The logic of America still fascinates me. Yeah, I know this is money driven country, but..
What I am talking about now, is the magazine subscription. For example, I enjoy reading National Geographic, leaving alone the fact that their photos and photographers are considered the best. The easiest way not to worry about not missing next issue is of course to subscribe to it. That’s what I do. First year, it was OK- I used the piece of paper in the magazine I bought, got special price, was happy. Next year, I got the renewal suggestion for … 30$. Guess what? If instead of renewing I would buy a new subscription, my price would be what? Whole 19$. I was enraged and e-mailed them about it. I succeeded in getting the price of 19$. This year, situation is less ridiculous, but still… My offer? 19$, doesn’t sound bad at all. But, if I decide to buy a new one, this time is 15$. So I am being punished for being loyal? Doesn’t make sense to me at all.
I am not even mentioning the fact, that the minute I click and buy a new subscription, their Customer Service will send me a subscription renewal offer. For another year. Already. Rigth away, in case I forgot I just did it. And then for another year. I think I am getting up to 6 offers per year. If I react to all of them, I would quickly have a subscription till the end of my life!
Anyway, I am renewing 3 months in advance only. What a waste of money for sending out this notices. My money, I should add.

Technorati Tags: magazine subscription, National Geographic, subscription renewal

Next week, it is a big day in my scientific carrier. I am going to give a talk at the international conference. I am very exited. I find it as a great chance to kind of force people to notice my research ;). It just seems to be more direct interaction than poster, at which people may stop or may not, depending on how interesting graphical explanation of your results you prepare. The problem is that my research is rather inter-disciplinary. It is too biological for chemists to notice, and too chemical for biologist to care.
At the same time, I am stressed like hell. Not only my boss already twice removed some slides from my posters, making me to invent my story from the very beginning. Also, telling the presentation is one thing, answering all the questions people may ask is another. They can ask me about anything they like, most probably- anything they are experts in. Which not necessarily is something connected to my research…
Anyway, I know a lot of people preparing for a presentation like that would prepare slides in Power Point, then sit down and write their whole presentation. And then I guess try to learn it by heart?
I don’t do that. I prepare slides, thinking how I am going to talk about them. And then I just run the presentation and just talk about them. It seem like harder way of doing that. But at least, I will find myself in front of 150 people in big room and if I freeze, I won’t need to remind myself what the heck was the first word of the first sentence of my introduction to my talk….
My boss already gave me one the advice I really like. Focus on your plot- explain axis and what is presented on the plot, and the story will come to you…
Anyway, I wonder how many people really write the presentation down, and how many prefer to go live?

Technorati Tags: talk, international conference, poster, presentation

The big issue this year is the new NIH policy requiring to provide the copy of accepted manuscript resulting from NIH sponsored grant to open access repository in biological sciences database PubMed. As much as I was always thrilled by open access publishing, I am starting to seriously rethink this opinion. New policy requires that every manuscript accepted after April 7, 2007, describing research financed by NIH, needs to be submitted to PubMed. You have some options though. You may send the “dirty manuscript”- your file as of the day the manuscript was accepted - or, in some cases - the final published paper (after proofing, journal style re-wording etc.).

The “case” depends on the journal in which final manuscript is published, or really what copyrights you retained when submitting. The article, depending on your choice of way to submit it, may appear in PubMed right away, or after 6 or 12 months. It may be exactly the same file as published paper, or it may differ quite considerably (but not in the scientific content!).

Of course, the publishers of non-open-access journals worry about their profits, and it looks that they have the basis for that. Some, like American Chemical Society, suggest that you pay $1000 (per manuscript!) to retain the right to open access distribution of that article, and thus it may be published on PubMed (or your own web page for that matter) right away. Seems to be a bit costly to me. As somebody commented today, it is a week or two worth of supplies, not a spare change really.

Now, in the beginning the whole open access was invented as the way to provide to everybody - be it the US taxpayers or whole scientific community even in poor countries - non limited access to all the results, papers and ideas. The question is, if it is not going to block or at least seriously limit the possibility for the scientists in poorer countries to publish in popular, and thus probably expensive journals? They currently have an option, because only NIH requires posting papers, and if you don’t want to buy open access, you don’t have to. The questions is, if paying large amounts of money to have your paper published (which to some extent is already present as per page fee in some journals, but not in many) is not the direction in which the open access movement is going? And this is my impression it may be the case.

Technorati Tags: NIH, open access, PubMed