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[3 Jan 2017 | One Comment | ]

This post is aiming to get down some thoughts around how the superset of evolutionary models can be framed. It’s almost certainly work that has been done somewhere before but I’m struggling to find it so it seemed useful to lay out what I’m looking for. 
Evolutionary models are extraordinarily powerful, in part because they are extremely flexible. At their worst they are tautologies – the criticism of “survival of the fittest” as an idea is well founded even if it’s description of Darwinism is not – but at their best …

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[4 Dec 2016 | Comments Off on Telling a story… | ]

This is the first pass at an introductory chapter for a book I’ve had in my head to work on for a long time. The idea is that it relates some of personal history shifting from my grounding science towards the humanities, while interleaving this with a survey of the theoretical work that develops those different perspectives. This is just a first draft written on a Sunday afternoon. Comments, as always, welcome.
“As a patient I struggle to relate to survival curves…”
This is a book about narratives, perspectives, and knowledge. It’s …

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[20 Nov 2016 | Comments Off on Darkness/Dream | ]

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went— and came, and brought no day
I have a dream…
I have a dream that one day this Nation will rise up
And live out the true meaning of the creed,
“We hold these truths to be self evident,
That all men are created equal”
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all …

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[15 Nov 2016 | Comments Off on First steps… | ]

Amongst all the hot takes, the disbelief and the angst the question many of us are asking is what to actually do. I don’t have answers to that question, or rather I have lots of answers and no clarity as to which to choose. An inventory of resources reveals this blog, a substantial, if not massive, social media following on Twitter and some degree of influence associated with that. And money and the network of influence that goes with being moderately affluent and middle class. Not the 1% but definitely …

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[13 Nov 2016 | 2 Comments | ]

Like many people over the past week, and months, I’ve had some cause to reflect on what it is I do, and why. A lot of that circles around an issue that’s been troubling me for a while, how do you simultaneously acknowledge a personal and historical failure to act and credibly and coherently move to change that. How can I know when to challenge and when to shut up and listen – because its not always immediately obvious. There is perhaps a greater risk of challenging when it is …

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[8 Nov 2016 | 4 Comments | ]

Following one of “those” conversations on twitter, the ones where the 140 character limit just isn’t enough it seemed worth writing up a quick post. It’s that or follow the US election after all…
Richard Sever of Cold Spring Harbour Press posed the following question on:

Regardless of access, should there be a conversation about whether CC BY is the most appropriate license for images of patients? https://t.co/V3XpQ9jZSp
— Richard Sever (@cshperspectives) November 8, 2016

…to which my answer was:

@cshperspectives No, if an image shouldn't be distributed we need more granular upstream access controls and …

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[7 Oct 2016 | 3 Comments | ]

This a set of notes for my talk at Duke University this week. It draws on the Political Economy of Publishing series as well as other work I’ve been involved with by Jason Potts at RMIT amongst others. The title of the talk is “Sustainable Futures for Research Communication” and you can find the abstract at the Duke event page.
The video is now available along with the slides. The lecture capture didn’t get such a clear view of the slides so you may want to bring both up and play along.
Sustainability …

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[30 Sep 2016 | 2 Comments | ]
Speculation: Sociality and “soundness”. Is this the connection across disciplines?

A couple of ideas have been rumbling along in the background for me for a while. Reproducibility and what it actually means or should mean has been the issue du jour for a while. As we revised the Excellence manuscript in response to comments and review reports, we also needed to dig a bit deeper into what it was that distinguishes the qualities of the concept of “soundness” from “excellence”. Are they both merely empty and local terms or is there something different about “proper scholarly practice” that we can use to …

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[22 Sep 2016 | Comments Off on FAIR enough? FAIR for one? FAIR for all! | ]
FAIR enough? FAIR for one? FAIR for all!

The development of the acronym “FAIR” to describe open data was a stroke of genius. Standing for “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable” it describes four attributes of datasets that are aspirations to achieve machine readability and re-use for an open data world. The short hand description provided by four attributes as well as a familiar and friendly word have led to its adoption as a touchstone for funders and policy groups including the G20 Hangzhao Concensus, the Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science, the NIH Data Commons and the European Open …

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[2 Aug 2016 | Comments Off on Submission to the European Commission Expert Group on Altmetrics | ]

As part of the broader Open Science agenda of the European Commission an expert group on “altmetrics” has been formed. This group has a remit to consider how indicators of research performance can be used effectively to enhance the strategic goals of the commission and the risks and opportunities that new forms of data pose to the research enterprise. This is my personal submission. 
Next Generation Altmetrics
Submission by Cameron Neylon, Professor of Research Communications, Curtin University
1. Introduction
The European Commission has an ambitious program for Open Science as part of three aspirations, …