I promised a photo of Bavarian merry-making and here it is courtesy of Thorsten Jochim.
The controversy over the Google heist posting has quietened and there are the signs now of some sensible debate emerging. This piece from Even Schnittman writing on the OUP Blog is an example. There's also rather a good piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung marred only by their describing me: 'von Statur einem Möbelpacker ähnlich...' - not quite sure what it means but I suspect the worst. One lesson I've learned from the affair is that increased visitor traffic (visits leapt several fold for a few days) doesn't necessarily translate into increased ad revenue. Dammit!
I know some of my readers are more interested in the ins and outs of the British independent book trade than significant events in the world of scientific information. I am also aware that I've blogged about things going on at Nature Publishing Group a lot recently. But I can't help it. They keep coming up with really interesting new projects and ideas. Here's the latest, Nature Precedings (no, it's not a spelling mistake) described here by Timo Hannay:
'Nature Precedings is a free online service that enables researchers rapidly to share, discuss, and cite their early findings.
Written scientific communication takes place mainly through journals, but the web provides new, complementary opportunities for more rapid, participative and informal approaches. Nature Precedings accepts contributions from biology, medicine (except clinical trials), chemistry and the earth sciences. Submissions are screened by a professional curation team for relevance and quality, and are usually posted online within hours. The service is free of charge to both authors and readers. It has been created in collaboration with an outstanding group of partner organisations: British Library, European Bioinformatics Institute, Science Commons, and Wellcome Trust. You can find out more at Nascent, Nature's own blog, and on O'Reilly Radar.'