Buzzword is a free online word processor based on the Adobe Flash technology. I previously wrote about Buzzword and how it could be used to write a scientific paper. The first impressions were positive, so I decided to write my next paper with Buzzword. This paper has been submitted this week. What did I like and dislike about Buzzword?Good Most importantly, there is only one version of your manuscript.
We usually look forward to a well-written paper about central aspects of your research. But sometimes you are frustrated. Maybe someone has done (almost) the same experiments, but was quicker in getting the work published. Then you can at least publish your results, probably in a less prestigous journal, to confirm these findings.
A recent Nature article, repeated in a Nautilus blog post, talks about author accountability. The article suggests that at least one author per collaborative group signs a statement with reference to Nature's publication policies. This policy would certainly help avoid honorary authorship , but it can be difficult to enforce in large research projects. I would like to make another suggestion.
How could you improve your scientific writing skills? Two months ago I talked about books. Another idea would be a scientific writing workshop. This weekend I attended such a workshop, organized by Julia Klapproth and Barry Drees from Trilogy Writing & Consulting. The workshop was organized as a 1½ day course with many group exercises.
Are you tired of writing a paper, based on real experiments? SciGen could come to the rescue, at least if you do computer science research. SciGen is a program that creates random papers, complete with results, discussion, graphs and references. Some of these random papers have been accepted at conferences or even for publication. SciGen is of course a hoax.
Today I decided to rename my blog from Publish or Perish 2.0 to Goobledygook. The old name explained the topics of this blog pretty well, so why the change after only 4 months of blogging on Nature Network? And there are already many blogs with the same name. I simply like the new name. The word Goobledygook was invented by the U.S. congressman Maury Maverick and used in a New York Times article published May 21, 1944.
Papers is Macintosh-only software to manage the PDF files of all the scientific papers you stored on your computer. I previously wrote about version 1.0 that appeared earlier this year.The new Version 1.5 is compatible with Leopard, the latest release of the Macintosh operating system. The biggest improvement is support for search engine plugins.
The STIX Project has finally released a first beta version of their fonts. STIX stands for Scientific and Technical Information Exchange and the fonts were designed specifically for publishing scientific or mathematical texts.
Kathy Redmond wrote an editorial in the November issue of Nature Clinical Practice Oncology about the media coverage of cancer. She argues that this coverage is frequently of poor quality, reinforcing the myth of cancer as an automatic death sentence and the overemphasis on stories about wonder cures.
The U.S. senate yesterday passed the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill. The bill includes provisions that make public access of all papers from NIH-funded research mandatory.
