I did a little experiment to figure out whether the full-text versions of my last 15 papers (published between 1997-2008) are available online. The result: 3 papers available for everybody 10 papers only available from within my institution (Journal subscription required) 2 papers only available for purchase Interestingly, the papers in the two journals with the highest impact factor are both available as full-text.

Anna's recent post about her struggles with Pubmed searches reminded me that there is still a lot that could and should be done to improve the paper (or thesis) writing process. This is my personal list of major annoyances: Pubmed . This topic has been extensively covered in Anna's post.

Participation in a social network can have it's perks. Thanks to the O'Reilly Group on Facebook (that other social network), I received a review copy of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. But why would a scientist want to know how to write and edit articles on Wikipedia? Wikipedia has become a respectable source of information that rivals the more traditional encylopedias such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

A March 13 Nature News article (Six degrees of messaging) talks about a study on Microsoft Messenger chat users. Any random two Microsoft Messenger users (out of about 240 million) could be connected two each other via an average of 6 users that have chatted with each other. This study is just another confirmation of the six degrees of separation concept.

David Crotty, the Executive Editor from CSH Protocols, last month wrote a provocative blog post called Why Web 2.0 is failing in Biology. He did an informal poll among scientists and found that none of them read science blogs or use social networking sites for scientists.

You have finished all the experiments and are in the middle of writing that wonderful manuscript that will change not only the field you are working in but also your personal career. But then you encounter all these complicated issues related to paper writing, including duplicate publications, joint first authors, multi-authored papers and paper rejections.

Donald Kennedy, the edior-in-chief of Science, yesterday wrote an editorial about a legal dispute between the New England Journal of Medicine and the drug company Pfizer. Pfizer wants the NEJM to provide the reviewer comments on submitted papers about the two Pfizer products celecoxib (Celebrex) and valdecoxib (Bextra). Both drugs are used to treat pain and belong to the COX-2 inhibitor class of drugs.

There are many reasons to list all your publications online. Maybe you are looking for a new job or want to attract students to start their PhD in your lab. Usually you find this information on the home page of your laboratory or department, but several tools can automate this process. Nature Network You can list your publications in your Nature Network profile. Simply add the DOI or Pubmed ID in the form provided.

A Nature News article last week talked about the confusion that happens if a number of authors have the same or similar names (Scientific publishing: Identity crisis). This is apparently a special issue in China because of the difficulties transliterating Chinese characters into English and the use of only a limited number of surnames.

Cancer is caused by genetic changes ¹ . Oncogenes harbor activating mutations that cause or promote cancer, whereas tumor suppressor genes ² protect from cancer. In this model, genetic changes in one copy of an oncogene, but both copies of a tumor suppressor gene are required to initiate cancer.