Peer review is like a box of chocolates.
January 16, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing, Reviewing
In talking with Gary Lackmann recently about my philosophy of peer review, the issue came up about how much you can push authors to submit to your will as Editor. I thought about what G. K. Batchelor said in his article in Journal of Fluid Mechanics “Preoccupations of a journal editor” that you don’t have […]
Most scientific paper retractions due to misconduct
December 23, 2012 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing
Raw Story reports that “When a biomedical study is retracted, most of the time it is because of misconduct rather than error, a report published Monday said. Two-thirds of all retractions around the world stem from acts like fraud, suspected fraud or plagiarism, it added.” The relevant paper is the Fang et al. (2012). Fang, […]
How to Prepare a Really Lousy Submission: Water Resources Research Editorial Team
Sent to me from colleagues at the University of Utah. [PDF]
How NOT to review a paper. The tools and techniques of the adversarial reviewer
A paper by Graham Cormode (2009) [PDF], sent to me by Rene Garreaud. The abstract gives you a flavor of how this paper reads…. There are several useful guides available for how to review a paper in Computer Science. These are soberly presented, carefully reasoned and sensibly argued. As a result, they are not much […]
“Utilize” versus “Use”
December 18, 2012 Filed under Blog, Featured, Uncategorized, Writing
From The Telegraph (sent to me by Jamie Gilmour): When the American writer David Foster Wallace died four years ago, he left behind the following fragments: notes towards a dictionary all of his own. Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn’t do, its extra letters and syllables don’t make […]
Wanted: Copyeditor. Inquire with God.
(From slate.com)
Have you heard the one about PowerPoint?
September 26, 2012 Filed under Blog, Featured, Humor, Presentations
A word about PowerPoint. PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show […]
Thoughts about Clarke’s “Ethics of Science Communication on the Web”
September 22, 2012 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing, Uncategorized
My friend Jim reminded me about an article “Ethics of Science Communication on the Web” by Maxine Clarke of the Nature Publishing Group in Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics. I might have seen this paper before, but Jim’s reminder and me taking a look at it again strikes me as a little ironic. Don’t […]
Coming soon: eBook of Eloquent Science!
The American Meteorological Society is close to offering eBooks of some of its titles. This means that Eloquent Science will soon be offered in electronic format. Watch this space!
Blog Break
I’ll be away until the end of August on a well-deserved and well-needed break. (Image from http://anxiousnomore.blogspot.co.uk)
