Nutrition Cafe

the website of the pacific science center has three nutrition games in their nutrition cafe: nutrition sleuth, grab a grape, have-a-bite cafe

the main site is flash-based (and means that i can’t provide you with direct links to the individual games), but a non-flash version is also available.

thanks to hippocratech for pointing me to nutrition sleuth.

Posted in food | Comments Off on Nutrition Cafe

how do you become a reviewer for a journal?

somebody asked me recently how one gets to be a reviewer for a library-related journal. here’s how you can do it:

  • to be a reviewer you have to have a publishing track record. what topics in librarianship do you care most about?  start writing about them and show your writing to as many people as can stand to look at it. this informal review process does great things for the quality of your manuscripts and also makes others aware of what you care about.  people remember these things.
  • be an expert on a topic. it doesn’t matter what it is, but if you know a lot about x and have written about it, journal editors will think of you when they get a manuscript on that topic.
  • find journals you care about. if you always dogear articles in a particular journal to read or think about later, this is a good sign.  do you agree with the journal’s mission?  as a reviewer you will be charged to evaluate manuscripts with that mission in mind, so it should jive with what you think is important.
  • read up on who is on the editorial board for your favorite journals. do you know any of the members of the board? drop them a line and let them know you’d like to be considered as a reviewer, and specify in which areas you are competent.

the idea behind peer review is that your skill set or knowledge of a topic is broad enough that you can comment with ease on ideas broached in a manuscript.  it means that you keep up with literature in the area of your interest and will be able to discern high quality from low quality in this area.  the goal of the peer review process is to be able to further the body of literature in an area.

leave a comment if you’ve got other suggestions to share about how to position yourself to become a reviewer.

Posted in publishers, writing | 1 Comment

blogging gang signs

okay, so it took a year and a half for this to come to my attention: bloggers are dangerous.

you’ve probably seen me flash a sign for the west side, the area in LA in which i live. i see in this graphic that the sign is also used for wordpress. i use wordpress so i won’t quibble over who used the sign first. 🙂 west side

if mla has official conference bloggers next year i think you can expect to see this sign demonstrated in person:
blog sign

Posted in monkeys/bananas | 1 Comment

truthiness in images

the chronicle of higher education has an intriguing post in yesterday’s edition, about fraudulent images used in scientific publications. the images discussed in the article were altered in a way that made it look like the results of the research were different than the actual results, but the researcher commented that she was simply, “trying to present it even better.”

if a researcher does alter an image, those changes should be noted in the caption, a footnote, or in the methods section. it is easy to note that “the contrast in this image was increased to demonstrate more clearly the difference between a and b.” if you think of an image as data, a researcher should be able to understand that he/she should disclose all changes to images just as he would note any statistical weighting to data.

how do we go about altering images in a way that maintains their integrity? i started a draft of do’s/don’ts at this wiki: http://orgmonkey.wetpaint.com/page/images+as+evidence. will you check it out and make changes or add new things to think about? i’d like to be able to hand a copy of this to researchers when i meet with them to assist in image preparation for publications.

Posted in images, publishers, wiki, writing | Comments Off on truthiness in images

Nature’s social network

note to self

to examine: http://network.nature.com/

has anybody played with this yet?  leave a comment and tell me what you think.

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pubshub

PubsHub is a “strategic publication planning tool,” a database to help you choose to which medical journal or meeting to submit your manuscript or present your data.

i saw a demo of this in the exhibits hall at the medical library association meeting and enjoyed the clean, easy interface with a series of drop-down boxes from which you choose your criteria. rank medical journals by 50 fields of information, like impact factor, circulation, or amount of time (in days) from acceptance to publication.  they don’t yet have in the database whether or not you need to negotiate with the publisher to have your nih-funded manuscript made available, but the representative said they would be adding that information soon.  you can store searches and get email alerts (no rss?) of deadlines.  a free trial is available.

Posted in exhibits hall, MLA 2008, publishers | Comments Off on pubshub