Stupid PubMed Central Tricks

The new NIH public access policy mandating deposition of manuscripts describing work supported under NIH awards into the PubMed Central (PMC) repository takes effect this week. Predictably, the Open Access Nozdrul are spurring their porkers onward with great vigor.
I don’t have too much more to say about this at the moment, as I’ve previously mentioned that this NIH demand is relatively seamless from the current perspective of this user. Most of the journals to which I tend to submit papers are now featuring some sort of checkbox on submission that takes care of the whole thing. I’ve discussed how easy it is to drop one of your older manuscripts into the system in your spare 10 minutes drinking your coffee. Also, as someone who has library rights sufficient to cover most of my needs in accessing scientific papers, well, “access” isn’t front and center for me.
But I will take the opportunity to repost part of an observation I made in a prior post about a neat little feature PMC has included for us.

Ethical Considerations for the Scientist-Blogger

In a post Abel Pharmboy wrote giving some linklove to our old site on WordPress, he lamented:

However, NIH/NSF/other-big-agency grant-funded PhD researchers who spend most of their bandwidth talking about the business of conducting biomedical research are less frequently found as bloggers; DrugMonkey is one of the few out there.

It strikes me that beyond the obvious issues of time, disinterest and career worries there lies a morass of ethical implications that may pose a barrier. The raising of ethical questions is most certainly not to suggest that there is an ethical problem at hand. Certainly, blogger ethical situations are going to be as varied as the bloggers themselves. However it may be worth exploring some commonalities for the scientist blogger.

It Doesn't Hurt a Bit to Be "That Guy"

The irrepressible PhysioProf had a recent post pointing out, among other things, that women had motivation to blog pseudonymously in part because of a certain species of stalker-commenter. In the discussion I arrived back at a more traditional topic for women in science careers:

when Abel says:

I have learned so much from people like FSP, MsPhD, Zuska, et al., that we have a long way to go in rehabilitating or eliminating fascist, racist, sexist men.

and Dr. Jekyll says:

Bravo for standing up for women,

I’m starting to get a little WTF myself. Is it really so rare for men to vocally stand up for women? rare for them to ask “wtf? where are the women on this symposium slate? why aren’t we interviewing any women?”. really so rare for them to say “um, colleague-dude, that comment really wasn’t cool.”
is it really so rare?

Many women chimed in with “yes” in the comments, for the most part kindly leaving unspoken “you irredeemable doofus! although one did question my terrestrial attachment. Dr. Jekyll and/or Mrs. Hyde went so far as to take in up in a post.

It Doesn’t Hurt a Bit to Be “That Guy”

The irrepressible PhysioProf had a recent post pointing out, among other things, that women had motivation to blog pseudonymously in part because of a certain species of stalker-commenter. In the discussion I arrived back at a more traditional topic for women in science careers:

when Abel says:

I have learned so much from people like FSP, MsPhD, Zuska, et al., that we have a long way to go in rehabilitating or eliminating fascist, racist, sexist men.

and Dr. Jekyll says:

Bravo for standing up for women,

I’m starting to get a little WTF myself. Is it really so rare for men to vocally stand up for women? rare for them to ask “wtf? where are the women on this symposium slate? why aren’t we interviewing any women?”. really so rare for them to say “um, colleague-dude, that comment really wasn’t cool.”
is it really so rare?

Many women chimed in with “yes” in the comments, for the most part kindly leaving unspoken “you irredeemable doofus! although one did question my terrestrial attachment. Dr. Jekyll and/or Mrs. Hyde went so far as to take in up in a post.