by Jeff Harvey

Jeff Harvey — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 06:22:09 +0000

I was invited to submit a paper to the International Journal of Molecular Sciences in the MDPI family. The journal has an impact factor now of 3.257 and our paper was very professionally treated. Well peer reviewed and rapidly published. While I think that Beall's list is useful, in some instances he goes well over the top and in the end he is losing credibility. Two years ago many of my colleagues rated his list highly but no longer; now we deal with requests on a one by one journal basis. Beall is not as far as I know a life scientist and many of his inclusions appear to be based on his gut instincts.

Comment on About by Anne Sofie

Anne Sofie — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 10:15:48 +0000

I have been following your fight for open data and better access to research data for quite some time. It is a great inspiration for me as I have done a lot of research myself and in my opinion the entire publishing system needs to rethought. It comes out of a pre internet era and there are so many issues with it. Lastly, they make a lot of money on publishing public founded research which is not acceptable.

Thanks for all the great work you have done!

Comment on "Dialogue" with Elsevier - story-1 (Will Elsevier publish Crystallographic Data?) by Armel Le Bail

Armel Le Bail — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 11:42:11 +0000

Elsevier would not have a so large power on crystal data if crystallographers themselves finally understand that it depends on them to send their CIFs to the Crystallography Open Database, and that the data upload there is something very simple.

Comment on Sci-Hub and my personal position on legality 5/n by Viv Rolfe

Viv Rolfe — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:42:11 +0000

Hi Peter
Was just forward this great post via Twitter having tried to capture something along similar lines (http://vivrolfe.com/blog/from-nhs-glasses-to-sharing-research/). Happy to join up - talk more.

Viv