I found a great quote and analogy from an essay published in Current Biology by Peter Lawrence titled The mismeasurement of science. This essay takes a look at how science is measured and examines the use of impact factors and other metrics that measure scientific progress for individual scientists, academic departments and institutions. The quote [...]
Elements of this post are taken from my article “PLoS ONE Publishes First Taxonomic Paper” on The Other 95% on May 28, 2008. I’ve reposted it here as I am collecting my thoughts about open access publishing. ———————————————————- Why should one support open access publishing of taxonomic papers? Visibility is important to the field of [...]
This article was originally published February 20, 2008 at The Other 95%, where a good comment thread is also archived. I am reposting because I plan on discussing open access and electronic publishing in taxonomy more and feel this article sets the mood for my future thoughts. I recently posted an update on state of [...]

In May of 2008 I enthusiastically lauded PLoS ONE for publishing their first open access paper that described some new species of ants. It has been a year and half since then, have there been other taxonomists taking to this new concept of a completely online, open access forum for publishing new species? Currently, only [...]
An interesting news piece came out today in the most recent issue of Science. Elizabeth Pennisi reports that systematists are up in arms over pending patents on methods that have been in place for dozens of years. Such as a novel “… way to use biological data that has been organized according to evolutionary relatedness. [...]