Tuesday, September 19, 2006
academia vs. industry (bench work)
Over here there is a good discussion of academia vs industry. I pop up in the comments section... My take home point is that industry and academia aren't that totally different at the end of the day (when it comes to bench work). You can be happy/unhappy in either place. Overall, I think you might be better paid in industry, but that doesn't neccesarily make people happy. Anyway - go read it over there.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Nature Peer Review
I will freely admit I had no idea this was going on until I read about it over here. Seems like a cool idea, but as Coranted notes, there is nothing there yet. Many articles, some I even care about, but no real comments. He sums up the feedback pretty well so I won't repeat.
I asked around my own company to see if people knew about this. Nope. Not one did. Stealth launch? -OR- do biologist just not seem to read journals on line. I still get paper versions of several journals. We get them free as we advertise so much that they throw in subscriptions on the side as a bonus. That triggers me to read them. I don't seem to ever go to the science or nature sites? Not like I am computer phobic (working, and programming, in the bioinformatics field covers that...). My entire life is on computers - why not journal reading. When I want to share articles for discussion, I go to the web site and get the pdf to share/discuss around that one. BUT - I don't start there to find/read it. Go there in a directed manner to get 1 article.
In asking around, this was the same behavior that many others had. This wasn't age biased, as there were several new post docs amongst the directors I asked. Wide range of people.
Why don't we find the articles on line? I am just programmed to read the paper version.
When do I start on line? When I find the article in PubMed. Then it is direct to the electronic version. That is directed searching. The reading of a journal is "browsing". I look at the table of contents of every issue of science and nature and generally browse the "news" sections.
Don't think I am weird, but it is weird given that I get the entire rest of my news online.
I asked around my own company to see if people knew about this. Nope. Not one did. Stealth launch? -OR- do biologist just not seem to read journals on line. I still get paper versions of several journals. We get them free as we advertise so much that they throw in subscriptions on the side as a bonus. That triggers me to read them. I don't seem to ever go to the science or nature sites? Not like I am computer phobic (working, and programming, in the bioinformatics field covers that...). My entire life is on computers - why not journal reading. When I want to share articles for discussion, I go to the web site and get the pdf to share/discuss around that one. BUT - I don't start there to find/read it. Go there in a directed manner to get 1 article.
In asking around, this was the same behavior that many others had. This wasn't age biased, as there were several new post docs amongst the directors I asked. Wide range of people.
Why don't we find the articles on line? I am just programmed to read the paper version.
When do I start on line? When I find the article in PubMed. Then it is direct to the electronic version. That is directed searching. The reading of a journal is "browsing". I look at the table of contents of every issue of science and nature and generally browse the "news" sections.
Don't think I am weird, but it is weird given that I get the entire rest of my news online.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)