Think you knew librarians?

Librarians can sometimes suffer unfairly from stereotypes. But footage like that below suggests there could be much more to your average librarian than might initially meet the eye.

I certainly wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of a late fine from any of these warrior librarians!

See how long you can stifle your giggles. And rest assured in the knowledge that the book-cart-drill-team contest will be held again this year at the ALA annual conference.

How do you summarise Science Online 2010 in 140 characters?

Inquisitive, hungry, intense, can get nasty? Science nerd or squirrel?

Science Online 2010 wrapped up on Sunday and, despite its brilliant format, great networking opportunities and overall general coolness of fun and quirky participants, I was left with a dilemma.

If anyone can possibly tell me how to wrap up a conference about science, the web, technology and journalism to fit into a Twitter post, I will either fund your child’s college education (or at least buy them a cell biology textbook) or do the Locomotion at the next Sci Online 2011 (as an Australian, sorry about Kylie Minogue).

Because for anyone new to Twitter or just not good at headline-style conversation, even isolating topics into a catchy tweet was difficult. If you don’t believe me, check out the archive here and see what really catches your eye.

My point being that, for those who have mastered the art of the tweet, it really does equate to microjournalism and full-length blogging should as such be given the same cred as ‘dead-tree’ media (thanks to an unknown conference delegate for pulling out that term. Should we call web writers ‘ozone-depleting’ or ‘powergrid-draining’ media?).

It will take a while to get my summary of the conference to a respectable length, so for now I’ll refer to others who have already slept off their jetlag, showed their respect to the great dreamer on Martin Luther King Day and got their thoughts into an ordered state not overly addled by caffeine or sweet tea (an abominable North Carolina drink, sorry for saying so).

Co-organiser Bora gathered a full list together at http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2010/01/blogmedia_coverage_of_scienceo.php, which includes some of my favourites so far:

http://galleyproofs.blogspot.com/2010/01/things-i-learned-at-scienceonline2010.html

http://scienceinthetriangle.org/2010/01/rebooting-science-journalists/

http://www.walterjessen.com/scienceonline2010-follow-up-medical-journalism/

http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/

http://johnmckay.blogspot.com/

In another recent news, here’s a link to a new f1000 Report discussing osteoarthritis treatments:

f1000 Report by Yves Henrotin

On the run—15Jan10

A quick round-up of all that’s new and approved in the world of f1000. Or at least my corner of it.

M’learned colleague Steve P is in North Carolina today, hobnobbing with the geeks at Science Online 2010. I decided not to go because I’d done quite a bit of travelling just before Christmas (admittedly not as much as last year), and having had a bit of a nightmare November personally, frankly I thought could do without the hassle.

However, those of you who are disappointed at not seeing me (hah!) will get their chance at the London equivalent of Science Online, Solo10. Yup, following the success of Science Blogging 2008 and Solo09 (not to mention Fringe Frivolous), we’re doing it again this year! I know this because I met with the inestimable Lou Woodley earlier today, along with Matt Brown and the Mendeley guys (and Martin Fenner by Skype), to discuss dates and all sorts of necessary weevils.

The programme is of course a mere glimmer in the distant sky, but I can tell you we’re looking at a two day (Friday/Saturday) event, and there will be a large collaborative component (indeed, we reckon that we can devote the Saturday morning to an ad hoc unconference). So there’s plenty of scope for plenary and parallel sessions, and you should start thinking about what you’d like to do/see. Matt Brown is likely to be running some pre-conference pub-crawls events, and we’re hoping to have a fringe pre-conference again (although I’m making no promises about me and Flip cameras, one way or the other).

Keep an eye on the Science Online London website,  and I’ll let you know about hashtags and whatnot in due course.

While in Crinan Street I was able to meet with Ian Mulvany (the brains behind Connotea) and discuss a couple more projects. First, he showed me what’s in store for the users of Nature Network: we’re getting MT4! This is a long-anticipated improvement in the platform there, and has acquired something of a mythical status. But I saw it!—on the staging server, at least.

The second thing is a little more ephemeral. I’m not at liberty to say much about it, but wouldn’t it be cool if you read an article in your favourite journal, saw that it had been evaluated on f1000, and could make a comment? And that comment then appeared next to the evaluation on f1000? Or maybe you could read an evaluation on f1000 and see what people were saying about that paper all over the web, and join in the conversation?

Like Google Sidewiki, but done properly?

Yeah.

Other things that have happened this week include us sending test data to PubMed Central. You can draw your own conclusions from that little snippet of information.  I’ve also spent quite a bit of time writing and polishing a press release about Sarah Greene. More on that next week; it’s now time to take our Dev team to the pub, methinks.

oh carolina, my spidey senses are tingling

Inspire or scare your grad students! Credit to zazzle.com for original button

Ah North Carolina, home to sweet potatoes, Krispy Kremes, Pepsi, the Wright brothers’ first flight, old-time music (whatever that is) and Venus Fly-Traps. And for four days in January, also home to the moderately sized gathering that is the Science Online 2010 conference.

Skim over the program here and try to contain your jealousy at the thought of all those techy web science people squeaking about how microbiology and microchips can join together in glorious harmony. My cynicism aside, it sounds like a great lineup – though if anyone dresses up in a Spiderman outfit to take the web/science mashup too far, I’ll head straight to the bar.

Closer to home, Richard’s discussion on author listings in scientific papers has generated some interesting debate, especially as one academic suggests cage fighting as a method to solve ordering issues. Brings to mind images of a Celebrity Deathmatch between Watson and Crick or Curie and McLaren. Could make the punters more interested than the usual war of words ever does.

*As for all the spidey talk, I did rewatch Spiderman 3 last night and, like Avatar, found it a bit too touchy-feely to be a great action film. Though being a long-time fan of Venom, his appearance made it ploughing through worth the glossy Hollywood coating. But I’ll save further movie analysis for another blog in another place.

Citizen Science campaign ramps up

I’ve mentioned before about the superb efforts of our friend Darlene Cavalier in encouraging non-scientists (and some influential members of US Congress) to actively engage in science, which we gladly endorse.

Darlene is working hard on the ScienceforCitizens website, which will be launched next month, but she also found time to be interviewed recently by Florida radio show Weekend Workout on science policy, cheerleading and other topics.

Take a listen here (her interview starts at 20:50 on the Soundcloud player below or about a third of the way through if you use the basic web player at this link):

Weekend Workout podcast featuring Darlene Cavalier

Darlene, myself and other web 2.0-savvy bloggers, science press, educators and developers will be attending Science Online next month in North Carolina, where we will (as the conference notes promise) “discuss, demonstrate and debate online strategies and tools for doing science, publishing science, teaching science, and promoting the public understanding of science.” Sounds like a hoot doesn’t it.

I’ll report on those happenings in mid January, for now it’s off to cold and snowy Belgium and Germany for the Christmas/New Year break. Keep an eye on our Twitter account for regular updates on f1000 and enjoy the festive season.

Final video from Society for Neuroscience meeting, I promise!

I finally conquered the beast that is Youtube this morning, managing to upload a Flash video that was rejected more than 20 times previously due to some unknown error and proved to be too large for our Vimeo or Metacafe channels to handle. It feels something close to winning £10 in the lottery after spending £100 on losing tickets.

Svenja Caspers from the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine in Jülich, Germany, discussed her presentation with F1000 on the connectivity pattern of the human inferior parietal lobule by means of diffusion tensor imaging.

*In other news, it is Shorthand Week and my new friends at Journalism.co.uk are running a competition, presumably for anyone who has had no use for shorthand since digital voice recorders were invented but can’t get those annoying squiggles out of their head.

Nothing could be finer than to be in North Carolina…

Richard has previously mentioned some of the conferences he attends and speaks at to spread the word about F1000. One of the upcoming events on the calendar that we’re excited about is ScienceOnline2010.

If you were one of the 226 people who signed up before registration closed, there’s an amazing program now up on the website and and some great-looking workshops. It’s a shame the organisers couldn’t fit more people into the attendance list: a cross-section of the speakers includes a who’s who of Twittering scientists and some online pioneers .

On a different note, anyone who has looked at our Youtube channel lately will have noticed the abundance of videos from the Society for Neuroscience and also the varying quality of the more recently added films. Adobe Premiere Pro was working fine for our video editing guru but then decided to churn out video formats that Youtube can’t handle and switching to the less favourable 3gp format was the only option for a few of the clips.

So if you watch Svenja Caspars’ discussion of her research into the “connectivity pattern of the human inferior parietal lobule by means of diffusion tensor imaging” on anything bigger than an iPhone screen, the quality will be disappointing. We’re working on this and hope to have formatting issues sorted for when Richard and Tom return next week with fresh footage in hand from the 29th Annual Charleston Conference in South Carolina. See, the Carolinas gets two visits from us in three months!

*Just because we like you, here’s a sneak preview of a F1000 Medicine Report on a new, less-invasive technique for abdominal surgery:

Michael Shaefer’s report on NOTES

The invisible conference

It’s not easy for any large gathering of people to almost completely bypass the interweb these days but the conference I attended last Thursday seemed to have achieved the anonymity MI6 spies could only dream of.

Sure, there are thousands of conferences (in the real world and online) that go on daily in this city and others round the world but even the smallest and most insignificant seem to have a hashtag dedicated to them on Twitter, a Facebook page and at least 20 hits on an average Google search.

Unless the details being discussed are a matter of national security, in an age when even the BNP’s secret agendas are being retweeted, it did seem odd that an international biotech meeting (intelligently titled Biotech 09), attended by government and industry leaders, was virtually nonexistent on the web.

And yes, while it was very dry with only a few speakers who deigned to tell a joke (thank you, Sir Mark Walport, Wellcome Trust director) and way too many sales pitches disguised as serious industry updates, there were still some very interesting, newsworthy or at the least bloggable points being made.

Conference sponsor PepTcell’s CEO Gregory Stoloff tackled the UK government policy on pandemic flu, warning the audience of impending doom if New Labour didn’t approve his company’s flu drug for general consumption. While a bit theatrical (in the ‘Merchant of Venice’ rather than ‘Avenue Q’ sense), the stats quoted from the southern hemisphere’s winter experience of pandemic flu were thought-provoking and slightly scary: 1 in 3  down under caught the flu and 1 in 25 were hospitalised. If the numbers were converted for the UK population, at least 16,000 would need intensive care – a slight problem given there will only be 4000 intensive care beds in the UK by Christmas.

Sir Mark nicely alluded to the NHS’s current inability to contribute to the ‘future knowledge economy’, in his opinion owing to the masses of patient data the NHS collates but does not use to assist biotech development.

A Socttish accent and attitude can help to liven the atmosphere and Fergus McKenzie from ITI Life Sciences did an admirable job of making their £9.6 million stem cell technology program interesting enough to actually attract some rare audience questions.

At this point I’d try to post a link to another blog/news site with more informative discussion on the conference but, as you might have guessed,  there isn’t any I could find. Note to the organisers: invisibility doesn’t mean exclusivity and if no one is talking about you, it generally means they don’t find you interesting.

You can’t always get what you want

I was at the Internet Librarian International on Thursday and Friday of last week. Not the sort of conference I’m used to attending but as we were sponsoring it we had a speaking slot, and I seemed the obvious choice!

Rather than talk about f1000 or give a ‘corporate’ presentation I talked about the Journal Impact Factor, about alternative metrics, about the difficulties in assessing the literature, discovering quality, and locating what’s important. (This is actually what we’re in the business of doing, but aside from the branding I only mentioned what we do in passing. This was appreciated by the audience and organizers, as it turns out: and we stood out from the crowd because of it!)

I may have mentioned ‘Web 3.0’ a couple of times. As I see it, Web 1 (which it was never known as) was typified by information coming from a more or less authoritative source to many consumers. Web 2.0 was where you got people producing and sharing the information on a more level playing field; between themselves, as I told the Research Information Network back in May:

rpg at RIN, May ’09

And yeah, the Web is not the internet, and ‘Web 2.0’ was happening off-Web as it were for years before anyone thought of the term: through bulletin boards, Usenet etc. The wonders of marketing.

Web 3, I think, is when we figure out how to use all this funky technology that enables peer-to-peer, all the tagging and RSS and search and everything, and actually start finding stuff. To be more precise: all the power of web 2.0 gets brought to us where we are in useful, digestible chunks. A guy can dream, can’t he?

That’s what we’re trying to achieve at f1000, in our small corner. To find the important literature (currently biology and medicine, although that might expand) and to bring what you’re interested to you, in the way you want to see it. We’re not there yet, and the new site won’t hit it straight off, but we have lots of ideas and times are beginning to look exciting.

Anyway, the talk seemed to be well-received (I got spontaneous applause!) and Tom was on hand to record it. I spent yesterday afternoon trimming the video and inserting (some of) my slides as cutaways. And then about four hours uploading them because the internets don’t seem to reach south of the river…

Here’s me from Thursday (in two parts):

Enjoy!