Maxine's Connotea page

About me

My name is Maxine Clarke. I am Publishing Executive Editor of Nature. You can contact me at m DOT clarke AT nature DOT com. I am happy to respond to any general reader, author or reviewer queries of an editorial nature.

Links:
Nature's website
Nature's author information pages
NPG authors&referees website
Peer to Peer blog: for and about peer review
Nautilus: the blog for past and future authors of Nature Publishing Group journals
Ask the Editor forum at Nature Network
Good paper journal club at Nature Network
Citation in science group at Nature Network
Researchers and web 2.0 group at Nature Network
Tomorrow's Giants group at Nature Network
Weekly 'From the blogosphere' column in Nature
My Open ID

Ask the Editor forum at Nature Network

Hosted by the editors of Nature Network, the Ask the Editor group/forum is for scientists who want to learn more about getting their work published in Nature and the Nature journals and about careers in scientific editing straight from the editors of these journals, including me. Join the group and post your questions in the forum.

Good paper journal club at Nature Network

Group set up by Linda Cooper, Martin Fenner and Richard Grant. The purpose of this Good paper journal club at Nature Network is to promote good scientific writing. We do this by posting examples of well-written papers. Discussion of these papers is of course encouraged. Please join us there.

Citation in science group at Nature Network

Group set up by Allan Sudlow and colleagues. Following a debate on Citation in Science on 27 May 2008 at TalkScience (British Library), we invite you to continue the discussion in the Citation in science group at Nature Network. Some of the subjects being debated:
1. ‘Tools for the Job’: does use of a single citation search tool bias the results? Is there a call for the use of mutiple tools?
2. ‘Pick n’ Mix’: selective citation to support a particular argument/hypothesis. Are people only citing portions of an article and thereby deliberately ignoring conflicting evidence elsewhere within the same article?
3. ‘Don’t Quote Me on That’: Even when the “original” paper is cited it is often misquoted. Do those citing not always fully understand the meaning behind a paper? Is this form of mis-citation more a case of misinterpretation rather than misrepresentation?
4. ‘It’s all Just Greek to Me’: is there a citation bias against non-English language papers or papers from “non-English-speaking” countries?
5. ‘Return to Nature’: is there a preference for citing known/higher impact factor paper?
6. ‘Measure for Measure’: are citations and bibliometric measures in general an accurate reflection of research excellence?

Scientific researchers and web 2.0 group at Nature Network

So you use Nature Network, but what do you really think of the impact of Web 2.0 on research? Join the Researchers and web 2.0 group for online discussion of these and other related questions:
- Is Web 2.0 only being embraced within specific interest communities? What is the motivation for a busy researcher to get involved, even as a consumer? What do contributors get out of it?
- Web 2.0 harnesses the ‘power of the crowd’ but for many scientists attribution is key. Do Web 2.0 approaches which anonymise and collate lead to issues around attribution, validity and plagiarism?
- With a rapid growth in contributions of personal and professional information to networking sites, what are the privacy risks? Do current attitudes to consent and confidentiality apply in the blogosphere?
- Is Web 3.0 a semantic pipe-dream or a true vision for the future of the web? How do folksonomies become ontologies, and do they need to? Or is it all about the “data web”?
- Is the key to sustainability of Web2.0 resources through user engagement? Is it a case of evolution and growing a ‘long tail’ to survive?
Talk Science at the British Library in Sept 2008 debated some of these issues. A podcast of the introductory talk, by Timo Hannay of Nature Publishing Group, is available. The online conversation continues at Nature Network, so please join the group and contribute.

Tomorrow's Giants: a conference hosted by the Royal Society and Nature group at Nature Network

The Tomorrow's Giants conference is part of an exciting week of celebrations for the Royal Society’s 350th anniversary celebrations, including an extended Summer Science Exhibition, at The Southbank Centre, London. This Nature Network forum is an opportunity for you to contribute to the agenda by discussing the issues you feel will impact on the shape of science in the next 10-50 years.
The Tomorrow’s Giants one-day conference will be held in London on Thursday 1st July 2010, co-hosted by the Royal Society and Nature, bringing together scientists and policymakers to gather scientists’ visions of the next 50 years: what is required to enable academic achievement of the highest quality, putting funding issues to one side and focusing on the concepts and practicalities? What will science be like in 10 years’ time? In 50 years? What are the main goals and challenges? What will be the vision of the future for science in 2050?
In the lead up to the conference the Royal Society will be hosting regional meetings from May to September 2009, inviting scientists to share and exchange views on a range of issues including the impact of web 2.0 on how scientists share data, communication between industry/ services and academia, and issues affecting careers and research

From the blogosphere

A weekly column on the Authors page in Nature, highlighting nature.com blog posts of interest to scientists in their role as authors and peer-reviewers. The column is archived as a blog at Nature Network, where we welcome comments and suggestions for topics to cover.

Peer review debate

In June 2006, Nature published an online debate on peer review. Please click here to access the peer review debate, and add your comments to any of the articles at the Peer-to-Peer blog.

Accompanying the debate is a Connotea resource on peer review. Please visit this page for a list of links to articles about the topic. We encourage Connotea users to add their own links to useful articles on the topic, using the tag "peer review debate", to make the resource comprehensive.

My Connotea library

You are welcome to view my Connotea library by clicking on the link at the top of this page. My library is focused on scientific publishing issues with an emphasis on author services. But there are other science and web-technology links in there too; they are mostly focused on some aspect of scientific communication via publishing, whether in Nature and other journals or on the web. There are also links to some more general articles that I find interesting. Please feel free to add any of these links to your own library, and/or add your comments.

Author and referee website and blogs

In January 2007, Nature Publishing Group created an authors' and reviewers' website at authors&referees@npg . The site contains the Nature journals' editorial publication policies (including links to relevant editorials in the journals), and links to all NPG's author and referee services and benefits. There are feedback buttons on every page so that scientists, authors, reviewers and others can comment and ask questions about these policies and services. Selected feedback is published on our author blog, Nautilus, or our peer-review blog Peer to Peer. Please have a look at the site, and add the blogs to your rss reader. I post regularly on both blogs, and include NPG news relevant to the scientific community of authors, referees and readers, as well as more general information and discussion relevant to authorship, peer-review and publication. Everyone is welcome to join in the conversation.