Did you know that there are actually guidelines for determining authorship on scientific papers?
Continue readingCredit where credit’s due (a short guide to authorships in scientific papers)
Publishing
Take back control: an encounter with eLife’s publish, review, curate model
In January 2023, the journal eLife – long at the vanguard of the progressive movement in scientific publishing – took the radical step of adopting a “publish, review. curate” model. Here, with some background framing, is what it feels like to use it.
Continue readingPraise, censure, and the dream of open science
Highlighting good-quality work post-publication might be more feasible and of more value than attempting to police data integrity.
It’s the dream of open science: people post their work online, the community reviews it and provides constructive feedback, and then the authors correct their findings based on that feedback. Any new knowledge produced is rapidly and expertly assessed by the community as a whole, thereby maximising the input that the authors receive as they continue to pursue their lines of enquiry. Everyone participates, everyone benefits.
It sounds great, right? The problem is that almost nobody in the community voluntarily reviews others’ work. We’re all too busy. Peer review is a community service that does not have the cold hard reputational currency of grants and publications, and while appreciated, it is nonetheless undervalued in career terms. Preprints have belatedly and wonderfully achieved mainstream recognition in the biological sciences, but the majority of chatter for the majority of preprints is publicity-based. The comments area of most preprints is empty, with only around 8% of accruing public input.
Continue readingAnd the Oscar goes to…
Would papers – or research projects, even – benefit from copying the arts in having an official producer, director, technical director, and starring cast?
Continue readingI feel the need…the need to read
People need to spend more time reading the scientific literature. Continue reading
2021: TIR’s year in review
A look back at our 6th record-breaking year, and a big thanks to all of you out there. Continue reading
The devil in the details (a short guide to writing figure legends)
A short guide to writing the most important text of any scientific manuscript. Continue reading
The pitfalls of perfectionism
Publishing work is an odyssey, and sometimes, getting a story out means chaining people to the mast. Continue reading
No more years of hurt
The capacity to forget past trauma can be an impediment to productive change. Continue reading
Excluding elites
If ever there was a word that needed reclaiming from the faux culture wars stoked by right-wing media machines, lost and wounded in an online no-man’s land of internecine strife, it is “elite”. Continue reading
Total Internal Reflection 