In the journals
Althoff DM, KA Segraves, MTJ Johnson. 2013. Testing for coevolutionary diversification: linking pattern with process. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2013.11.003.
In this review, we highlight potential mechanisms of coevolutionary diversification, outline approaches to examine this process across temporal scales, and propose a set of minimal requirements for demonstrating coevolutionary diversification.
Vines TH, AYK Albert, RL Andrew, F Débarre, DG Bock, MT Franklin, KJ Gilbert, J-S Moore, S Renaut, DJ Rennison 2013. The availability of research data declines rapidly with article age. Current Biology. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.11.014.
For papers where the authors gave the status of their data, the odds of a data set being extant fell by 17% per year. In addition, the odds that we could find a working e-mail address for the first, last, or corresponding author fell by 7% per year.
See also coverage by The American Scientist, Science Insider, and Nature News.
In the news
“The deal represents a step in the right direction, but a small one.” — How the new U.S. budget deal will affect research funding.
“… if it really takes a year for a study to be reproduced, if your finding is that fragile, this is something that researchers should know about right away from reading the article.” — Formal replication is hard, but it’s still important.
“… a mandatory data archiving policy was much more effective than either recommending archiving or having no policy at all.” — The American Scientist covers Tim’s research on data archiving.
“The secret for sane use is to use Excel only for data entry; any data manipulation … or analysis is done in statistical software.” — When it actually makes sense to use Microsoft Excel.
“Goofus says, ‘George Price published a paper in Nature. He must be really smart. And I am smart because I have smartly recognized his smartness.'” — Jon F. Wilkins on the recent dustup about “luxury” journals.
