New guidelines for figures for BioMed Central journals

BioMed Central have issued improved figure preparation guidelines for articles submitted to their journals.

There is also an article in their blog asking for user feedback on these new guidelines.

Blogs and science - 2

Two other blog-related stories also highlight the way that blogs are getting noticed.

1. PhD student Shelley Batts was threatened with legal action for posting figures from the Journal of Science of Food and Agriculture on her blog. The Society of Chemical Industry, owners of the journal, later apologized to her, saying that it was due to an over-enthusiastic staff-member. The Scientist has the full story.

2. Another PhD student, Reed Cartwright, posted some thoughts he had about an alternative explanation of results reported in a genetics paper. It was a little outside his field so he didn't attempt to pursue the idea. Six months later someone else had the same idea and seeing it also on Cartwrights blog he got in touch to invite Cartwright to be a co-author. Again the full story is in The Scientist (this one needs a subscription, or see the print version - Vol 21, Issue 4; page 21). They also mention some other similar tales.

Blogs and science - 1

Blogs are getting noticed more and more in science. Just as I was gearing up to write a little review of science blogs into my inbox pops a lovely article in the latest issue of Cell that has done the job for me. Scientists Enter the Blogosphere by Laura Bonetta (Cell 129(3), 4 May 2007, Pages 443-445) notes that

1,000 or so science blogs provide authoritative opinions about pressing issues
in science, such as evolution or climate change, or aim to engage other
scientists in open and frank discussions about the scientific literature or
science policy.

She gives a number of links, including links to some key finding aids. She also mentions the phenomenon of "Blog Carnivals". Wikipedia explains:

A Blog Carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a
magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a
regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in
the form of a blog article that contains permanent links to other
blog articles on the particular topic. ... Communities of blog readers, writers, and edition hosts form around specific carnivals.

Some that are not mentioned in the article include

• Bio:blogs - a blog carnival covering bioinformatics and computational biology
• Pedro Beltrao's blog on (mainly) bioinformatics
• Seven Stones - EMBO's new systems biology blog

Royal Society "Exploring our Archives" Blog

One of the joys of doing the news update for a couple of days, while Frank is away at meetings, is the things you come across by serendipity - such as this blog.

The blog is being written by 2 researchers Anna Winterbottom and Jenni Thomas as they explore the Hooke Folio. This is a book of minutes of Royal Society taken by Robert Hooke, during his time as Secretary (1677-1682). The official minutes for the Society at this time seen incomplete, and this Folio is slightly mysterious (see What is the Hooke Folio).

The blog has been in existence since Jan 2007 and many of the posts are linked to anniversaries (Royal Society and slavery - abolition of slavery), current news (hot air? - climate change) and hot science topics (malaria).

The blog can be found at http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/. You can also sign up to receive new posts or comments as an RSS feed.