The Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) is proud to announce the
release of the latest version of its bibliography, PYRN-Bib. PYRN-Bib is
a synthesizing international bibliographical database aiming at
collecting and distributing information on all theses submitted for
earning a scientific degree in permafrost-related research.



It can be reached at:

http://pyrn.ways.org/resources/pyrn-bib-permafrost-bibliography



PYRN-Bib currently hosts 916 entries and is offered in different file
formats: tagged Endnote library, XML, BibTex, PDF.

PYRN-Bib is hosted by the Permafrost Young Researchers Network
(http://pyrn.ways.org), an international network of early career
students and young scientists in permafrost related research with
currently 581 members (2008-10-27). PYRN-Bib is also published under the
patronage of the International Permafrost Association (IPA,
http://www.ipa-permafrost.org).

PYRN-Bib is a comprehensive database that includes all degree-earning
theses (e.g. Diploma, Ph.D., Master, etc.), coming from any country and
any scientific field, under the single condition that the thesis is
strongly related to research on permafrost and/or periglacial processes.

It attempts at referencing buried sources of information including
theses published in languages other than English. It is completely open
and can be searched and exported online (e.g. as Endnote format)

The PYRN-Bib database is growing rapidly and is accepting new entries
related to permafrost research. You can submit new entries at:
http://pyrn.ways.org/node/add/biblio or simply by contacting Guido
Grosse (ggrosse@gi.alaska.edu). Large amounts of citation information
(in any database or non-database format) can be submitted at once by
contacting us before hand. Any submission (small or large) is welcome.

You can reference the bibliography it using the following information:



Grosse, G., Lantuit, H.(2008). PYRN-Bib 3.2: The Permafrost Young
Researchers Network Bibliography of Permafrost-Related Theses,
Permafrost Young Researchers Network, 3.2, 72 pp.
http://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.31101



More information on PYRN-Bib and the methods and criteria used to
compile the references can be found in the companion paper:
http://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.31101



Guido Grosse, Hugues Lantuit

This post is meant as a contribution to Open Access Day (OA day) which strives to raise awareness - amongst researchers, research funders, academic publishers, students, politicians and the public - of the importance of Open Access (to literature containing peer-reviewed results of scientific investigations, that is) for our global society.

One way to do this is to have people like you blog in synchronization, i.e. on four questions during OA day. To give you some inspiration on the topic, you may wish to take a look at the first such synch-blogging entry, which came from Neil Saunders, based at the University of Queensland, Australia.

I will follow Neil's formatting to address the four questions:

1. Why does Open Access matter to you?

OA, for me, marks a turning point within the scientific cycle, i.e. the iterative process which leads (if sufficiently funded) from a research question or idea to a hypothesis or new method that can be tested and, ultimately, to the results of those tests which then have to be communicated. This communication step is crucial, as it adds to our global knowledge foundation (often described, following Newton, as "the shoulders of giants") for new research questions or ideas that may eventually lead to things like "innovation", "insight" and "progress". If innovators-to-be, however, do not have access to the findings of their forebears (which may indeed be contemporaries), they will have to spend a lot of their time and resources by (re)inventing some aspects of the giants' shoulders before starting to work on their innovations in the first place. Open Access is a movement to lift those access barriers, and it is not only useful to researchers but it can also, for instance, help patients and their relatives to gather first-hand expert information on their specific health conditions, and it can help to inform public debates about research data with scientific implications. The full power of Open Access, however, can only be harvested if all other steps  within the scientific cycle (including, e.g., notebook keeping) also become increasingly open, a goal with multiple names (of which Open Science is my favourite). This would not only reduce the considerable time lag between the obtainment of some results and their application in other circumstances but also foster the development of new citation metrics that would allow to more adequately evaluate the research accomplishments of young scientists.


2. How did you first become aware of it?

I had been aware of the barriers since I started reading scientific papers in the mid-1990s, as I rarely had access to much of the literature cited therein, no matter what library I went to (and I went to more than a dozen regularly at that time). I got a glimpse of a possible solution when checking out the freely available content at BioMed Central on a weekly basis some years later but this again did not cover much of my core areas of interest (Evolutionary Biophysics), nor did arxiv.org that I had discovered around the same time. So it took the Budapest Open Access Initiative to make me aware of the progress that had already been achieved or was underway by 2001, and I signed it shortly after starting to work on my PhD thesis.


3. Why should scientific and medical research be an open-access resource for the world?

Knowledge grows when shared. And what else is the goal of research if not growing knowledge on a global scale? Besides, I find it non-sustainable to use the limited resources that we have to constantly re-invent the wheel for reasons external to the research process.


4. What do you do to support Open Access, and what can others do?

As an author, I strive to publish OA (i.e. gold) but independent of whether this is possible or not, I self-archive my papers (i.e. green OA). I am neither a journal editor nor part of a publishing house but I occasionally use my blog to cover OA and related topics, particularly Open Education, and Open Science as a whole, and I link to others who do this more intensively. Finally, I am playing around with platforms and technologies that may facilitate the transition to a more open scientific cycle, keeping a special eye on what these upcoming changes might mean to young scientists, e.g. in terms of theses and online lectures rather than papers. Others can, of course, familiarize themselves with the issue of effectively (in both time and resources) communicating (peer-reviewed) research results via the channels that are technically possible, they can experiment with the tools at hand to communicate their thoughts, and they can educate even more others about these matters in more traditional ways. In fact, I think they should.

SciDev, always a good source of information on science and development, recently posted a blog entry "How to set up a science blog" which may be of interest here, too, even though, at WAYS, you do not have to set up your own blog (it's all been done already, and you can start typing write away). The SciDev post also offers advice on what to blog and how, how often and how to generate discussion. Enjoy and feel free to use your WAYS blog for your first steps in science blogging!

As for blogging in the developing world, they mention the following: "Jonathan Gosier, a software developer living in Kampala, Uganda, describes blogging from a developing country as "a lesson in patience, endurance and ingenuity". On his blog on Apprifca he recommends ten applications that can ease the challenges of dealing with power cuts, unstable Internet connections and potential data loss."

Like much of the contents at SciDev, this post is also available in Chinese: 如何建立科学博客 .

It does not matter whether you have just started working on your PhD, finished it recently or decades ago - the main requirements are that you post a record of you conveying some aspects of your PhD thesis by dancing. For details, see here .

WAYS is a pretty interactive website (i.e. you can both consume and generate contents in various medias, a concept commonly referred to as Web 2.0) but if you are not sure what all these new tools can do for you as a scientist, you may wish to take a look at the Small Worlds project hosted at the University of Leicester.

Dear WAYS members, the following workshop may be of itnerest to you.
IMPETUS 2008: Techniques in Polar Ocean Observation and Monitoring
St. Petersburg, Russia
19-22 November, 2008
For those who already applied: if you did not receive an email confirming your registration, please contact: impetus2008@ifm-geomar.de
In November 2008, the Otto-Schmidt Laboratory for Polar and Marine Research in Saint-Petersburg (OSL), located at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), the Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) and the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) are organizing a training workshop on monitoring techniques in polar ocean and sea-ice observation in St. Petersburg. The workshop is funded by the IMPETUS-project of the German Ministry of Education and Research, the OSL, and the AARI. It is endorsed by the Arctic Ocean Science Board (AOSB).
There are AT LEAST TEN FULL FELLOWSHIPS for young and early career researchers to participate in the workshop!
The workshop will provide early career scientists with know-how and hand-on skills in the fields of ecology, oceanography, meteorology, geology, sea-ice, submarine permafrost, and engineering. It aims to improve existing and build up new collaborations and networks along the continuum of senior to early career scientists. It offers the opportunity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of modern monitoring techniques and methods of data transmission. It is intended to install new interdisciplinary monitoring projects and methods across national boundaries.
Senior scientists will give lectures on topics that are usually not convened by traditional science conferences. They will focus on practical issues, methods and techniques associated with modern research and future forecasting needs. Early career scientists will present and discuss their research in a poster session. New approaches to current and future challenges will be presented through panels and open forums.
The workshop will be held at the Otto-Schmidt Laboratory at the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg from November 19-22, 2008.
Funding will be available through the IMPETUS program itself (see: http://www.otto-schmidt-laboratory.de/?Events:IMPETUS_2008:Regis...) and through the AOSB Fund “New Research Generation” (see: http://www.aosb.org/programs.html). The US Arctic Research Commission has providing funding for US young researchers interested in Arctic Policy Issues and the Betty and Gordon Moore Foundation have also agreed to sponsor several US young researchers interested in Polar Marine Microbiology.
The application deadline is Tuesday, 30 September 2008.
For further information, please go to:
http://www.otto-schmidt-laboratory.de/?Events:IMPETUS_2008
Or contact:
Carolyn Wegner
Email: impetus2008@ifm-geomar.de

The German network of PhD candidates and Postdocs, Thesis, publishes (in German) a quarterly journal, THESE, on doctoral and postdoctoral matters, mainly in Germany. For the autumn 2008 issue, I conducted an interview with philosopher Larry Sanger whose postdoctoral activities on the organization of knowledge in projects like Wikipedia, Citizendium and WatchKnow, will certainly be of interest to knowledge workers beyond Germany, and thus an advance online version of the interview is given here.

Why did you do your PhD, what does this have to do with your current activities, would you do it again?

I did my Ph.D. because I have wanted to earn a living as a philosopher since I was about 17 years old. Until I finished my M.A. I thought I would become a philosophy professor; then I became disillusioned with academia in a way that I imagine is pretty typical. I decided to finish my Ph.D. simply because I was so close to doing so, and just in case I changed my mind.

Having gone through the entire academic credentialing process has helped my career and current activities in many ways. It has acquainted me with the nature and justification of editorial and academic standards, and that has proven to be invaluable in leading reference work projects. I think having specialized in philosophy and in epistemology in particular, as well as in philosophy of law, also has helped me to articulate and defend the particular approach I have to collaborative knowledge production. Of course, the mere degree itself has opened doors and made me seem more credible to some of the people I've been trying to organize.

I would certainly do it again. But I might also have taken a few years off and gotten a B.A. or M.S. in Computer Science as well.

Why should PhD candidates and PhD holders contribute to Citizendium, as opposed to other online encyclopedic projects (Wikipedias, Knol, Encyclopedia of Earth, Scholarpedia, Larousse etc)?

There are many potential reasons why an academic might want to contribute to the Citizendium. I believe most do so because they find its unique mission compelling. What do I mean by that? It is the only project in existence with its configuration of qualities. On the one hand, it is a general, open content encyclopedia, fully collaborative, and open to public contribution. On the other hand, we make a general oversight role for experts, and we require real names. This unique combination of policies appeals to those who understand and appreciate the benefits and potential of Wikipedia, but who also understand the drawbacks of Wikipedia's particular system.

In short, the Citizendium may be, currently, the world's best hope for summing up knowledge both freely and credibly in one place. Other projects, such as Knol, Encyclopedia of Earth, and so forth, all have their good points, but they also all have a variety of drawbacks. Perhaps the largest drawback of the other academic-led projects is that very few of them are robustly collaborative. While I can't take the time here to explain my arguments for this, I think that collaboratively produced encyclopedia articles can be far superior to what is produced by individuals. So, while time will tell, I think the Citizendium holds the greatest promise; insofar as others agree with me, they naturally want to be part of something that is so world-changing and so important to spreading knowledge of their fields.

What about non-English sections? And would Citizendium be affected by the recently revised peer review policy at the German Wikipedia?

I'm not able to speak to the revised peer review policy at the German Wikipedia. My understanding is that they are not really engaging in peer review, but making sure that there is not abuse in revisions made by the newest contributors. Simply checking that edits are not vandalism addresses a different problem. It is obviously very far from anything like robust expert involvement or credible peer review.

We do hope to expand into other languages, including German, but it is more than a big enough challenge to get the English Citizendium off the ground very well at this time. The real difficulty will be to find people who will lead the new projects, in other languages, on a full-time basis. We might end up simply announcing a sort of rough franchise of the idea of the Citizendium.

What are the long-term perspectives of integrating encyclopedic projects (which generally operate a "no original research" policy) with scholarly wikis, e.g. of the OpenWetWare type?

I have given that quite a bit of thought, and for a long time I thought that it would be both possible and desirable to pool forces, somehow. Having tried to start the Citizendium as a fork of Wikipedia, however, has given me insight into the special difficulties of incompatible editorial policies and very different communities, or editorial processes. The most profound discovery I think I have made is that content deeply encodes editorial policy, and for that reason it is extremely difficult if not impossible to merge projects that have very different or incompatible editorial policies. But even small differences in editorial policies can have huge effects. So my hopes are not high for usefully combining content projects online, generally. One has only to look at answers.com and other search and reference aggregators, and one gets a sense of what the problem is.

We are, of course, open to people porting content from dormant content projects, but, as you can well imagine, we are not really interested in changing our own editorial policies to make a wholesale merger happen. So any proposal we (or others) might make about a content merger would simply be an invitation to close down their shop and adapt their content to our system. Few if any people will be able to take such an invitation seriously, at least not until we are more credible.

What seems more possible is that content sources might populate Citizendium subpages--pages where you can find different kinds of reference information about a topic.

Citizendium has also launched an educational initiative, Eduzendium. Considering that young researchers near the completion of their PhD are often involved, in overlapping or adjacent periods, with both the student and the teaching side of coursework, is there something special that they might gain from or offer to this project?

Eduzendium has already been successfully demonstrated to be a very innovative, interesting assignment for university students. The task of crafting an excellent, broad introduction to a topic might be easy and boring to the instructor, but to students--especially advanced students—it presents exactly the sort of challenge from which they can learn most. In addition, students whose work is displayed publicly tend to do their best; and they are also sometimes helped by Citizendium authors and editors. You might have heard of instructors assigning work on Wikipedia for college credit. Eduzendium is similar, but we have many, many more topics that are completely open; and our community is far better behaved. In some ways it is a superb venue for public, collaborative writing by advanced students.

Intructors use Eduzendium in a few different ways. For example, you can assign students specific topics, or you can assign groups (or the whole class) work on a topic. It is quite adaptable and I would strongly encourage your readers to give it a try! You will benefit, and by giving free content to the whole world, many others will benefit along with you.

A good occasion for that would be our Write-a-thons on the first Wednesday of each month or the Workgroup Weeks, starting with Biology Week from September 22-28.

(by Daniel Mietchen and Supten Sarbadhikari)

Introduction
Scientific research is the systematic dwelling at the frontiers of knowledge. Since these are scattered in space and time, successful dwellers require reliable reference works that assemble existing knowledge. Diderot and d'Alembert created their "Encyclopédie" to serve this purpose [1], and over the two and a half centuries since, many other encyclopedias have been produced following their scheme: Written by scholars, they charged users for access to the information they provided at update intervals on the scale of years. This resulted in credibility, the core currency of reference works, but (by today's standards) in limited dissemination and slow reactions to new knowledge. Web-based wikis, spearheaded by the Wikipedias, have extended knowledge accumulation to fields far beyond any traditional notions of expertise, provide their information at no cost to the user, and invite anybody to contribute (even anonymously) on a voluntary basis. This makes them popular and updateable on scales way below years but vulnerable to vandalism, thereby precluding credibility. Due to such problems, wikis had a slow start into the academic world but expert-only wikis like Scholarpedia [2] or the Encyclopedia of Earth [3] are gaining ground, and with the continued growth, diversification and global availability of the Internet, knowledge and the structuring thereof are becoming ever more dynamic and participatory [4]. Some key biology databases and communities are going wiki [5][6][7][8][9], as did OpenWetWare [10] - a place where lab notebooks are being kept in public. Besides, collaborative learning by structuring knowledge is a good preparation for later collaborative knowledge production in research teams. Collaborative, peer-to-peer learning principles thus develop in parallel and lead to more student-centred learning environments [11].

Citizendium (CZ)
Citizendium [12][13] is a web-based educational and reference platform that seeks to combine expert knowledge with public participation in a way that harvests the strengths of both worlds and avoids the major pitfalls of unilateral approaches. It allows anybody to contribute under their real names, provides all of its contents for free, and hosts two basic flavours of articles: As in Wikipedia [14], most content pages can be edited by any user but the information they contain will not be considered reliable. Credibility is lent to an article in a very traditional way, i.e. by means of approval by experts ("editors") upon fulfillment of a set of quality criteria like factual accuracy, balanced arguments, and readability by non-specialists. The approved articles then serve as a reliable introduction to a topic (much like in paper encyclopedias, just more up-to-date), and all the non-approved versions ("drafts") as an educational playground, with stubs actually being encouraged in the hope that they attract other contributors that improve them. Approved versions cannot be edited but work on an approved article can continue in the draft version which may eventually enter the approval process again.

This two-step (and potentially cyclic) approach is conceptually similar to Feynman’s thermal ratchet [15], the principle behind molecular motors [16][17]: Whereas Brownian motion can drive the paddle wheel randomly, the ratchet's movement will only follow if the pawl permits. If random motion can be translated into directed motion by means of appropriately structured molecular motors, the notion that reference works for human knowledge can be structured in a way that takes into account contributions by experts and the educated public may indeed be perceived as straightforward: given the incentive of presenting one's knowledge on a platform that regularly attracts putative employers or academic supervisors, the input provided by most registered users can be expected to average well above thermal noise, thereby facilitating the role of the pawl.

At CZ, the pawl's role (which requires energy) is being played by said editors - people whose life's work is to know things and who are willing to share the knowledge they have acquired during long years of dedication to their field. Consequently, CZ contributors are given credence for their work: The wiki allows to track individual contributions in a much more detailed way than any non-wiki system currently used in scholarly communication. This transparency of contributions to the structuring and expansion of global knowledge may well provide a fertile ground for the careers of knowledge workers and workers-to-be.

Education at CZ
Taking these educational considerations into practice, Citizendium, in collaboration with teachers and lecturers, has launched Eduzendium [18], a project that allows students to write their course assignments online on the Citizendium. Students work for course credits, and their teachers grade the finished work based on the quality of the article drafts produced from each student's input. But by writing their assignments under this scheme, students not only get to earn grade credits, they can see their work online and add to the global store of knowledge. By collaborating with the rapidly growing Citizendium community of expert and non-expert authors, they stand good chances that their essays eventually develop into a lasting encyclopedic article. Finally, perhaps best of all, students get to learn in a highly collaborative real-time way, and rumours have it that they might actually have fun doing so. Not surprisingly, educators who opted for Eduzendium noticed a higher degree of enthusiasm amongst their students. The educational potential of CZ is enhanced by the use of subpages which provide for an easy integration with other free educational materials like videos, e.g. the non-profit, K-12 educational video contest WatchKnow [19] or, at undergraduate level, the non-profit world lecture project (wlp)° [20].

Scholarly knowledge at CZ
CZ covers many fields, both academic and beyond, which are organized in workgroups whose main responsibility is to identifiy a set of core articles around which the field’s knowledge is structured, and to oversee the approval process (editorship in the sense discussed above is defined in terms of these workgroups).

As in traditional encyclopedias and Wikipedia, original research will not be allowed in the main namespace of CZ. Discussions are afloat for including original research into the subpages (e.g. as „signed articles“, similar to contributions to Scholarpedia) or other namespaces. Ways to take academic credit for contributions to CZ are also being discussed [21], whereas bot assistance for fact picking (as in [7]) can be made available on a case-by-case basis to facilitate data-intensive contributions.

Cross-disciplinary links are achieved in a variety of ways: First, several workgroups can collaborate on individual articles. Second, each article features a „related articles“ subpage where parent topics, subtopics and related topics are linked independent of their respective workgroups. Third, a coherent disambiguation strategy avoids page name disputes for articles on topics associated with different meanings in different fields, while allowing for a synopsis of what the different uses may have in common. Fourth, Citizendium organizes monthly Write-a-thons on broad topics to which anybody can contribute. Fifth, every user can nominate drafts as „Article of the Week“ or „New Draft of the Week“, and the winning entries are featured on the Welcome page, from where they usually receive lots of edits from specialists and non-specialists alike. Finally, as is typical for wikis, all contributions are immediately visible by anyone, and so the potential of frequent visits to the „recent changes“ page to initiate cross-disciplinary interactions should not be underestimated.

Activities in the biomedical fields have been especially visible: Biology is second to history in terms of number of articles (followed by health sciences), second to computers in terms of number of authors (followed by history) and fourth (after computers, engineering and health sciences) in number of editors (for details, see the CZ statistics [22].

"Biology" was the first article to be approved in Citizendium (on December 15, 2006, half a year after the launch of the project) [23]. The article Biology makes good use of subpages for related articles, bibliography, external links, gallery, videos and signed articles. This article's history also highlights how experts and non-experts work shoulder on shoulder, and that may be inspirational for others to join the bandwagon. A good opportunity for that will be "Biology Week" [24]- the first of a whole series of topic-dedicated weeks that will initially be held once a month (watch out for Health Sciences Week, Food Science Week, Agriculture Week and Anthropology Week).

How you can get involved
"Biology Week" is scheduled to be held during September 22 to September 28, 2008. For all biologists, this is a chance to start sharing their expertise by creating and improving biology articles, or to satisfy their curiosity by browsing (and contributing to) articles on other subjects. Others can lend their phrasing or illustration skills to make articles more attractive to non-specialist readers. Students, as explained above, can even get credits for that, and all the interested public can participate - it is an open wiki, after all.

References
1. Diderot, D.; D'Alembert, J. (1751). Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Encyclopedia or systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts and crafts). Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand. Online at http://artfl.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic31/getobject.pl?c.36....
2. Main Page – Scholarpedia, http://www.scholarpedia.org/ . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
3. Main Page - Encyclopedia of Earth, http://www.eoearth.org/ . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
4. Butler, D. (2005). "Science in the web age: joint efforts". Nature 438 (7068): 548-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/438548a.
5. Giles, J. (2007). "Key biology databases go wiki". Nature 445 (7129): 691. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/445691a.
6. Mons, B.; Ashburner, M.; Chichester, C.; Van Mulligen, E.; Weeber, M.; Den Dunnen, J.; Van Ommen, G.J.; Musen, M.; Cockerill, M.; Hermjakob, H.; Others, (2008). "Calling on a million minds for community annotation in WikiProteins". Genome Biology 9 (5): R89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/gb-2008-9-5-r89.
7. Huss III, J.W.; Orozco, C.; Goodale, J.; Wu, C.; Batalov, S.; Vickers, T.J.; Valafar, F.; Su, A.I. (2008). "A Gene Wiki for Community Annotation of Gene Function". PLoS Biology 6 (7): e175. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060175.
8. Pico, A.R.; Kelder, T.; Iersel, M.; Hanspers, K.; Conklin, B.; Evelo, C. (2008). "WikiPathways: Pathway Editing for the People". PLoS Biology 6 (7): e184. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060184.
9. Biology-Online Dictionary, http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Main_Page . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
10. Main Page – OpenWetWare, http://openwetware.org/wiki/Main_Page . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
11. Boulos, M.N.; Maramba, I.; Wheeler, S. (2006). "Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education". BMC Medical Education 6 (41): 1472-6920. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6920-6-41.
12. Welcome to Citizendium - encyclopedia article – Citizendium, http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Citizendium . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
13. Giles, J. (2006). "Wikipedia rival calls in the experts". Nature 443 (7111): 493. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/443493a.
14. Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedi... . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
15. Feynman, R.P.; Leighton, R.B.; Sands, M. (1963). The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1. Addison Wesley, Reading MA.
16. Oster, G. (2002). "Brownian ratchets: Darwin's motors". Nature 417 (6884): 25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/417025a.
17. Ait-Haddou, R.; Herzog, W. (2003). "Brownian ratchet models of molecular motors". Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics 38 (2): 191-213. http://dx.doi.org/10.1385/CBB:38:2:191.
18. Eduzendium - the collaborative learning environment, http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Eduzendium . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
19. WatchKnow, http://www.watchknow.org/ . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
20. World Lecture Project, http://www.world-lecture-project.org/ . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
21. How to cite Citizendium articles, http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Proposals/Citing_CZ_article_by... . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
22. Citizendium – Statistics, http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Statistics . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
23. Biology - encyclopedia article – Citizendium, http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Biology . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.
24. Biology Week - encyclopedia article – Citizendium, http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Biology_Week . Retrieved on July 17, 2008.

Acknowledgements:
We thank Chris Day, Larry Sanger and Anthony Sebastian for comments on earlier drafts of this blog.

The title of this post is a sentence taken from a report on citation statistics prepared by the
International Mathematical Union (IMU). Another such take-home message is "Research is too important to measure its value with only a single coarse tool." Given that citation statistics are heavily used in assessing research and researchers, young scientists might gain a lot from investing some time to familiarize themselves with this subject.

seen at
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2008/06/03/nobel-laureate-... :
2007 Nobel laureate Oliver Smithies is financing a series of lectures with his Nobel Prize money. These lectures are being planned at all four of his former academic homes, and they are dedicated to the young scientists' perspective at a scientific career. Wouldn't it be cool if these conferences could be made available online for all of us to watch, e.g. via the World Lecture Project?