Nearly a year ago, I got an email from Liam Shen, who was interested in getting seriously involved in palaeontology. He asked for advice on doing a Ph.D part time, and I realised what what I had to say in reply might be of broader interest. Here’s Liam’s question, lightly edited: And my reply (which I did send to Liam the next day, but am only now getting around to posting here): I never set out to do a Ph.D really.

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Wouldn’t it be great if there was a database of all dinosaur specimens? Well, there is — or at least, it’s on its way. Gunnar Bivens, who we know from SV-POW!

I’m trying to free some space in my office, and I’m going to let my run of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology go: {.aligncenter .size-large .wp-image-13145 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13145” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/03/24/free-to-a-good-home-sixteen-issues-of-the-journal-of-vertebrate-palaeontology/2016-03-24-07-42-13-2-stack-of-jvp/”

The European Commission is putting together a Commission Expert Group to provide advice about the development and implementation of open science policy in Europe. It will be known as the Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP). This is potentially excellent news. The OSPP’s primary goal is to “advise the Commission on how to further develop and practically implement open science policy”. But there’s potentially a downside here.

Ten years ago today — on 15 September 2005 — my first palaeo paper was published: Taylor and Naish (2005) on the phylogenetic nomenclature of diplodocoids. It’s strange to think how fast the time has gone, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I get a bit self-indulgent and nostalgic.

Stop what you’re doing and go read Cameron Neylon’s blog. Specifically, read his new post, Improving on “Access to Research”. Regular readers of SV-POW! might legitimately complain that my so-called advocacy consists mostly of whining about how rubbish things are.

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Matt and I were discussing “portable peer-review” services like Rubriq, and the conversation quickly wandered to the subject of PeerJ. Then I realised that that seems to be happening with all our conversations lately. Here’s a partial transcript. Mike: I don’t see portable peer-review catching on. Who’s going to pay for it unless journals give an equal discount from APCs?

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