Online Science Resource Survey pt2

Thanks to all my friends and colleagues who responded to my email asking for online science content.  The list we generated covers a wide range of topics from Epidemiology, Environmental Chemistry, Public Health, Statistics, Microbiology and Open Science.  The formats vary widely: email alters, websites, rss feeds, expert blogs,  discussion boards, list serves, and linked news sites. One things is clear, that if you want to access science online there are many formats available– and just find the format that works for you.

NEWS / FEEDS
> Infectious Disease Resarch and Policy – http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/
> CDC selected topics – http://www.cdc.gov/emailupdates/index.html
> CDC selected news items -     http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/services/email
> Community of Science (CoS e-alerts) -  http://www.cos.com/login/join.shtml
> EnvironmentalHealthNews – http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/subscribe.html
> Science Commons (open access news) – http://sciencecommons.org/feed/
> MicrobeWold News (microbiology current events) – http://feeds.feedburner.com/microbe-news
> 60 sec science blog by Scientific American (broad topics, current events) -  http://rss.sciam.com/60-second-science-blog
> MIT Technology Review – http://feeds.technologyreview.com/technology_review_top_stories

BLOGS
> Science Planet Blog - http://blogs.america.gov/science
> Andrew Gelman, social science stats- http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/blog/
> ScienceBlogs  – http://scienceblogs.com/channel/rss.php
> Effect Measure (A progressive public health science blog) http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/
> everyONE (PLoS ONE community blog)- http://everyone.plos.org/feed/
> Open Access News – http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogger/wPhg

DISCUSSION /  LISTS SERVES
> Recreational water quality list serve (not just for the great lakes) – http://www.great-lakes.net/glba/beachnet.html
> DIYBio (google group on homemade biology experiments) – diybio@googlegroups.com

JOURNALS
> Applied Env. Microbiol. – http://aem.asm.org/papbyrecent.dtl
> PNAS – http://www.pnas.org/rss/
> BMC bioinformatics papers – http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbioinformatics/
> Env. Science & Technol – http://pubs.acs.org/journal/esthag
> Lancet Infectious Diseases – http://www.thelancet.com/rss
> Lancet – http://www.thelancet.com/rss
> Am. J. Epidemiology – http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/rss
> Int. J. Epidemiology – http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/rss
> Nature (short abstracts from journal) -  http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue/rss

I’ve been trying out a several formats and hit a few dead ends.  I find email alerts annoying and delete them almost reflexively.   I bookmark sites on http://delicious.com/DaveLove but rarely visit them.  I even tried using delicious to keep a community lit review, but others didn’t use it.   The one method that does work for me is using rss feeds, because they can pile up unwatched and scanned in bulk quickly.  I drop rss feeds into Thunderbird (on my computer) and in parallel on Google Reader (for use on other computers).   I’m curious what others do?

A declaration for young scientists

image from Global Graphica

<1> be open in research and publishing (OA)

<2> if you know it then act, but don’t act like a know it all

<3> speak truth to power (Quakers) even when your ass is on the line

<4> be an active listener and practice complete collaboration

<5> deconstruct as a last resort

Let’s get more science on the interweb!

WHY CURRENT PUBLICATION PRACTICES MAY DISTORT SCIENCE

Young NS, Ioannidis JPA, Al-Ubaydli O (2008) PLoS Med 5(10): e201

Summary (full text)

“The current system of publication in biomedical research provides a distorted view of the reality of scientific data that are generated in the laboratory and clinic. This system can be studied by applying principles from the field of economics. The “winner’s curse,” a more general statement of publication bias, suggests that the small proportion of results chosen for publication are unrepresentative of scientists’ repeated samplings of the real world. The self-correcting mechanism in science is retarded by the extreme imbalance between the abundance of supply (the output of basic science laboratories and clinical investigations) and the increasingly limited venues for publication (journals with sufficiently high impact). This system would be expected intrinsically to lead to the misallocation of resources. The scarcity of available outlets is artificial, based on the costs of printing in an electronic age and a belief that selectivity is equivalent to quality. Science is subject to great uncertainty: we cannot be confident now which efforts will ultimately yield worthwhile achievements. However, the current system abdicates to a small number of intermediates an authoritative prescience to anticipate a highly unpredictable future. In considering society’s expectations and our own goals as scientists, we believe that there is a moral imperative to reconsider how scientific data are judged and disseminated.”

I found this article while reading an editorial by Richard Smith in The Guardian, forwarded by Khalid.

Look Around You: Water

Look Around You on the BBC:

“SCIENCE stands for Super-Corroborative Information on Everything and Nothing in the Cosmos and Earth. That’s a pretty wide-ranging subject, I’m sure you’ll agree!

Ninn = 4

One simple way to think of Science is to imagine it as a giant, spinning roulette wheel whose numbers correspond to the great Scientists (1=Newton, 2=Einstein, 3=Quarnborg, 4=Ninn, and so on. (The ball represents Time.)).

Look Around You is an eight-part series designed to promote the understanding of Science in a simple and concise format. Although aimed at those of school-age, we are sure that many adults will also find it of interest.

The eight weekly modules contain a number of step-by-step experiments performed by qualified, professional scientists. You can follow too – in your school, or in your home laboratory.“

SCImago: rank, analyze, compare, and visualize science

A visualization of research in the US, generated in SCImago. It is the same (or similar) Java tool Mike Love used for his Genealogy of Influence Map. Compare to a more elaborate static map of science found by Luke/Mike. SCImago lets the user define the science catagory, country and type of visualization which is pretty cool.

A bubble graph of science field rank (x-axis H index) by cites per doc (y-axis). Medicine and biochem/molecular biology are the big green and olive points. Multidisciplinary studies is the small salmon colored point at the top right.

In addition to flashy visualizations, SCImago is a free journal ranking tool, that is sorely needed. I am currently using this function to pick a journal for my latest manuscript.

Here is an introduction to SCImago as posted on their website:

“The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains.

This platform takes its name from the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator, developed by SCImago from the widely known algorithm Google PageRank™. This indicator shows the visibility of the journals contained in the Scopus® database from 1996.”