Green Tea and Velociraptors

Academia

The rise of open research data

This was originally posted at: http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2015/08/26/the-rise-of-open-research-data/ As a junior researcher in the UK, it has given me great pleasure over the last few years to see the dramatic development of open access publishing. Most major research funders in the UK now require public access to published research articles in one form or another, and many other research int ...[Read More]

A thought on impact factors

OK, bear with me on this one. It’s a bit of a thought dump, but it would be interesting to see what people think. You can’t go anywhere in academia these days without hearing about impact factors. An impact factor is a metric assigned to a journal that measures the average number of citations per article over the preceding two year interval. It was originally designed to help libraries ...[Read More]

My year in 2013

Inspired by Martin Eve (link), I decided to make a documentation of academic-related stuff I’ve achieved in 2013. The last year was mostly occupado by the first year of my PhD, but other academic-ish stuff too as complimentary activities to research. This is kinda like a personal diary of ‘achievements’, as well as a documentation of the extent of work-procrastination. As such, p ...[Read More]

The 12 days of PhD Christmas

Twelve Dinners Delivered (to the lab) Eleven Papers Prepping Ten Bugs-a-Bugging Nine Ladies Dancing (but not with you) Eight Bunsens-a-Burnin’ Seven Dance Solos Six Words a Minute Fiiive Grants Rejected Four Calling Mates (“I’m busy“) Three Absent Supervisors Two Days off a Year (maybe) And a h-index of nooought. Merry Christmas everyone!

Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: That social media thang

This was initially posted at: http://www.nature.com/spoton/2013/04/social-media-for-science-outreach-a-case-study-that-social-media-thang/ as part of a series of case studies exploring how academics use social media. Jon began university life as a geologist, following this with a treacherous leap into the life sciences with a course in biodiversity and taxonomy. Now undertaking a PhD in tetrapod b ...[Read More]