Life of a Lab Rat

Yes, I've been away, so this isn't exactly timely, but seeing as I previously drew your attention to a minor furore over citation indices, I should probably also link to the open source free alternative.

Declan Butler writes in detail about the SJR on the Nature website, although he forgets to actually link to it. Which is a bit suss, but hey.

And from this bit of news you may now calculate that I'm 20 days behind my reading (at least according to my RSS reader). Considering I was only away for 15 that's pretty good going. Ahem.

Did the clocks go back or something?

*rattle* *clonk*

There's a certain company that makes certain site-licensed software. A couple of days ago I was encouraged to set up my university with a full *two month* unlimited site license trial. Interesting how 'two months' becomes 'unlimited' in these halcyon days, but I'm more concerned that these nice people have sent the invitation to the wrong sucker target customer.

I don't actually know where the 'University of Sidney' is, although they might be talking about somewhere in Cambridge, I guess.

"How's about we go into the darkroom and see what develops?"

I'm back. And normal service, or what passes for it around here, will be resumed when we've done all the post-holiday fritzing.
xxx

"If you see something big, it's probably a mis-assignment."

"Do you want to come and have a look at my pellets?"

The Journal of Cell Biology has a scathing editorial on the reliability (and utility, actually) of impact factors.

This database appeared to have been assembled in an ad hoc manner to create a facsimile of the published data that might appease us. It did not.

And the killer?

Just as scientists would not accept the findings in a scientific paper without seeing the primary data, so should they not rely on Thomson Scientific's impact factor, which is based on hidden data [...] we hope that people will begin to develop their own metrics for assessing scientific quality rather than rely on an ill-defined and manifestly unscientific number.

There is a somewhat unsatisfactory response by Thomson, that completely misses several points, not least those of transparency and reproducibility.

We all knew that impact factors were crap anyway. Now we just have to convince the funding bodies.

It's over; I've cloned someone new.

Well colour me pink and call me a Barbie. One of my posts from last year has been selected to appear in the second science weblogging anthology Open Laboratory 2007.

Which is, apparently, going to be a real book (2006's was print on demand), available from bookstores and Amazon and stuff. Despite my new-found notoriety, I'll not be able to make the conference because I have a prior engagement with a bottle of vodka and a fishing rod.

Thank you to my proposer (you know who you are) and a fantastic 2008 to everyone.