culture of science
jdupuis | May 1, 2012A fantastic quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson:
The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.
For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
The source of which seems to be…
jdupuis | April 23, 2012As I mentioned last week, on Tuesday, April 17 I was part of a workshop on Creative Commons our Scholarly Communications Committee put on for York library staff. My section was on open data and the Panton Principles. While not directly related to Creative Commons, we thought talking a bit about an application area for licensing in general and a specific case where CC is applied would be interesting for staff. We figured it would be the least engaging part of the workshop so I agreed to go last and use any time that was left.
Rather unexpectedly, the idea of data licensing and in particular…
jdupuis | April 16, 2012As part of a workshop on Creative Commons, I'm doing a short presentation on Open Data and The Panton Principles this week to various members of our staff. I thought I'd share some of the resources I've consulted during my preparations. I'm using textmining of journal articles as a example so I'm including a few resources along those lines as well.
The Panton Principles
Why does Dryad use CC0?
#sparc2012 a manifesto in absentia for Open Data
Information mining from Springer full-text: I ask for freedom
Textmining Update: Max Haussler's Questions to publishers: They have a duty to reply
The…
jdupuis | April 11, 2012It's probably best to start with what Marc J. Kuchner's new book -- Marketing for Scientists: How to Shine in Tough Times -- isn't.
It isn't a social media jackass recipe book for "Success through Twitter." It isn't a detailed treatise on marketing theory. It doesn't come with a guarantee of grants, publications and prizes if you follow it's instructions. In fact, it's hardly about Twitter or blogs or Facebook or Pinterest or any of that stuff at all.
Instead, it's a primer on why getting your message out is a good idea.
Marketing for humans, in other words, where humans = scientists.
Kuchner…
jdupuis | April 1, 2012Hi everybody,
It is with great pride and excitement that I'm finally able to announce something that's been in the works for a few months now. I will be accepting the role of inaugural editor-in-chief of an exciting new journal to be published by Elsevier: The Journal of Applied Publishing Experiments.
This amazing opportunity arose a few months ago, initiated by a blog post of mine that congratulated Elsevier on their wise marketing and publishing moves and this one a bit later, where I declare my undying loyalty to the Elsevier brand. The publisher of Elsevier immediately contacted me…
jdupuis | March 27, 2012This post has superseded my two previous link collection posts here and here.
The first focused solely on the Research Works Act, the second added posts on the Elsevier boycott and this one also incorporates posts on the reintroduction of The Federal Research Public Access Act. These three stories are all intertwined to the extent that it is difficult to separate them out completely. That being said, I'm not attempting to be as comprehensive in coverage for the boycott or for FRPAA as for the RWA.
Some relevant general resources:
The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against…
jdupuis | February 21, 2012A little while back the Cost of Knowledge site started up a boycott pledge list in response to mathematician Timothy Gowers' pledge to stop contributing to Elsevier's operations by ceasing writing, reviewing and editing for them.
Here is the call to action:
Academics have protested against Elsevier's business practices for years with little effect. These are some of their objections:
They charge exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions to individual journals.
In the light of these high prices, the only realistic option for many libraries is to agree to buy very large "bundles", which will…
jdupuis | February 13, 2012I was really angry riding home on the bus last Friday night. Not angry because the transit system here in Toronto is royally fudged in general or that transit to York University is fudged in particular.
No, it wasn't that particular aspect of the public sphere that had me upset.
It was the growing tendency of publishers of all sorts to try and take their works out of the public cultural commons and place them exclusively behind pay walls. It's their desire to monetize every reading transaction that had me hot under the collar.
Here's what I tweeted standing on the bus, altered a bit for…
jdupuis | February 9, 2012Walter Isaacson's book on Apple founder & CEO Steve Jobs is a fairly long book. It's not exactly a thriller either, especially since I know how it ends. As a result it took me a while to plow through it. I tended to read it in bursts of 40 or 50 pages over a few days then maybe put it aside for a while.
As a result, I ended up reading a bunch of other auto/biographical works at the same time. And there are some interesting parallels.
Ozzy Osbourne's I Am Ozzy and Tony Iommi's Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath are both great books. Like Jobs they are…
jdupuis | January 24, 2012Well, I survived.
Science Online 2012 took place this past weekend and it was a blast. There's already been quite a bit of discussion in blogs and on Twitter about how it went.
A very small selection of the them bits are:
Scattered reflections about ScienceOnline 2012 (#scio12)
Science Online North Carolina (a nice Storify)
Scientists have .... (impressions from #scio12)
Sex, Gender, and Controversy, a #scio12 WRAPUP
Science writing, in contextBut there's way more that I've missed, I'm sure.
One of the things the stellar organizing committee of Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker and Karyn…
jdupuis | January 18, 2012The Stop Online Piracy Act is a piece of legislation in the US whose aims are:
The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill…
jdupuis | January 17, 2012Sometimes good things happen to good people and this is certainly the case.
Michael Nielsen has been named a SPARC Innovator for 2012.
I don't usually do awards announcements here but I've made exceptions in the past for friends and I'm doing that again today.
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition has a program called the SPARC Innovators that twice a year recognizes innovations in the field.
The SPARC Innovator program is a new initiative that recognizes an individual, institution, or group that exemplifies SPARC principles by working to challenge the status quo in…
jdupuis | January 13, 2012All I have to say is that I'm really glad this wasn't published 20-something years ago.
5 things you should know before dating a scientist
1. We can figure things out. Understand, we're paid to dig deep, find the secrets and wade through bullshit. We can pick up on subtleties, so what you think you are hiding from us won't be hidden for long. Sure, we'll act surprised when you eventually tell us you failed freshman biology in college -- but we already knew.
We don't take shit from anyone, so don't lie to us or give a load of bullshit. We spend all day separating fact from fiction, listening…
jdupuis | January 13, 2012With the final countdown underway and the conference less than a week away, this post follows my post on library people in attendance at Science Online 2012 from a few weeks ago.
And I'd like to start off with another best-tweet-ever, this time Marieclaire Shanahan retweeting Colin Schutze:
+ they'll be fascinating! RT @_ColinS_: #Scio12 Newbie Tips: You will meet more librarians in one day than you thought existed in the world.
And that's long been one of my goals, to promote the integration of librarians into faculty and researcher conferences and social networks. And Science Online has…
jdupuis | January 9, 2012Note: this post is superseded by: Around the Web: Research Works Act, Elsevier boycott & FRPAA.
Following on my post from yesterday on Scholarly Societies: It's time to abandon the AAP over The Research Works Act, I thought I'd gather together some of the recent posts on the issue.
The Wikipedia article is here, full text of the bill here and status here.
2012.01.04. New US Publisher Anti-OA Legislation by Cable Green
2012.01.04. A Threat to Open Access: the Research Works Act by Lisa Federer
2012.01.05. Update on publishers and SOPA: Time for scholarly publishers to disavow the AAP by…
jdupuis | December 16, 2011OK, the blog post in question isn't actually that funny. But the title is. And, it's really worth reading for the seriously intentioned message it contains.
How to argue with a scientist: A guide.
I notice it all the time- on Facebook, in the comments of a science blog, over family gatherings, or listening to a radio talk show. Someone, maybe you, is patiently trying to explain how vaccines cause autism, perhaps, or why so-called "anthropogenic" global warming is really just due to sunspots or some other natural cycle. Perhaps you are doing pretty well at first, making use of passionate,…
jdupuis | December 5, 2011First the good news.
Saturday's Toronto Star had a really nice little piece on the trend among some Toronto-area science grad students to get a sign of their scientific passion tattooed onto their bodies.
T.D. MacDonald fact-checked the design five times before he let one drop of ink penetrate his skin.
"I didn't want to have an incorrect chemical structure on my body," he says, recounting the long hours he spent creating his tattoo. "The way it is oriented in space had to be right."
That his ink is accurate matters to him, of course.
But few of us would know the strangely beautiful tattoo…
jdupuis | November 21, 2011I like to think I'm developing a little niche here on Confessions of a Science Librarian, at least as far as some of my book reviews. And I like to think that niche is reviewing science-oriented graphic novels. And I've reviewed a few over the past couple of years. Logicomix (review), Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth (review) and The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA (review).
And now the amazing new graphic novel Feynman, written by Jim Ottaviani and art by Leland Myrick. (Colours by Hilary Sycamore).
Now when I first heard about this new biography of Richard Feynman…
jdupuis | November 16, 2011It all started with this innocent little tweet from @seelix:
In going through the twitter list, I believe that half the #scio12 people are either a librarian, a marine scientist or named Emily.
To which I responded:
@seelix is there a marine science librarian named Emily? #scio12
@BoraZ had to chime in as well:
The holotype #scio12-er RT @dupuisj: @seelix is there a marine science librarian named Emily? #scio12
With @seelix getting the last word:
Found my new career path! RT @BoraZ The holotype #scio12-er RT @dupuisj: @seelix is there a marine science librarian named Emily? #scio12
Over the…
jdupuis | November 12, 2011Why Engineering Majors Change Their Minds
Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It's Just So Darn Hard)
Why The Internet of Things Will Be Open
Access or ownership: Which will be the default?
Designing for the phase change: Local communities and shared infrastructure
There is a pathetic lack of functionality in scholarly publishing. We must end for-profit publishing and allow libraries to make available the works of their scholars for all
Retaining the STEM Dropouts
Finding Scholarship and Scholarship Finding Us
Thoughts on 2011 Open Access Week
"We Don't Read That Way"
The Walled Garden…