Ricardo Almeida › Likes

The article needs more specifics and less gushing praise of Google :-) - Eric Jain

Agree actually. The lack of available space made it really hard to detail the caveats or go more into specifics. 900 words is a tough space to write for - Cameron Neylon from twhirl

I think it is a great piece for Nature's readers, most of whom are scientists who have not even dipped any toe into "social web" or "web 2.0" and who only have dimly heard of Google Wave (probably). - Maxine

Is not it strange, that a person who is well-known as the author of the telomere theory is not even mentioned? He was nominated for the Nobel prize as well, so he could have been at least acknowledged. It means that doing theory is not rewarding? - reflection

Agreed, this is strange. But it is typical of the Nobel process, which wants to make superstars and doesn't have much to do with actual science, and so it ignores the complex connections that actually drive discovery. Look at the Chemistry prize for "discovery of GFP" that went to three people OTHER than the actual discoverer. - Bill Hooker

IMHO, Nobels should be granted for sustained and conclusive work in a field, so personally, I think they got it right... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites...] - Andrew Su

Interesting that the wikipedia article was started today. Unless that was one of you... - Jason Winget

Bill, but I associate GFP with those other three people who really brought that to fruition. That's fine by me. In other words I agree with Andrew - Deepak Singh

Actually I'm not even right about who *discovered* GFP... Shimomura found the protein, 20 years later Prasher cloned the gene. I still think Prasher got ripped off though, since it was only a couple of years after he made the clone available that it started to be widely used as a tag, whereas the protein was known for 20 years before that and no one could do anything with it. Not that... more... - Bill Hooker

I am thinking about the 1962 Nobel prize for the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. The prize was awarded to the people who did theory. But that seems to be the only exception. Other than that, all prizes were awarded to the experimentalists. - reflection

Also remember that it took till 1962 to award the prize because otherwise there would have been four. The issues over that were only resolved when Rosalind Franklin died because the prize is never given posthomously. In the case of DNA you might argue that Wilkins was the experimentalist of course - Cameron Neylon

Interesting... from the book of Stephen S. Hall: "Cell paper confirmed the existence of telomerase and opened the door to one of the most productive areas of research in modern cell biology. It also confirmed Olovnikov's original hypotheses, but his train stil didn't arrive at the station, because Blackburn and Greider failed to mention his earlier theoretical work in their paper. "We... more... - reflection

"typical of the Nobel process, which wants to make superstars and doesn't have much to do with actual science".....hmmm......interesting perspective. Anyway, while discussing who was left out because of the three rule, S. Moncada is a recent one (NO). - Maxine

Maxine, my take on this is, the people who got it usually deserved it, and we should begrudge them their efforts. What we need to make sure is that deserving folks don't get left out. The three rule is tough one especially when big science comes into play. - Deepak Singh

so Andy you didn't have a problem with the life support system happening to fail just as they boarded after several hundred thousand years? :) - Jean-Claude Bradley

I would say it's more like Star Trek: Voyager with a Stargate. Didn't do much for me. - Richard Akerman

American Prometheus by Kai Bird - Sean Seaver

"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter. - Gladstone

For me, it was Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf. - Mickey Schafer

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, http://books.google.ca/books... - Jim Till

Some more books here, from Nature and Nature Network: http://network.nature.com/groups... - Maxine

Though they weren't originally a book, for me it was the Sydney Brenner columns on Current Biology - Wladimir Labeikovsky

In order, I loved (of all things) the Childcraft Encylopedia "World and Space", volume 4 of their set. I wore that book out. A few years later I loved Carl Sagan's book (and series) "Cosmos", which I still have - it looks like it's been run over by a bus about a dozen times, it's had so much use. And Patrick Moore's books about Astronomy. - Michael Nielsen

@Maxine -- thanks for the link -- I'm adding "Perfumes: The Guide" to my reading after I finish Penelope Hobhouse's gardening books. - Mickey Schafer

Haha, and the description is going 'it's slow in the beginning'? What the heck? I can barely see it fall right from the start of the game. Insane. - Wobbler

I love how relaxed he is at the start - clearly, for him that's a very easy pace at which to play the game. - Michael Nielsen

There's actually a pretty good comment at YouTube: "When he dies...his brain will be used to lay the foundation for SkyNet " - Michael Nielsen

I don't dare suggest there's a relation between a person's ability to play Tetris and his overall intelligence, but I do wonder if there's something special about it. I wonder how well he does/ would do academically? - Wobbler

Awesome. Useless in and of itself, but awesome. I wonder what else he's good at? - Bill Hooker

I'd say in the "Flow state" phase diagram ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... ) he doesn't move from Boredom to Flow before about 3:00 ... - Andrew Perry

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

Has anyone tried DevonThink? (often mentioned at http://groups.google.com/group... --- beware, this group has fallen to spam). - dK

Bill is right - I'm still an advocate of the general purpose wiki (Wikispaces in my case) for an online lab notebook. I know it isn't sexy and doesn't seem "cutting edge" but what is does well is let us represent pretty much whatever we need to record for experiments with the fewest assumptions. It is BECAUSE it is like paper that it works. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Jean-Claude: I noticed MediaWiki has some "forms" extensions, where users can create forms which fill out a template (like Semantic Forms). If this was simple enough to use, do you think this could be good hybrid approach between free-form and structured data in a wiki-based ELN ? For example, the powerusers could build forms+templates for standard experiments, which everyone could use. Extra data could be added to the wiki page after it was created from the forms+template. - Andrew Perry

Nice ideas Andrew. A few of the popular wikis have these form plugins (pmwiki, dokuwiki, mediawiki). I've thought before that they might provide a good environment for developing ELNs, LIMS and so on, but never had time (or sufficient positive feedback from potential users) to follow up. - Neil Saunders

There is one very good example of a Wiki-based production quality LIMS system (I haven't used it, but know folks who've taken a look at it). That's the WikiLims system from BioTeam ... so it's definitely doable http://blog.bioteam.net/tag... - Deepak Singh

WikiLims looks interesting; also a presentation here http://www.slideshare.net/guestcc.... I guess for wikis to work in this way, we need low barriers for developers and sufficient flexibility in the wiki backend. Otherwise you may as well code up your own web app in whatever language you know best. - Neil Saunders

That's definitely one of the plus points of MediaWiki. It seems fairly extensible - Deepak Singh

Most of you know I'm part of the OWW team. So let me ask this question: Those that have used or seen OWW's lab notebook, what would you like to see added (or removed!) from it to make it more to your liking? As it has been said, MW is extensible and we are getting good at extending it, so let me know what you'd like and we can see what's possible. - Ricardo Vidal

I only keep a ELN. It's closed ;-0 It's dokuwiki install with a few modifications and plugins. As I spend all my time at the computer I have found this a lot better than writing/printing/cutting/pasting. I started of using mediawiki but had problems getting the 3rd party plugins (gnuplot, math etc.) to function. 2 of 12 in our lab use an ELN fulltime. I'm unsure of the Universities policy on ELN's, but i'm not concerned given that 2 Masters students just submitted without keeping any formal documentation. - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

That's another good point; many wikis have some great plugins for research (when they work): plotting, formulae, BibTeX and so on. My "ELN" is basically a Trac + SVN installation, since most of what I do is generate file revisions (code, input/output, papers in LaTeX). It's "semi-open" in that parts of it are browse-able but file view requires authentication: https://predikin.biosci.uq.edu.au/project.... - Neil Saunders

Added wiki + forms = LIMS/ELN etc etc idea to Biogang projects: http://openwetware.org/wiki... - Neil Saunders

The other thing I like about the wiki is the discussion page. Supervisors/PI's can read and make comments at their own leisure. I would love to have "virtual meetings" on my ELN - that way when it comes up "what ! you did it that way !?!?!" "But we spoke about that.." "No we didn't..." situations are eliminated. - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

Neil: What about those of us absolutely unable to "code up your own web app" in any language at all? We need someone to make those templates for us... - Heather

Ricardo: I definitely would like the content of each lab notebook *entry* to be searchable. For some reason, this <sitesearch>title=Search this Project</sitesearch> only seems to search within the page titles, at least for me. I'd also like a way to make image entry possible from within the pages one is editing (ie. a notebook page), the way Wordpress does when you are making a blog post. I might be asking for the moon... - Heather

@Heather - by "you", I mean "programmers", obviously! A good thing about wikis is that they are accessible to anyone. If a programmer wants to make them do more, they have to decide whether learning how to hack the wiki is a good use of their time and how extensible the wiki software is. The question is: how many wikis offer this extensive customisation? For a web developer, it can be faster just to code in what they know than learn a new framework. - Neil Saunders

@Ricardo: I signed up for a lab notebook just to play with it (my boss is very conservative, I can't use it for anything real...yet) and managed to break it by including an apostrophe in my "lab" name. I got email from the dude who looks after the notebooks, but he never did get around to fixing what I messed up... - Bill Hooker

Andrew - in a sense we use "templates" on the Wikispaces notebook since students often copy a previous similar experiment and delete the unrelated stuff. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Mitchell - one of my favorite features on the online notebook is being able to point out problems or ask questions directly on the page in bold and italics. When the students address the issues they can remove my comment. I have found this to be much more useful than the discussion tool since it is much harder to point to the exact section in the text. - Jean-Claude Bradley

@Bill I'll fix it up and let you know via email. - Ricardo Vidal

@Heather I believe that the search is working properly. It performs a restricted search within your lab notebook. As for the images, you can add images inside but I see what you are looking for. It is totally possible and I'll suggest it to be implemented :-) - Ricardo Vidal

Sorry to trouble you, but I don't get why it doesn't. Not browser-dependent... for example, if I search http://www.openwetware.org/wiki... for the string "Sophie", I get this message: There is no page titled "Sophie +"Etchevers:Notebook/Genomics of hNCC" -"Lab Notebook"". - Heather

@Heather, you are right. It was buggy and we're fixing it. MW's search sucks and we're making it better via Google. It should be working better later today. - Ricardo Vidal

Thanks Ricardo. No hurry, mind you, since I'll only be playing. But of all the ELNs I've looked at, OWW is the only one that comes with a community, so I'd really like to give it a good workout before considering others. - Bill Hooker

@Bill, I'll let you know once your playground notebook is fixed. Meanwhile, you can fool around with this demo one: http://openwetware.org/wiki... - Ricardo Vidal

I realise I'm way late on this but I thought I'd add my two pieces. Our approach is blog based and (we think) neatly solves the problem of the issue of 'free text' via form based input by enabling users to set up templates using the standard markup language with some wildcards in it. I desperately need to do some screen casts of how this works but you can see some of it in the talk I gave at Drexel last year (http://drexel-coas-talks-mp3-p...). - Cameron Neylon

This enables the non power user to easily set up templates that then generate forms that can be filled in. Our user interface is ropey at the moment and as Bill points out we don't have a community using this as yet but we're working on both of those! - Cameron Neylon

I used Wordpress for a couple of years - would probably use that or Drupal (for structured entries) nowadays. - _alf

There are some free ELN's out there but you get what you pay for. I work for Rescentris Inc who make CERF, the only ELN that is both Mac and Windows compatible and fully 21 CFR 11 compliant. Obviously I am biased, but we believe our product is the best. CERF is infinitely flexible, extensible, and customizable. Check it out at www.rescentris.com - Rob Day

If it were me, it would boil down to who else is on the SAB, and could I see myself publishing there. If it's not something I'd normally want to be associated with, then I don't think the cool title is worth it. my two cents... - Andrew Su

Shirley: erm... no, that doesn't sound typical. looking at the few members of the board who have joined up and are displayed on the site, they look to be all prof or assoc prof level (no names i recognise, but...), which seems pretty standard... - Joe Dunckley

It actually looks pretty good to me -- OJS, LOCKSS, CC-BY and a founding concept (publish all data) that I agree with. It's a definite plus in my book if they don't care about formal degrees and just want to get the best people. I'd like to know more about the business model/support framework, esp since there's no mention of author-side charges. I've registered as a reader/potential author/available reviewer. - Bill Hooker

If I could double-like this, I would. - Chris Miller

Let us know what you find out, Shirley. I'm a grad student who wouldn't mind reviewing either, if it's kosher. - Chris Miller

I replied with some questions, we'll see what they say - Shirley Wu

Quoting Feynman: "If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish BOTH kinds of results." [http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti...] - Eric Jain

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My main concern is that it is a lot of work to write a paper based on failed experiments and I don't know how many researchers would be willing to do that. I don't have a problem with sharing my failed results from within my lab notebook, which I have to maintain anyway. But if scientists do contribute I think it is fantastic. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Key questions are business model and what they are offering beyond what is already available. Also not confidence inspiring that two of the web pages provides for SAB members seem to lead to dead ends which don't have their name listed. Happy to give benefit of the doubt but presentation of these things is important. - Cameron Neylon

@Jean-Claude: I see two kinds of papers ending up in these journals: 1, "this didn't work" papers reporting pretty much only failed expts; and 2, regular papers that simply include extra information on the stuff that failed, as well as the stuff that didn't. Even when the failed stuff is useful information, trad. journals usually tell you to leave it out. So this model seems to be a sort of compromise between ONS and normal science -- a "gateway drug" for ONS, perhaps? - Bill Hooker

@Bill: A bit of an aside, I'm currently reviewing a paper for Neuropharmacology, a journal which is a tad out of my usual reading. Scanning the author instructions, I was struck by this line:Results. The results should be fully illustrated. Negative findings should also be noted to avoid unnecessary replication by others. - NatBlair

Bill - I appreciate the motivation and the utility if they get submissions - I am just wondering if they can get enough people to put in the effort. It will be interesting information about the scientific community either way. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Haven't heard back from them yet. The morning after I sent my response with questions, however, I got a verbatim copy of their original email sent to me again by the same person. So I don't know what's going on but like Cameron said, not exactly confidence inspiring - Shirley Wu

Does anyone have an opinion on the Journal of Negative Results? - Mr. Gunn

@Jean-Claude - I think your concern is well founded. We get good feedback for JNR-EEB (http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index...), but few submissions. - Bob O'Hara

I got a reply from the section editor that contacted me. They do want Ph.D. scientists, and he didn't know I was still a graduate student (not that hard to click on the "about me" page of my blog, especially if you mention that you've seen my blog and that's why you're contacting me...). Anyway, the other things he mentioned were that there are no author fees (in addition to no access fees), and everything is done in a volunteer fashion because the people involved want to improve science. - Shirley Wu

I'd still be concerned about whether it's possible to sustain high quality without a business model but then again, that's what this open stuff is all about, right? So it would be great if it worked long enough to get something behind it to maintain it. Of course, J-C's concern is also a big one - who will write and submit papers to it? - Shirley Wu

I'd be very worried - getting papers is a big enough problem - but to do it with no business model just isn't sustainable. The business model can be volunteer but then you've got to explicitly worry about how to support and retain your volunteers. But in general I think I'm coming to JC's point. No-one has the time to write full papers on material that isn't up to the grade for existing journals - I don't think they are going to start just because the journals are there. The barrier has to be much lower. - Cameron Neylon

People who start writing their papers before doing the actual work and keep them in sync with the latest progress should be glad to be able to submit them somewhere (even if a few more days of effort are required to clean up the paper and answer reviewer questions etc)? This approach also seems more effective than spending weeks after the fact going through unreadable lab notebooks and... more... - Eric Jain

Which one of the two Eric? I think the latter is more common...but even with a good record the hassle of going through a peer review process is a big disincentive - Cameron Neylon

Kind of journal of negative data. More likely to fail, or at least what people claim as "all results" will be the tip of iceberg. - Dean Johns

"They do want Ph.D. scientists" -- that grates my cheese. Suppose you read Shirley's blog and think "smart person, want her on board my project" -- well, what has changed when you find out she's a grad student? This feeble reliance on a piece of paper is why universities are less and less focused on actual education, and more and more on certification -- a product, bought and sold. [/rant] - Bill Hooker

I certainly agree with you, Bill, but I think there was some validity to what they said; they went on to ask me what my plans were after graduating, whether i was going to remain in the sciences. I would assume that they wouldn't be recruiting folks with Ph.D.s in mol bio that were now working as management consultants on wall street, for example. But they didn't exactly do a great job of vetting if they didn't know I was still a student. - Shirley Wu

@Cam: I think this is basically another "journal of negative results", not so much about material that isn't up to scratch. Eric's comment about people who keep notes in sync with benchwork makes me think that journals that are willing to take negative results are likely to be a boon to anyone who keeps an open or semi-open notebook. (I disagree that peer review is a hassle or a disincentive. Sure, some reviewers are jerks, but overall the process is fun.) - Bill Hooker

I've never looked at the journal of negative results. But it strikes me as quite weird to think about peer-reviewed negative results. I think it's sufficient to just publish your notebook and an informal summary ("we were hoping this would happen, but instead this happened and we don't feel like publishing it in a peer-reviewed journal. Hope these results are helpful!") It's tough to see what peer-review would add w/o asking the researchers to do extra experiments? - Steve Koch

I'm also unclear on whether there is a definition of "negative result." Does the term originate from pharma stuff? I.e., drugs that didn't work? In other fields is "negative result" a synonym for "less-interesting result?" That's sort of what I was thinking and why peer review would seem weird. - Steve Koch

Steve, I think there does need to be some degree or review, or they could end up with a bunch of "Bigfoot was not discovered in Alaska" kinds of submissions. Negative, in the sense of isn't something that will support a grant application, is how I imagine it to be used. - Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn, yeah I agree with that. I was really saying I don't see the point of having a journal like that. It seems like a waste of peer-review resources. Self-publishing seems to make more sense to me...but I'm probably not thinking about the right examples of negative results. - Steve Koch

What the journal adds over self-publishing is editing, review, and discovery. Pretty much the same as other journals. I see what you mean about a waste of resources, though. Some people consider Friendfeed to be a waste of resources, too, so there's that. - Mr. Gunn

This is all fascinating. Mr. Gunn says, "What the journal adds over self-publishing is editing, review, and discovery. Pretty much the same as other journals..." But it is the same as other journals? This one would be specifically devoted to secondary findings—that would set it apart, wouldn’t it? If this journal were well run (which doesn’t seem to be the case, based on Shirley’s... more... - Hope Leman

Hope, my comments were directed towards Steve's question of what value publishing negative results in a journal would have over simply self-publishing them. Of course the journal would be set apart from others in terms of content. - Mr. Gunn

I can't make much comment about how organized they are other than that they didn't know I wasn't a Ph.D. despite having been to my blog. Even if they do have a committed and organized core of people, the bigger concern is whether they can sustain a purely volunteer effort. If they can't, they need an actual business model, and the arguments here (and elsewhere: http://tinyurl.com/c2b3xm) are of the mind that a full-fledged journal of negative results isn't cost effective. - Shirley Wu

Thank you for your patience, Mr. Gunn. Thank you for the link to Cameron's post on the topic. That is an outstanding, asute bit of analysis. - Hope Leman

Another possible use for the open journal system model would be using it for well-done student publication -- another venue of practice before hitting the bigger journals -- individual schools/labs could put OJS to use, students learn not simply to write for publication but also how to act as reviewers -- provides a neat continuing reinforcement of how to read science (stats, design, etc) -- basically a more finished open notebook product -- also useful for initiating new people into the lab - Mickey Schafer

Hey all -- I got an email invite from All Results Journal:Physics today for the scientific advisory board. I reread my comments above and still agree with my own skepticism. On the other hand, wouldn't mind supporting it to see if it can fly. Did any of you end up getting invovled? Jean-Claude, I see your name on the SAB for ARJ:Chem ... any opinions? - Steve Koch

(As an aside: is this thread sufficiently public that the majority of reasonable people wouldn't mind if I linked it to the editor who sent me the invite? I think definitely yes, but given the hoopla that ensued several weeks ago, figured I'd ask first.) - Steve Koch

I'm still skeptical - I don't see evidence of awareness of the magnitude of the job they're taking on. But then anything that starts from the assumption "publication should basically be free" sets my alarm bells ringing. Happy to see this made public but then I would be I guess :-) - Cameron Neylon

It'd be good if it did take a role as a dumpster for drug research -- stuff failing at any stage might be usefull from discovery on. - Chris from twhirl

Pity is that it's not what I thought at first, which is a journal that publishes just data sets with structured annotation (rather than a full paper being needed, shortcutting the idea of the paper-writing robot) to really get people to clear out their lockers. Just a tab-format form answering the kinds of questions listed in projects linked to by MBBI (ref.... more... - Chris from twhirl

Call it ' Kudos Convertors -- "Free you data. Boost your citations*." ' [* Subject to funders counting it]. How about some kind of data copyright statement while we're at it, to assist with enforcement. - Chris from twhirl

What do you think, Martin? Did he get it about right? - Mr. Gunn

I thought it was very funny when I saw it via John Dupuis's link - lots of familiar touches! - Maxine

We would all love meaningful online comments on papers. But all we might get is this... - Martin Fenner

Weissberg is persistent. Now, if the duplicate comments are 14 years apart, are they still counting as duplicates? - Bora Zivkovic

awesome! funniest phd comic ever! - Alexey

I tried to read Weissberg et al., but it was $20 to download. - Steve Koch

The comic could be based on this paper: http://dx.doi.org/10... - Martin Fenner

I have the PDF, that is indeed the paper - well found Martin! - Neil Saunders

Love the HOT MaTLab DEALZ. - τorƍue

Wow, impressed by Martin! - Steve Koch

whoohoo! look forward to reading paper (and perhaps blog post?) - Neil Saunders

Well done. Buy one on me (seriously -- will pay you back when I next come by SF) - Jonathan Eisen

Congratulations! Until the concept of journal prestige dies out completely (if it ever does), that's the best bio journal in the world. - Bill Hooker

@Jonathan, what, you buying beers for all authors in PLoS Biology? _Definitely_ need to put that in the marketing materials... (I bet the I.F. would go through the roof -- sorry Bill...) - Andrew Su

Well, the plan was that this was specific for Pedro (and what is I think his first PLoS Bio paper but he can confirm ...). But sure, if there are other first time PLoS Bio authors I am more than happy to buy a beer for them. However, after Pedro there will have to be some restrictions - like I have to be there .... - Jonathan Eisen

congrats Pedro-great work - Abhishek Tiwari

congrads, looking forward to reading - chaz2b

hey, well done! congrats!!! - Thomas Lemberger

Thanks everyone, specially Jonathan for the beer ;) - Pedro Beltrao

congrats ! - Pierre Lindenbaum

Congratulations Pedro! Can you send me a reprint? Oh wait, it's Open Access :-D - Lars Juhl Jensen

Lars FTW. :-) :-) - Bill Hooker

Congrats Pedro! - Duncan Hull

Excellent! - Konrad Förstner

Nice. - Peter Binfield