GigaScience recently published an article all about a Genotype Investigator for Genome-Wide Analyses, alternatively known as Gigwa. But what is this and how can it help? Guilhem Sempere explains more in a guest post. Exploring the structure of genomes and analyzing their evolution is essential to understanding the adaptation of organisms to biotic and abiotic environments.
Imagine you would like to study a plant species of interest, say for its ability to supply food, fiber, fuel or just to gain a deeper scientific understanding. Two approaches immediately come to mind: an understanding of its underlying genetics and an understanding of plant phenomics, which spans how the genes express themselves across huge length scales from the microscopic to the whole plant itself.
Schistocephalus solidus is as an emblematic study system in parasitology, first discovered by Peter Christian Abildgaard as far back as 1790, as having an extremely complicated life-cycle with multiple developmental states and host species (parasitizing crustaceans, fish and birds). Its fitting that such a classical model system has been used to showcase novel mechanisms of crediting and sharing research protocols in a reproducible
** GigaScience has Tapeworms and Scabies! And Reproducible Research. **While there has been recent controversy (and hashtags in response) from some of the more conservative sections of the medical community calling those who use or build on previous data “research parasites”, as data publishers we strongly disagree with this.
The question in the title is serious: of the ~US$10 billion we collectively pay publishers annually world-wide to hide publicly funded research behind paywalls, we already know that only between 200-800 million go towards actual costs.
“an academic career, in which a person is forced to produce scientific writings in great amounts, creates a danger of intellectual superficiality” Albert Einstein Isaacson W (2008) Einstein (His Life and Universe) (Simon and Schuster, New York), 1st Ed, p 79
Scholarly journals, on the face of it, emerged in the 17 th century as a medium to facilitate communication of scientific discoveries among interested scholars. In the 21 st century, it’s not all that different: researchers form communities around topics in which they share a common interest: Journal of Neuroscience, Pediatrics and Neonatology, Journal of Economics or the British Educational Research Journal.
The Leader of the Curation Pack. At GigaScience we are keen to maximise the use and utility of our published data, narrative and other research objects.
In her recent editorial on Sci-Hub (an initiative I support), editor-in-chief of Science Magazine Marcia McNutt wrote: The editorial is essentially trying to make the somewhat tenuous but not implausible case that using sci-hub may lead to subscription cancellations which, in turn, may lead to scholarly societies (like those of Dr. McNutts employer, AAAS) to miss revenue they need in order to pay for important services (such as paying
Around 2005, German politicians decided on a plan to circumvent a newly created amendment to the German constitution that prevents federal funds from supporting state-owned institutions such as universities.