Massimo Pinto › Likes

very nice - Frank

A little underwhelming, but I can just imagine the uproar if they had made more substantial changes. - Mr. Gunn

The sad thing is that design has probably been in the making since 1998. So much administrative red tape to go through in an institution like that. Just hope redesigns to subpages come quickly too. It'd be dumb if that was the only spot that gets a facelift. Although, this is what I start with every morning - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gquery... - Brian Krueger - LabSpaces

I really like that they have a "free full text" filter next to search results - not sure if this was possible before, maybe through some advanced search feature? - Shirley Wu from twhirl

would be nice to have it as an OpenID as well ;) and have it really open, not owned/authored by a for-profit organization.. - Yaroslav Nikolaev

OpenID+. Having a site that (a) function as OpenID provider, (b) contains information about you (e.g. department, contact details) that _you_ are in control of (i.e. edit/hide), (c) can autogenerate your publication list, and (d) allows you to manually add other contributions to the advancement of science (e.g. open source projects). We'd need the backing of one or more major publishers, but stranger things have happened. Can't we set something up like that? - Jan Aerts

Sounds like a good idea. One ID to rule them all.... - Allyson Lister

+1 Jan. Between OpenID and the auto-publication-list generators at places like Nature Network and BioMedExperts, it seems like most of the necessary functionality exists, just not in one place. - Bill Hooker

There are initial investigations being made (certainly within the field of publishing and the library community) towards institutional identifiers which may well be easier to handle than trying to do the individual author identifiers. - Jill O'Neill

But institutional identifiers alone will not work. I've moved quite a few times and saw that people still try to contact me on the email address from two jobs back, because that was the email of the "corresponding author". - Jan Aerts

Would it help if journals suggested to authors that they include their OpenID with their address details, if they have one? That should be pretty easy to do. - Maxine

Maxine: Yes ! That would be great ! It would be nice to see that OpenID just like we can see the DOI of the paper ! This would motivate the other publishers to do this ! - Pierre Lindenbaum

Maxine: Yes, yes, yes! That would be absolutely brilliant! Are Rafael, Simon, and Peter (or Bora) about? This might actually work! - Cameron Neylon

I'm not a guru about OpenID. Can it be then used later to find the publications/geoloc/social networks ? - Pierre Lindenbaum

In the medium term I agree with Maxine: let journals suggest to authors to include their OpenID. But I'm also with Deepak's comment in the "related entry": we should separate our author ID from our general online identity. I'm still brooding on how this all could be incorporated into a system where you as a researcher can update your scientific contributions yourself in a central place... - Jan Aerts

Pierre: I suppose you still need a central website/database, like researcherID.com for example (I know: not open and stuff...). Ideally you'd log in using an OpenID which would also be your researcherID. Even better: the system could function as an OpenID provider itself (that would keep your scientific identity separate from your general online identity). But the website would then have all functionality to find publications/geoloc/social networks. Am I (a) kicking in open doors or (b) making no sense? - Jan Aerts

Jan: That makes sense. Of course it would be great if the NCBI could be this OpenId provider (well, at least for the biologists... ) - Pierre Lindenbaum

Pierre: NCBI could indeed be an OpenID provider, but it should be limited to that. We need a separate entity doing the publication/geo... functionality. This is important enough that it should be the core function of the entity providing it. Also: would be nice if we could add contributions like "have helped in discussion about blabla on FriendFeed" :-). (Or is that "distracted discussion from blabla") - Jan Aerts

All you really need is a unique identifier - it could be an openid or it could be a random string. The advantage of openid is that it acts as a pointer to a service which treats you as a resource. Services can then connect that to any other information that is available. The other advantage of openid is that the provider is completely irrelevant - it can be anybody from the journal to NCBI to an institution to a third party. You're never tied into one provider. - Cameron Neylon

I'll say there was an interesting meeting early this year sponsored by CNI to bring publishers, A&I vendors (like Thompson Scientific), library reps (including OCLC and LIbrary of Congress), and others with interest in this to talk about it. OpenID was mentioned but many publishers and vendors already have their own (internal and not eager to share) identification systems. I'm not sure if anything definite came out of that meeting unfortunately (and I was there). - Sarah

Maxine, if you get this proposal rolling, your name will be legion :) - Neil Saunders

previous discussions about this subject on FF: http://tinyurl.com/6p3evw http://tinyurl.com/6m3w88 http://tinyurl.com/564amw http://tinyurl.com/5arawr http://tinyurl.com/5vnmxu - Pierre Lindenbaum

Sarah - quite a few of these points were made in the EMBO piece at the link. In fact, probably the article is a report arising from that meeting - though there is not much information of that sort, or about the author, there (ironically!). I will ask about the "display openID" and get back to you - will not be instant because one person is away until new year, but I won't forget. - Maxine

BTW there has been a lot of discussion on this in Nature over the years too - since 2006 when I started the author blog I have attempted to capture the discussion there, see: http://blogs.nature.com/nautilu... (includes Raf's correspondence in fact). - Maxine

Finally got round to blogging about this. Let me know what you think....http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs... - Chris Leonard

@Chris : in my view, this central repository (CrossRef/NCBI?) would associate this ID with a FOAF file containing all the information you want to publicity release :, your interests, your web accounts, your contacts, your publications.... - Pierre Lindenbaum

Yes, sounds good Pierre. According to the EMBO article at the link and various others, one issue is all the world's registration systems recognising the ID. Other issues, also. As we mentioned in another thread very recently, I am following up on this and it is on the agenda of a wider discussion about authorship and related issues that is going on between various journals - I will keep people posted with what I hear. - Maxine

Physics's gone! - Massimo Pinto

@Massimo Yay! Good riddance... - Duncan Hull

as has maths, any social sciences. Clearly this requires a much higher dimensional space... - Cameron Neylon

more dimensions, more colours: even prettier eye-candy! - Lucas Brouwers

And does informatics really equal Computing Science, or is CS also missing? Pretty eye candy, though! :) - Allyson Lister

Could be a starting point for a companies mapping in the field of health! like it - novoseek

@Allyson Informatics != Computer Science, but then computer science isn't really a science, so we shouldn't trouble ourselves with it :) - Duncan Hull

Physics (along with biophysics, et al.) is missing. - Chris Miller

@Duncan - while I agree that informatics isn't science, I'd have to say that Computing Science is a science. It is research-based, idea-driven study of theories in computing. Definitely a science in my book... :) - Allyson Lister

@Duncan: According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... it's a wider term than "computer science" as it is often meant to include both more theoretical and practical aspects. It's interesting to note that not all languages have separate terms for "informatics" and "computer science". For German-speaking people it's all "Informatik" and for French-speaking people it's just "informatique". - Eric Jain

@Allyson: If computer science deserves a place in the picture, mathematics will want in, too :-) - Eric Jain

@Allyson I think informatics == science but I'm not so certain about computer "science" - Duncan Hull

How about replacing informatics with physics (with biophysics and physical chemistry at the intersections and biophysical chemistry at the center) and treating informatics as a separate dimension? - Eric Jain

Extremely likely I'll be there - enjoyed the last few at the IET building. There's a lecture at IET by the curator from Greenwich Maritime museum coming up which looks interesting. Not all that surprisingly it's something to do with time. - Jo Brodie

Kings Place is literally next door to Nature, so if anyone is going, let me know. - Maxine

I may be able to get there, since I'll already visiting London around then for the World Conference of Science Journalists the following week http://www.wcsj2009.org/ - Jen Dodd

I like the "science communication" angle. Since I'm not a working scientist, I would be much more comfortable going to an event under a "communication" scope, I don't consider myself a "science blogger", but I do consider my blog to include science communication. - Richard Akerman

Just a couple days after OAI6 at CERN too... - Richard Akerman

I would say at our science blogging conference in London in August, Richard, maybe one-third to half of the people there weren't scientists - they were librarians, publishers, journalists, editors, book authors, policy people, educators et al.- I was quite surprised about that. - Maxine

Just noticed CFP deadline is *tomorrow* Friday 21 November 2008. http://www.the-ba.net/the-ba... - Richard Akerman

@Richard Akerman Yay for science communication. I'm neither a working scientist nor a science blogger (of course I learn quite a lot of science from them). I'm not quite a librarian either although I do work in a science library. But I am a science communicator. My understanding of SciBlog08 is that it was for people interested in communicating (or reading) science via blogs :) - Jo Brodie

Very true, Jo. But it did broaden out to "Web 2.0 in general" also - eg the open lab notebook/wiki session. - Maxine

Yes good point, it's where I first heard of FriendFeed. I chatted over lunch (very nice lunch!) to David Bradley about it and decided to give it a go later. Glad I did. - Jo Brodie

I like Friend Feed too, as you can probably tell ;-). I heard of it on the run-up to the conference and would not have persevered with it (because of the cancaphony of everyone's twitter etc etc) but for the "hide" option which someone kindly explained to me; and for the fact that we had this FF room on the run-up to the conference set up by Matt Wood, so I could see the usefulness... more... - Maxine

I agree, Maxine. I'd really like to see more science outreach people in here. - Jen Dodd

I like "science communication", a better term for what most of us are interested in than "science blogging". - Martin Fenner

well, if I land this job I'm going for in London (or the Nature one...) I shall try to make it... - Richard P Grant

All editorials in Nature are free to access, but the same is not necessarily true of editorials in the monthly Nature journals - this one is from Nature Nanotechnology. If your institution does not have a site licence, try writing to Peter Rodgers, the Editor in Chief of N Nanotech to see what he can do (p dot rodgers at nature dot com). - Maxine

thanks Maxine - emailed Prof Rodgers - now to wait and see... - Chris Leonard

What's your email address, Chris? - Maxine

by the way, I could only get to Nautilus, but not the article, as I am off sick at home without journal access. May I have one? 8-} - Massimo Pinto

Peter came up with the goods - thanks Maxine. - Chris Leonard

Just got back here after day working, etc - hope you enjoy the article, Chris. You should have heard from me via email, Massimo. Hope you feel better soon. - Maxine

Thanks. Reading it on the train in about 5 minutes. No email from you though. Just want you know in case not replying was considered rude! - Chris Leonard

"Liking" in the sense of "good catch, Bill". DNA Dynasty definitely appear to be people to avoid. - Michael Nielsen

afaik it was Nils who caught them at it. I assume Ricardo is on honeymoon still, since we haven't heard from him? - Bill Hooker

Ricardo is back, but no internet in his new place, AFAIK. - Paulo Nuin

@Eva: given what happened to my blood pressure as I read through their site, I think your last suggestion may be accurate. - Bill Hooker

It is in their "ahead of print" section, forget what they call it. The journalist will have worked from an embargoed version. - Maxine

"PNAS Early Edition contains papers published online before print each business day. When papers appear in print, they will be removed from this feature... Because PNAS publishes daily online, you may read about an article in the news media on Monday or Tuesday, but the article may not publish online until later in the week...." - Christina Pikas

see- it makes sense to me if the embargo runs out the same day the article appears on the site, not a few days before - Christina Pikas