The ambition that took Robert Maxwell from a poor Yiddish background in rural Czechoslovakia to the highest echelons of British society would eventually prove to be his downfall. Maxwell escaped the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, fought in both the Czechoslovak and British armies across Europe and acted as a spy for fledgling state of Israel. […]
The Philosophical Transactions cannot, for much of its history, be described as a financial success. After its initial run under that long-suffering, overloaded secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, the journal continued to be published by successive secretaries of the Society in a largely unofficial capacity and entirely at their own expense. Curiously it […]
The first systematised form of scientific dissemination was the writing of personal correspondence which, as I have explained previously, was decidedly not up to the task. Realising the shortcomings of this method of scholarly communication, several of these nascent scientists hit upon the same solution: the scholarly journal. The first periodical publication that could be […]
I came across this book after reading about it in Times Higher Education, where Miedema was interviewed for an article on narrative CVs. It was mentioned in passing that he had written a book about open science that was also combined with a personal memoir of his experiences. Now, I love a bit of research […]
In 1974, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) published a now-legendary article by Dennis Upper of the Behavior Therapy Unit at the Veterans Administration Hospital, Brockton, Massachusetts. It was titled The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of “Writer’s Block”. Now, it doesn’t take a PhD to make the logical leap to the rather obvious […]
When they first arose in the seventeenth century, the first “learned societies” held regular meetings at which members and their guests performed experiments and demonstrated their findings for an enthusiastic and educated audience. The meetings were often held in secret, due to the potential for conflict between the new scientific approach and the strictures of organised […]
In my previous post, on the importance of openness to the scientific method, I emphasised how the failure to share the results of scientific work can delay the development of important innovations. Henry Cavandish’s reluctance to disseminate his research findings seems to have resulted from a deep-rooted social anxiety, but the subject of this post […]
Science is about sharing. Dissemination of research findings is the first step towards the integration of that new knowledge into the scientific record. It allows other researchers to build upon your work, and it allows for the correction of research that has – for whatever reason – not been carried out properly. Even when published […]
Open Warfare 