Academic publishers in general and Elsevier in particular have a reputation for their ruthless profiteering, using professional negotiators pitting hapless librarians against their own faculty during journal subscription negotiations. Consequently, these companies boast profit margins of over 40%, when the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Archive for science
161 results.
After almost 25 years since Stevan Harnad’s “subversive proposal“, now, finally, scholars and the public have a range of avenues at their disposal to access nearly every scholarly article. Public access, while not the default, has finally arrived. Granted, while […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
As a regular user of the scholarly literature since before the internet (I started reading primary scientific literature for a high-school project around 1989), I have closely followed its digitization. I find it rather frustrating that some of the most […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Our lab is looking for a PhD student interested in the molecular mechanisms of operant self-learning, a form of motor learning. The work will mainly revolve around the FoxP gene – the Drosophila orthologue of the language-associated gene FOXP2 in […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Posted on July 10, 2017
at 17:49
Comments Off on Looking for a PhD student
There have been repeated online discussions about my suggestion to libraries that now would be an excellent time to start cancelling subscriptions. Prime counter-argument is that librarians risked their jobs or at least face faculty backlash if they did that. […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Below, I’ve taken the liberty to “peer-review” recent proposals to ‘flip’ subscription journals to open access The applicants have provided an interesting proposal of how to ‘flip’ the current subscription journals to an article processing charges (APC)-based ‘gold’ open access […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
There can be little doubt that the defunding of public academic institutions is a main staple of populist movements today. Whether it is Trump’s budget director directly asking if one really needs publicly funded science at all, or the planned […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Posted on March 7, 2017
at 10:44
Comments Off on Are we inadvertently supporting the defunding of public science?
Starting this year, I will stop traveling to any speaking engagements on open science (or, more generally, infrastructure reform), as long as these events do not entail a clear goal for action. I have several reasons for this decision, most […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Few insect behaviors are more iconic than the proverbial moths circling the lamps at night. These observations are prime examples of the supposedly stereotypic insect responses to external stimuli. In contrast, in our new paper that just appeared today, we […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Posted on December 21, 2016
at 09:30
Comments Off on Why did the moth fly into the flame?
