This is a guest post by Professor Rosemary Tannock, Editor-in-Chief of Behavioral and Brain Functions. To mark International Women’s Day, she takes a look back over how her career has developed from physiotherapy to psychopathology. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference… Read more »
This is a guest post by Sheila McCormick, an editor for BMC Plant Biology. To mark International Women’s Day, she takes a look back over her career in plant genetics and publishing. When I started college at Illinois State University, I thought I might become a high school biology teacher. But as the semesters went… Read more »
Since its inception in the early 1900s International Women’s Day has witnessed lots of changes both in societal attitudes and equality. The work in creating an equal society is far from over and this ties in with this year’s theme of ‘Inspiring Change’. In light of this theme we’ve asked some of our Editors to… Read more »
When a researcher gets their work published, months of hard work and dedication finally pay off. The rewards of being published in a reputable journal are immediately obvious, but what about the hard work that goes on behind the scenes? Peer review remains the gold standard for the evaluation of new research and key to… Read more »
James Evans, Product Manager Open Repository writes: The Connacht Ulster Alliance launched their repository on Tuesday February 18th, attended by staff and the Presidents of the three Institutes in the CUA. The CUA is a strategic partnership formed by Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), Letterkenny Institute of Technology (LYIT) and Institute of Technology, Sligo… Read more »
Citizen science – the public participation in gathering data for scientific studies – is certainly not new, but facilitated by the ease of sharing information online, the opportunities for the public to engage in scientific data collection have increased in recent years. Zooniverse, one of the most successful platforms facilitating citizen science experiments, recently announced that they now have over 1 million registered users (this map shows how geographically diverse they are), quite an impressive milestone to reach in just seven years.
But what are the implications of publishing scientific studies which, by definition, rely on the engagement of a broad group of participants?
BioMed Central is organising a panel discussion at the Citizen Cyberscience Summit to discuss this question, rounding off the second day of the conference in London this Friday.
Written by Ruth King Open access is just one part of a successful research process. I am reminded of that during every conversation I take part in about open access to African research. It can end up sounding simplistic compared to the complex issues that surround it, such as availability and uptake; building capacity… Read more »
Which research articles and researchers of 2013 deserve recognition? It’s a tough question to answer. Last year was another fantastic year for open access research, and not least here at BioMed Central. 25,000 articles were published with us, across topics as diverse as malaria metabolics, the genomics of chocolate, and the link between night work… Read more »
Guest blog post from Mark Martindale and Max Telford, Editors-in-Chief, EvoDevo Change over time is a central theme in biology, and of particular importance in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. Working at the interface of these fields, evodevo research frequently uses video recording as an important measure of specific biological events. Recognising the… Read more »
With the literature available to researchers growing—indeed, in the last decade the amount of articles published increased by around 44%[i]—the way in which researchers are able to consume that literature becomes increasingly important. Readers need ways to quickly find what research is relevant to them. For example, say I want to find all the literature… Read more »