Category Archives: Scientific Publishing

Elsevier again, and collective action

We all know about higher education being squeezed financially. Government support is falling and tuition is going up. We see academic jobs getting scarcer, and more temporary. The pressure for research to focus on the short term is going up. … Continue reading

Posted in $$$, Science 2.0, Scientific Publishing | 19 Comments

TQC 2014!

While many of us are just recovering from QIP, I want to mention that the submission deadline is looming for the conference TQC, which perhaps should be called TQCCC because its full name is Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and … Continue reading

Posted in Conferences, Quantum Computing, Science 2.0, Scientific Publishing, scirate | Leave a comment

Are articles in high-impact journals more like designer handbags, or monarch butterflies?

US biologist Randy Schekman, who shared this year’s physiology and medicine Nobel prize, has made prompt use of his new bully pulpit. In How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science: The incentives offered by top journals distort … Continue reading

Posted in Science, Science By Press Release, Scientific Publishing | Leave a comment

El Naschie works on entanglement now

The Journal of Quantum Information Science will not be getting any of my papers starting today, because today is when I learned that they recently published the following gem: A Resolution of Cosmic Dark Energy via a Quantum Entanglement Relativity Theory, by … Continue reading

Posted in Funny Ha Ha, Open Science, Physics Bastardizations, Quantum Basterdizations, Scientific Publishing | 10 Comments

Science Code Manifesto

Recently, one of the students here at U. Sydney and I had the frustrating experience of trying to reproduce a numerical result from a paper, but it just wasn’t working. The code used by the authors was regrettably not made … Continue reading

Posted in Computers, Programming, Scientific Publishing | 3 Comments

Funding boost for the arXiv

This is fantastic news: starting this January, the Simons Foundation will provide the Cornell University Library with up to US $300k per year (for the next five years) of matching funds to help ensure the continued sustainability of arXiv.org. The funds are … Continue reading

Posted in $$$, Economics, Open Science, Scientific Publishing | 4 Comments

The Nine Circles of LaTeX Hell

Poorly written LaTeX is like a rash. No, you won’t die from it, but it needlessly complicates your life and makes it difficult to focus on pertinent matters. The victims of this unfortunate blight can be both the readers, as … Continue reading

Posted in Off The Deep End, Scientific Publishing | 46 Comments

A Federal Mandate for Open Science

Witness the birth of the Federal Research Public Access Act: “The Federal Research Public Access Act will encourage broader collaboration among scholars in the scientific community by permitting widespread dissemination of research findings.  Promoting greater collaboration will inevitably lead to … Continue reading

Posted in Open Science, Politics, Science 2.0, Scientific Publishing, Society | 2 Comments

Why boycott Elsevier?

Everyone has their own reasons for doing this. There is an interesting debate at Gower’s blog, including a response from an Elsevier employee. Some people dislike Elsevier’s high prices, their bundling practices, their fake medical journals, their parent company’s (now-former) … Continue reading

Posted in General, Open Science, Science 2.0, Scientific Publishing | 19 Comments

strike!

In a move that will undoubtedly bring the US Senate to its knees, the Quantum Pontiff is going dark from 8am to 8pm EST on Jan 18 to protest SOPA, PIPA, the Research Works Act and other proposed acts of … Continue reading

Posted in Computers, General, Open Science, Scientific Publishing, Society | Leave a comment