Biweekly links for 05/04/2009

  • Peter Suber appointed as a Berkman Fellow
    • Some excellent news: “Peter Suber will join the Center for a special joint fellowship with the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the Harvard Law School Library. Professor Suber will be focusing on Open Access documentation efforts, as well as outreach around Open Access, across Harvard and beyond.”
  • I Want You To Want Me
    • Thoughtful essay about privacy, free speech, and online media.
  • Anthropology: The Art of Building a Successful Social Site
    • StackOverflow is by far the best and most useful Q&A site I’ve ever used. Here, co-founder Joel Spolsky talks about some of what makes StackOverflow successful. Interesting reading for people thinking about similar endeavours in other fields, e.g., science.
  • Merck Makes Phony Peer-Review Journal | blog.bioethics.net
    • “The Scientist has reported that […] Merck cooked up a phony, but real sounding, peer reviewed journal and published favorably looking data for its products in them. Merck paid Elsevier to publish such a tome, which neither appears in MEDLINE or has a website, according to The Scientist.

      […] I’m sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, “As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications….” Said doctor, or even the average researcher wouldn’t know that the journal is bogus. In fact, knowing that the journal is published by Elsevier gives it credibility!”

  • Wikipedia:Peer review – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    • “Wikipedia’s Peer review process exposes articles to closer scrutiny from a broader group of editors, and is intended for high-quality articles that have already undergone extensive work, often as a way of preparing a featured article candidate. It is not academic peer review by a group of experts in a particular subject, and articles that undergo this process should not be assumed to have greater authority than any other.”

Click here for all of my del.icio.us bookmarks.