Biology Library News

Human Genome Project 10th anniversary Seminar Series

Human Genome Project 10th anniversary Seminar Series from NHGRI, Genomics Landscape a Decade after the Human Genome Project. These will be on YouTube archive available after each event. The first seminar is already available online. More info from Open Helix Blog.

Search tips and science tools

• We have a lovely new interface for Statistical Abstract of the U.S. | Quick Start Guide from Proquest
• Many short tutorials for PubMed and other NCBI tools are available on the NCBI YouTube Channel. One of my favorites is the 3 minute tutorial Use MeSH to Build a Better PubMed Query.
• Translational Bioinformatics (PLOS Collection) | Elements of Bioinformatics, a periodic table of tools | Resources to speed the R learning curve | all from Bioinformatics@Becker blog.
• Also useful? Learn R with Twotorials (ProfHacker) | How to Download Bacterial Genomes Using the Entrez API | Poster in my Pocket (free app from Elsevier)
• History of science, technology and medicine is now available on EbscoHost. An added feature of this platform is that you can "Choose Databases" (such as America: History and Life, Historical Abstracts and/or Medline) to add and search several databases all at the same time.

NIH Public Access Policy Overviews

The NIH Public Access Policy requires investigators and scholars to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PMC upon acceptance of publication. All journal manuscripts applicable under the NIH Public Access Policy must demonstrate evidence of compliance in NIH applications and reports. As of Spring 2013, NIH will withhold grant money to enforce public-access policy [Nat Med. 2013 Jan;19(1):3. doi: 10.1038/nm0113-3]. Another change this spring is an enhancement to My NCBI to facilitate reporting of publications in paper progress reports; More info about My Bibliography Tool in My NCBI; Research News: TWO Important Upcoming Changes to NIH Grant Policies.

• Are you preparing a manuscript for publication?
• Are you familiar with journal policies for NIH-funded authors?
• Do you need a NIHMSID or a PMCID for an application or progress report?
• Do you know how to respond to a request from NIH asking for documentation of compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy for your publications cited in a progress report?

This presentation (offered twice) will provide an overview of the NIH Public Access Policy including the steps involved in complying with the policy and how to demonstrate compliance.
Option 1: Location:Holden Auditorium at the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center
Date and Time: Thursday February 14, 2013, Noon-1:00 pm
NO REGISTRATION required for Feb. 14th session.
Option 2: Location: Farrell Learning and Teaching Center, Room 214
Date and Time: Wednesday 20 March 2013, Noon-1:00 pm
TO REGISTER: There is no fee for this presentation. Please register via online form or email Cathy Sarli (sarlic@wustl.edu) to reserve a seat.
Presentations are open to all NIH-funded investigators/authors, grant managers or support staff from both WU campuses.
If you have questions or would like to arrange a customized presentation in the biology department, please contact Ruth Lewis.

Miscellaneous news and links for biofolk

- Please share with any recent postdocs who are without a position: http://www.elsevier.com/postdocfreeaccess

- Blackboard training sessions for faculty and staff are planned several times in December and January. Registration is required so check your calendars now if you'd like to begin or improve your use of Blackboard.

- John Dupuis' blog Confessions of a Science Librarian is beginning the annual review of "best science books" lists. There will be many more posts if this is like previous years. These are available at http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/category/best-science-books-2012/. These are a great source for gifts or books to add to your future reading list.

- Thanks in Advance For Sharing Your Data - this blog post includes a list of journals that currently require data sharing. Although this is a fairly short list, it surprised me that so many important biology journals are included.

- Videos, slides and handouts are now available from the NCBI Discovery Workshop held at Becker Library in October, 2012. You may find some of these useful for your own teaching and learning about Sequences, Genomes and Maps; Proteins, Domains and Structures; NCBI BLAST Services;Human Variation and Disease Genes.

- PeerJ will begin accepting manuscripts on Dec. 3rd. PeerJ has an unusual business model involving a $99 basic membership for lifetime open access publishing charges and peer review for scientific and technical soundness followed by post-publication open peer review to judge impact and importance. | Call for papers on PeerJ blog. | PeerJ: An Open-Access Experiment, by Peter Binfield in Educause Review.

- As Open Access Explodes, How to Tell the Good From the Bad and the Ugly?, by Martin Enserink. Science 23 November 2012: Vol. 338 no. 6110 p. 1018 DOI: 10.1126/science.338.6110.1018

Miscellaneous links which might interest you?

-- You may now check out Mac laptop chargers at Olin Library! More info.

-- Video tip of the week: OneZoom viewer for large phylogenetic trees


-- The Future of Energy, Episode #1 of Hold that Thought podcast series. Speakers include Robert Blankenship, Ursula Goodenough and Himadri Pakrasi. About 1 hour long.

-- ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) has been in the news a lot this month; ORCID has launched. What’s next?. Becker Medical Library has a helpful guide on Establishing Your Author Name; please look there for more information about ORCID, Scopus Author Identifier and ResearcherID. I'd love to hear from you about your experiences with these tools. I will try to have this information on our site soon, probably on the Research Impact and Evaluation pages.

-- Upcoming classes: Topics include Twitter, Research management series featuring Zotero, Mendeley, Ipad productivity, Evernote. For more information see http://wulibraries.doattend.com/.

Measuring the impact of research

Altmetric for Scopus reports appear on the right side of entries in the Scopus database. It is interesting to look up some of the ENCODE articles in Scopus and click on the Altmetric report, because they have had many blog, facebook, twitter and other social media mentions. Altmetric for Scopus report for ENCODE Project Writes Eulogy for Junk DNA (Science) | Altmetric for Scopus report for An integrated encyclopedia of DNA elements in the human genome (Nature).

Another impact measure, the future h-index: Future impact: Predicting scientific success Nature 489, 201–202 (13 September 2012) doi:10.1038/489201a Links to more discussions about the "future h-index", including Chronicle of Higher Education, The Scientist, etc. You can try the formula for yourself especially if you work in neurosciences research.

Two articles from Research Trends, Sept. 2012:
1. Big Data: Science Metrics and the black box of Science Policy "...Dashboards of metrics that don’t link back to scientists are like dashboards missing the link of cables to the engine. They do not provide policy makers with information on how or why funding changed the way in which scientists created and transmitted knowledge...."
2. The use of Big Datasets in bibliometric research

ENCODE Project in the news

ENCODE has been much in the news this month. It is developing into an interesting case in science journalism; here's a sampling:
-- An integrated encyclopedia of DNA elements in the human genome: The ENCODE Project Consortium Nature 489, 57–74 (06 September 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11247
-- ENCODE Project Writes Eulogy for Junk DNA Science 7 September 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6099 pp. 1159-1161 DOI: 10.1126/science.337.6099.1159
-- Human genomics comes of age: ENCODE, Open Access and BioMed Central
-- Junky DNA, junky PR (Scientific American blog)
-- Most of what you read was wrong: how press releases rewrote scientific history Repeating myths may make good stories, but it breeds confusion. See the ENCODE news, from Ars Technica.

-- Tutorials also available from OpenHelix: How to access the ENCODE data in the UCSC Genome Browser [about 60 minutes]

Should articles be retracted when conclusions turn out to be wrong?

There are a growing number of interesting comments at both the editorial in PLoS blog, The role of retractions in correcting the scientific literature and the post in Retraction Watch, "If a paper's major conclusions are shown to be wrong we will retract the paper": PLoS.

Tips, Notes, News

-- If you are still using Internet Explorer 7, it is time to upgrade. PubMed will not work with IE7 after January 1, 2013.
-- Interesting reading: Whither science publishing?, The Scientist, August 2012. Also Opinion: OA Coming of Age: Open-access journals are reaching the same quality levels as their subscription counterparts, By David Solomon and Bo-Christer Björk. This post refers to the authors' recent article: Open access versus subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact (BMC Medicine 2012, 10:73 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-73); it also refers to Predatory Publishing from August The Scientist.
-- A Push Grows Abroad for Open Access to Publicly Financed Research, by Jennifer Howard. Chronicle of Higher Education Technology News, August 13, 2012.
-- The annual Nucleic Acids Research Web Server Issue came out in July. It is open access.
-- "PMC (formerly known as PubMed Central) has shortened its name in order to avoid confusion with PubMed…." Frankly I think they will just create more confusion! More info.
-- Three anthropology researchers, who work in Archaeology, Physical Anthropology, and Sociocultural Anthropology, will be discussing their research methods in Olin Library, room 142, Tuesday, October 30, 3:30-5 pm. We are calling this Anthropology Research 101. We expect several librarians and members of the anthropology dept.; biofolk are welcome to attend!

Ethnographic Video Online trial

We have trial access to Ethnographic Video Online; this resource currently includes 803 anthropological videos. Some browsable subjects are Genetics, Environment, Biological Anthropology, Ethnobotany, Primates, and much more. We do not yet offer off-campus access to WU users. If you have comments about this resource, please send them to Ruth Lewis. We hope to have full access for all WU users soon.