Search

Reports on the publication of a research paper that argues in favor of intelligent design in the "Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington" in the U.S. Impact of the publication of the paper on the advocacy of getting intelligent design into the curriculum; Use of information theory and other techniques to argue that the complexity of living organisms cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution; Overview of the arguments of Stephen Meyer, the author of the paper.

The article discusses the failure of U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund the most impactful researchers in favor of more conformists scientists with interests similar to those of the grant reviewers.

The article presents a discussion on issues related to scientific collaborations among researchers in the United States. The paper focuses on the agreement between biologist Paul Weldon and chemist Andrew Evans to confirm the compound content of the bovidic-acid samples, a suspected gaur's natural mosquito repellant. However, disagreement arose over who owned the samples. These consequences of failed collaboration is said to be a common conflict over biotechnology papers, publications, and data ownership. To avoid the problem, documented agreement at the start is suggested. Relevant questions to discuss before starting collaboration are also offered.

The article reports on the efforts of U.S. government to make scientific research available for all. It reports that the accessibility offered by the Internet has transformed science publishing over the past decade. The government of the U.S. is making efforts to make all federally funded research available for free. The new system will make huge numbers of scientific articles publicly available for all. It reports that such archives will basically contain the final versions of the manuscripts written by the authors. There was an increase in public access in late 2007 when the U.S. Congress passed a bill and made it compulsory for scientists funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to deposit their papers within 12 months of publication.

The article cites a U.S. report that states that Asian nations are catching up with Europe and the United States in terms of scientific output. According to the report, in 2004, countries from the Asia Pacific region including China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and India produced 25 percent of the world's research papers. By comparison, Europe produced 38 percent of the world's scientific papers, and the United States produced 33 percent. Within Asia, China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan grew the most. In China, some institutions even pay researchers extra for publications in indexed journals, especially ones that carry widely cited articles.

The article reports on the declaration made by the White House that government-funded research in the U.S. would be made accessible for the public by 12 months after publication, rather than kept behind paywalls. It notes that federal agencies have been give until August 22, 2013 to produce plans for making the data and papers from the research they fund more accessible to all. Open-access advocacy group Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition called the memorandum a landmark.

The article reports that officials of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy are dissenting a finding of an investigation that the alleged scientific misbehavior at a national laboratory qualifies for public release. David Williams stresses that the investigators allotted time reviewing the papers received from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee but failed to charge the management with misconduct despite the presence of errors. Lawyers of Oak Ridge claim that there was no conflict of interest in the case.

The article reports on the launch of a new science journal called "Answers Research Journal" (ARJ) by Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry run by evangelical Ken Ham in Kentucky. This peer-reviews scientific research journal is a free, online publication devoted to research on new creation and the global flood within a biblical framework. Editor-in-chief Andrew Snelling said that the papers will be peer-reviewed by people who support the positions taken by the journal. Keith Miller, a geologist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, claimed that for the most part, creationism is ignored by the scientific community.

The article presents several issues and developments related to nature conservation. Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman have introduced as bill which would require researchers with public funding to make their papers freely available. Japan have created a major medical research prize wherein such prize will go towards research and clinical work on disease prevalent in Africa. The European Bioinformatics Institute has launched a project called FELICS (Free European Life-science Information and Computational Services).

The article reports that post doctoral fellow Kristin Roovers has been suspended by the Ottawa Health Research Institute after learning that she had manipulated and falsified data published in several papers in the United States. In July 2007, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity concluded that Roovers manipulated 19 panels of western blot data while a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Roovers had used Photoshop to copy a set of bands and paste them into other blots representing data from different experiments.

Reports that the U.S. National Institutes of Health has unveiled its plan for open access to research findings. Composition of the policy on archive papers; Criticism on the changes made to publication policy; Estimated cost to run the research publishing.

Iranians struggling to secure free speech at home are facing a fresh set of restrictions from the U.S. government. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has ruled that editing or publishing scientific manuscripts from Iran, Libya, Sudan and Cuba violates the trade embargo on these countries. And U.S. publishers and scientific societies are divided over how to respond. At a meeting in Washington on 9 February, David Mills, the treasury official in charge of implementing the policy, told representatives of 30 publishers that anyone wanting to publish papers from Iran should seek a licence from the treasury department. He also suggested that U.S. scientists collaborating with Iranians could be prosecuted.