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September 18, 2006
NCBI Workshops Coming Nov. 30-Dec. 1st
The UIUC Biotechnology Information Center, a virtual branch of the UIUC Library, and the Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center are again pleased to be hosting several NCBI Workshops.
When:
Thursday and Friday, November 30th - December 1st
What:
Four mini-courses will be offered, each 2.5 hours in length:
#1. Making Sense of DNA and Protein Sequences
Thursday, Nov. 30, 9-11:30 AM
#3. Identification of Disease Genes
Thursday, Nov. 30, 1-3:30 PM
#5. BLAST Quick Start
Friday, Dec. 1, 9-11:30 AM
#7. Structure Analysis Quick Start
Friday, Dec. 1, 1-3:30 PM
Learn about the classes:
To learn more about the courses, as well as to take a peak at the types of problem sets you'll do during the hands-on portion, please go to the NCBI Mini-course web site.
Who should attend:
These sessions are designed for molecular biology grad students, post docs, staff, and faculty.
Who is teaching the courses?
Medha Bhagwat and Steve Pechous, biologists from the User Services staff of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, (NCBI) will provide the instruction.
How much does it cost to attend?
There is no fee for participants, but pre-registration is required.
Read more, and sign up for one or more classes!
NCBI Mini-courses, Fall, 2006
Posted by Katie Newman at 5:46 PM
Nature's New Open Peer Review System
Scientific journal Nature is trialing an open peer-review system to review papers submitted for publication. Under the initiative, manuscripts will be uploaded to a pre-print server and made available online to members of the scientific community in a blog format. Take a look at the papers currently up for review.
Comments submitted are subject to review themselves prior to being published, and those commenting will be required to put their name and institution to their words. In addition to public review via the Peer Review Trial, manuscripts will continue to be sent to Nature's experts for a closed review. Also, authors can choose not to have their work reviewed in this manner, as there are some disadvantages associated with having an open peer-review. Although access is intended primarily for the scientific community, anyone can access the pre-published material.
However, the journal will discard any comments found to be irrelevant, intemperate or inappropriate. According to Nature's editors, both sets of comments -- the traditional peer-review opinions as well as the online remarks – will be taken into consideration while deciding whether or not to publish a study.
Interested readers can also visit the Nature web debate on Peer Review, and are invited to comment on the articles published there.
Knowledgespeak, 9/18/06
Posted by Katie Newman at 10:23 AM
September 12, 2006
American Society of Plant Biologists Members to Get Open Access for Free
It is with great pleasure that I note that the society I was associated with in a "former life", the American Society of Plant Biologists, is again venturing bravely into the arena of open access publishing! A year or so ago, they allowed their authors to make articles published in Plant Physiology or Plant Cell open access, for an additional fee of $1000. About 10% of the authors took them up on this offer. In a recent editorial the editor-in-chief of Plant Physiology announced that, as of the January 2007 issue, all articles published by ASPB members in Plant Physiology will have their articles made open access for no additional fee! This means that over 50% of the articles published in Plant Physiology in 2007 will be open access.
The reason for this change in policy? Don Ort, the editor-in-chief of Plant Physiology and UIUC Plant Biology professor, says that
there are strong reasons to believe that Open Access drives higher impact and citation by accelerating recognition and dissemination of research findings. A recent recent longitudinal bibliometric analysis of Open Access vs. non–Open Access papers published over a 6-month period in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports this premise (Eysenbach, 2006). Even in a journal widely available in research libraries and one that publicly releases its full content after 6 months, Open Access articles were found to be twice as likely to be cited in the first 4 to 10 months compared to non–Open Access articles.
Additionally, they note that even during the short amount of time that ASPB has offered the open access option, the open access articles
have been accessed about 10% more often and downloaded approximately 20% more often than the non–Open Access articles published in the same volumes.
No word, yet, on whether Plant Cell will follow in the footsteps of it's sister publication, Plant Physiology. Both of these journals are highly regarded, with impact factors for 2005 of 11.088 and 6.114, respectively.
Posted by Katie Newman at 10:07 AM
September 8, 2006
Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell
Take a look at this beautiful, eight-minute movie showing the inner workings of a cell -- Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell. It was developed for use by Harvard biology students and illustrates unseen molecular mechanisms and the ones they trigger, specifically how white blood cells sense and respond to their surroundings and external stimuli.
(You'll need the Flash 8 Player, a free download available at the site).
Posted by Katie Newman at 12:40 PM
Fall RefWorks Training
Many of you have inquired about RefWorks workshops...
Here they are!
(Please pass the word to your students, too!)
What is RefWorks?
RefWorks, a Web-based service, allows faculty members and students to create customized databases using online resources and automatically format the content and bibliography of their papers. It also provides quick search and advanced search functions. Read more about it and give it a spin:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/refworks/
RefWorks is provided to campus by the Library and CITES and is an alternative to EndNote, etc. One advantage to using it in the lab setting is that multiple people in a lab can access the same account, sharing the same compilation of citations, accessing them from the web as needed when writing a paper.
Who:
These classes may be taken by anyone affiliated with UIUC -- students, faculty, staff. The classes are taught by Joe Straw, Library Central Reference Services. Please contact him if you have questions / concerns < jstraw@uiuc.edu >
When:
RefWorks Basic Workshop
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/refworks/RefWorksAnnouncementFlyer.doc
Tuesday 9/12- 1:30pm-3:00pm
Thursday 9/14- 1:30pm-3:00pm
Wednesday 9/20 -12n-1:30pm
Wednesday 9/27- 2:00pm-3:30pm
Thursday 9/28- 11:00am-12:30pm
Tuesday 10/3- 3:00pm-4:30pm
Thursday 10/5- 1:00pm-2:30pm
Wednesday 10/18- 3:00pm-4:30pm
RefWorks Advanced Workshop
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/refworks/RefWorksAdvancedAnnounceFlyer.doc
Thursday 11/2- 1:30pm-3:00pm
Wednesday 11/8- 12:00n-1:30pm
Where:
All classes are held in the Undergraduate Library computer lab, Room 291.
Please sign up to reserve your spot:
http://130.126.32.16/evanced/lib0/eventcalendar.asp
Note: these workshops filled very quickly last Spring, so sign up NOW!
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ps.
If you would like to arrange for a separate RefWorks training session for your lab group or department, drop me a line!
Katie
< florador @ uiuc.edu >
Posted by Katie Newman at 11:48 AM