Posts

April 25, 2013

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I recently was alerted to the existence of an Open Access (OA) publisher that I had not heard of before: MDPI. Their name stands for “Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute” and they are based in Switzerland. They publish more than 70 journals … Continue reading →

April 24, 2013

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5:56 PM | Getting your friends and colleagues to share what they know

One of the things I love about working in an academic library is the steady opportunity to learn about new things. I learn things when I help students, work with faculty and talk with my colleagues. Over the last couple of years I have worked to organize an informal series of workshops to help librarians [...]

April 23, 2013

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5:28 PM | Database creators take note: have URLs that work

I am tired of explaining to students that the URL for a database entry they copied and pasted from their browser won’t work. Here is the problem: A student searches for high quality content in a database that the library pays a lot of money for. Finding a great article, they copy and paste the [...]

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12:02 PM | Around the Web: Librarians dealing with data, Unbundling the university and more

Dealing with Data: Science Librarians’ Participation in Data Management at Association of Research Libraries Institutions Unbundling the University Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS): Search Result : Librarians, Archivists, Conservators And Curators (511) Open access: four ways it could enhance academic freedom Social Justice Librarianship Putting the “Expert” in Subject Expertise Making Things Happen and Getting…

April 22, 2013

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7:26 PM | The Leiden University Ranking

The new Leiden Ranking (LR) has just been published, and I would like to talk a bit about its indicators, what it represents and equally important – what it doesn’t represent. The LR is a purely bibliometrical ranking, based on data from Thomson-Reuters’ Web of Science database (there’s another bibliometrical ranking, Scimago, but it’s based [...]

Waltman, L., Calero-Medina, C., Kosten, J., Noyons, E., Tijssen, R., van Eck, N., van Leeuwen, T., van Raan, A., Visser, M. & Wouters, P. & (2012). The Leiden ranking 2011/2012: Data collection, indicators, and interpretation, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63 (12) 2419-2432. DOI: 10.1002/asi.22708

Citation

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5:08 PM | Last night I dreamt I went to Mendeley again

Two weeks ago I was down in Bournemouth at the UKSG conference – a great gathering of library and publishing people. As usual I took my running kit along and unusually I actually used them instead of just thinking about … Continue reading →

April 20, 2013

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5:00 AM | Die juristische Analogisierung digitaler Inhalte

Medialer Atavismus

April 19, 2013

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4:19 PM | Friday Fun: Mobile phone technology set to revolutionise things we already do quite easily

After a week like this, I think we all need something a little on the lighter side. Mobile phone technology set to revolutionise things we already do quite easily One of the biggest launches at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the I-open; an app which allows you to open your front door…

April 18, 2013

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4:00 AM | OC13 – Open Commons Kongress in Linz (Österreich), 14. Mai 2013

... ein Veranstaltungshinweis

April 16, 2013

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7:06 PM | Around the Web: Access Copyright sues York University

Since I work at York University, I’m going to refrain from commenting on this lawsuit. However, as is my practice I’ll be creating and maintaining a list of relevant articles and resources here to help me stay current on the matter. I am not attempting to create a comprehensive list. General Statement of Claim against…

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5:25 PM | Describing Your Data

Have you ever had that experience where you’re analyzing a dataset and realize you should have written some extra bit of information down when you took the data? Sometimes this is just a minor inconvenience, but sometimes this makes your … Continue reading →

April 15, 2013

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12:00 PM | Interview with Mark Patterson, Executive Director of eLife

Welcome to the most recent installment in my very occasional series of interviews with people in the publishing/science blogging/computing communities. This latest installment is with Mark Patterson, Executive Director of new OA publisher eLife. I attended an ARL Directors briefing conference call on eLife with Mark a little while back, highlighting for me just how…

April 13, 2013

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1:12 PM | Around the Web: Yet more librarian angst, The business of literature and more

Librarians as faculty? It’s a red herring. Why I think faculty status for librarians is (generally) a bad idea Library employees protest changed title As Role of Librarians Evolves, Some Colleges End Their Faculty Status Stratification and losing faculty status Gender, “thought leaders”, ego, and subversion Unpacking “faculty status” Postscript: faculty status and “administrative bloat”…

April 12, 2013

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12:00 PM | Friday Fun: Welcome to My Massive Open Online Cult!

McSweeny’s is brilliant at skewering fads. And there is no bigger fad in higher education than Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs, as they are known. Now I’m not quibbling with whether or not MOOCs are an interesting and potentially extremely valuable addition to the landscape of higher education, because I think they are. What I…

April 11, 2013

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6:21 PM | Does bundling "screw libraries"?

I'm not an Elsevier apologist, really, but let's just be pragmatic here. There are lots of things to criticize them for, but I can't get as exercised about the bundling as some. Here are my thoughts in brief: What we pay for each download/view is actually pretty low Our researchers have immediate access to lots [...]

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3:00 PM | GRÜNE kritisieren Gesetzentwurf zum Zweitverwertungsrecht wissenschaftliche Werke

Benachteiligung der WissenschaftlerInnen außerhalb Drittmittelprojekten an Universitäten

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12:54 PM | May the odds be ever in your favor: academic tenure

“Excuse me; the whole tenure system is ridiculous. A guaranteed job for life only encourages the faculty to become complacent. If we really want science to advance, people should have chips implanted in their skulls that explode when they say something stupid.” Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory Between the recent ACUMEN (academic careers understood [...]

Abbott, A., Cyranoski, D., Jones, N., Maher, B., Schiermeier, Q. & Van Noorden, R. (2010). Metrics: Do metrics matter?, Nature, 465 (7300) 860-862. DOI: 10.1038/465860a

Clawson, D. (2009). Tenure and the Future of the University, Science, 324 (5931) 1147-1148. DOI: 10.1126/science.1172995

Citation

April 10, 2013

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6:57 PM | The latest land grab in the LIS world: Citation managers

The information industry (or whatever) seems to go through wave after wave of big land grabs with mergers and acquisitions and then series of product launches. The current one is for citation managers. You might be wondering why now? What's going on? I have some thoughts (spurred along in part by discussions in the Library [...]

April 09, 2013

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5:12 PM | The Hidden Costs of Cloud Storage

Cloud storage is an increasingly popular way to store research data. Being able to upload and access files from any location is useful and makes transfer between computers much easier. But for all of the upsides of cloud storage, there … Continue reading →

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4:43 PM | Elsevier (giant for-profit scholarly publisher) buys Mendeley (free citation manager and discovery tool)

Earlier this week, my favorite citation management tool Mendeley announced that it had sold itself to a very large, for-profit scholarly publishing company, Elsevier. There have been mixed reactions to this. Mendeley is useful to academics and researchers on several fronts. The desktop application helps folks organize all the PDFs of journal articles that live [...]

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12:22 PM | Around the Web: Cool linky stuff for science undergrads (3)

I have a son who’s currently a first year physics student. As you can imagine, I occasionally pass along a link or two to him pointing to stuff on the web I think he might find particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps other science students might find those links…

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7:58 AM | Ferreting (1)

After commenting on my last post that I am only called on three or four times a year to ferret out interesting old documents, here I am again with more tales of history. It seems to be a boom year … Continue reading →

April 08, 2013

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12:00 PM | Reading Diary: Dinosaur Art: The World’s Greatest Paleoart edited by Steve White

Every once in a while a review copy of a book comes over the transom and it just makes your day. Nothing else that could happen is going to put a damper on the bright sunny mood that springs from such a happy moment. One that arrived a few days ago that I can wait…

April 07, 2013

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10:10 PM | Ferreting (2)

Following on from my previous post, my last bit of ferreting around last month was in support of the Strictly Science exhibition, organised by colleagues at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre. This high-profile exhibition is open (free) until 14 April, … Continue reading →

April 01, 2013

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6:50 AM | Symposion "Social Media & neue soziale Bewegungen - Potentiale, Chancen, Risiken", 19. und 20. April 2013

Ein Veranstaltungshinweis

March 30, 2013

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3:40 PM | Around the Web: The librarian tech skills gap, Bookless libraries and more

Considering the librarian tech skills gap Ten Easy Pieces on the Profession of Librarianship Nation’s first bookless library on university campus is thriving at UTSA Conference Report: Beyond PDF 2 Opinions, Morals and What Science Could but Shouldn’t Tell Us Degrees of Certainty The Ethics of MOOCs The Brave New World of College Branding Journal’s…

March 28, 2013

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7:30 PM | Tagung zu Social Media, IEEE & Open Access, Future of Publishing, Open Access & Bibliothekare, Impact Factor Kritik, Wiley verliert Klage wegen Weiterverkaufs importierter Bücher, Wissenschaftliche Integrität

Housekeeping 03/2013

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5:09 PM | The Proper Pen

Have you ever wondered what the scientifically optimal writing utensil is to use in your lab notebook? No? Well, this post contains the answer to a record-keeping question you never thought to ask. The answer comes from one of my … Continue reading →

March 26, 2013

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1:22 PM | Mobile Apps for Searching the Scientific Literature

I recently taught a fun workshop called “Mobile Apps for Research and Education.” We talked about some apps to access library databases, then shared some favorite apps for getting work done. The mobile apps for accessing library resources are always a bit weird. Because libraries and institutions pay lots of money for access to databases [...]

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12:00 PM | Around the Web: Cool linky stuff for science undergrads