Yesterday we got a treat: the description of a new titanosaur, Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, based on some decent cervical vertebrae and an almost absurdly nice skull from the Upper Cretaceous of Argentina (Martinez et al., 2016). It was published in PLOS ONE so it’s free to the world, including a 3D PDF of the skull and […]

In this short series on the moral dimensions of open (particularly open access), we’ve considered why this is important, the argument that zero marginal cost should result in zero price, the idea that the public has a right to read what it paid for, the very high profit margins of scholarly publishers, and the crucial observation that science advances best and fastest when we can build on each other’s work with minimal friction.

Several drinks later, they all die and somehow become skeletonised, and that’s how they all land up on a table in my office: {.aligncenter .size-large .wp-image-13338 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13338” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/04/14/a-fox-a-badger-a-pheasant-and-a-monitor-lizard-walk-into-a-bar/2016-04-14-11-12-52/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2016-04-14-11-12-52.jpg”

I keep reading pieces about self-plagiarism. the whole idea is idiotic. Plagiarism is “presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own”. So self-plagiarism is presenting your own work or ideas as your own. Which is nonsense. Can we please abandon this unhelpful and misleading phrase?

This is the fifth part of a series on the Moral Dimensions of Open, in preparation for the forthcoming OSI2016 meeting, where I’ll be in the Moral Dimensions group.

As I was clearing out some clutter, I came across this hand-written list of projects that I wanted to get completed: {.aligncenter .size-large .wp-image-13257 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13257” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/04/11/projects-that-happen-projects-that-dont/old-poop/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/old-poop.jpeg” orig-size=“1522,2078” comments-opened=“1”

This is the fourth part of a series on the Moral Dimensions of Open, in preparation for the forthcoming OSI2016 meeting, where I’ll be in the Moral Dimensions group. It’s widely recognised that the established scholarly publishers skim an awful lot of money off the top of research budgets.

Building on the pioneering work of Karbek (2002), Darren Naish (circa 2004) conceived a theory of sauropod locomotion that has not been as widely accepted as he might have hoped. Sadly, other projects captured Naish’s attention, and his interest in writing up his theory waned.

This is the third part of a series on the Moral Dimensions of Open, in preparation for the forthcoming OSI2016 meeting, where I’ll be in the Moral Dimensions group. [Part 0 laid the foundation by asking why this matters; and part 1 discussed the argument that price should be zero when marginal cost is zero.] As usual, I will be concentrating on open access.

Building on the pioneering work of Myhrvold and Currie (1997), Darren Naish (circa 2003) conceived a theory of sauropod defence that has not been as widely accepted as he might have hoped. Sadly, other projects captured Naish’s attention, and his interest in writing up his theory waned.

A couple of weeks ago, I said I was going to toss out my hardcopy issues of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology unless someone wanted them and was prepared to pay for shipping. The good news is that Andrew Stuck did want them. We got in touch and arranged shipping, and they arrived at his house a few days ago.