There are a set of memes that seem to be popping up with increasing regularity in the last few weeks. The first is that more of the outputs of scientific research need to be published. Sometimes this means the publication of negative results, other times it might mean that a community doesn’t feel they have an outlet for their particular research field. The traditional response to this is “we need a journal” for this.

It is increasingly common for journals to employ fairly strict length limits on submissions. I’m actually a big fan of this. I feel that the most important points of most manuscripts will fit into 6-8 published pages and details that only a small fraction of an already small readership will be interested in can easily be placed in online supplements.

I’ve been giving a fair bit of thought recently to the concept of “senior authorship”. Senior authorship is the practice whereby the last position on an author line is occupied by the leader of the lab in which the project was conducted (i.e., the P.I., the advisor, whatever terminology you prefer). Being the senior author on a paper is considered a sign of leadership on the project and is arguably at least as prestigious as being the first

I hold no particular candle for traditional peer review. I think it is inefficient, poorly selective, self reinforcing, often poorly done, and above all, far too slow. However I also agree that it is the least worst system we have available to us.  Thus far, no other approaches have worked terribly well, at least in the communication of science research.

A story of two major retractions from a well known research group has been getting a lot of play over the last few days with a News Feature (1) and Editorial (2) in the 15 May edition of Nature. The story turns on claim that Homme Hellinga’s group was able to convert the E. coli ribose binding protein into a Triose phosphate isomerase (TIM) using a computational design strategy.

Today I received news on the Jmol user list that Lubert Stryer’s Biochemistry replaced the proprietary Chime with the open source Jmol. The third edition from which I learned biochemistry in my first year at the university did not feature a CD with live figures, but I am very thrilled to see a program on which I have actively programmed hit a text book I used myself in the past.