When a preprint is uploaded to bioRxiv, it undergoes screening before it appears online. How long does it take for Affiliates to screen preprints at bioRxiv? tl;dr I used R to look at bioRxiv screening times. Even though bioRxiv has expanded massively, screening happens quickly (in about 24 h). I am a bioRxiv Affiliate – […]
Category: publishing
Take Off: preprints on COVID-19
I’m posting this the morning after generating a graph, and it’s already out-of-date. During the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak, preprint servers such as bioRxiv and medRxiv have again shown that they are the most effective way of communicating science rapidly. A collection of all papers on COVID-19 deposited on these two servers is available here, and […]
Methods papers for MD997 – 2020 edition
I run a Masters module called MD997. Over six weeks, students have to write a grant proposal and then assess their peers’ proposals at a mock grant panel. Each student bases their proposal on a paper. They present that paper to the class and then they write their proposal using the paper as a springboard. […]
Not What You Want II
This is a follow up to a previous post. Despite what the title says, it is what we wanted. Our paper on dongles has just been published in Journal of Cell Science. The previous post on quantixed, explained all about the paper and the background to it. The journal featured our paper as a research […]
Tiny Universe: new paper on intracellular nanovesicles
We have a new paper out! You can access it here. The paper in a nutshell We have discovered a new class of trafficking vesicle inside cells. These vesicles are very small (30 nm across) and we’ve called them intracellular nanovesicles, or INVs for short. What is a trafficking vesicle? Humans are built from lots […]
Yesterday’s Numbers
A quick post this week. I write “this week” in an attempt to convince regular readers that weekly posting will continue. I noticed that J. Cell Sci. give download metrics for their papers and that these downloads are categorised into abstract, full-text and PDF. I was interested in how one of my papers performed. After […]
Communication Breakdown
There is an entertaining rumour going around about the journal Nature Communications. When I heard it for the fourth or fifth time, I decided to check out whether there is any truth in it. The rumour goes something like this: the impact factor of Nature Communications is driven by physical sciences papers. Sometimes it is […]
Rollercoaster IV: ups and downs of Google Scholar citations
Time for an update to a previous post. For the past few years, I have been using an automated process to track citations to my lab’s work on Google Scholar (details of how to set this up are at the end of this post). Due to the nature of how Google Scholar tracks citations, it […]
Not What You Want: our new paper on a side effect of GFP nanobodies
We have a new preprint out – it is a cautionary tale about using GFP nanobodies in cells. This short post gives a bit of background to the work. Please read the paper if you are interested in using GFP nanobodies in cells, you can find it here. Paper in a nutshell: Caution is needed […]
Five Get Over Excited: Academic papers that cite quantixed posts
Anyone that maintains a website is happy that people out there are interested enough to visit. Web traffic is one thing, but I take greatest pleasure in seeing quantixed posts being cited in academic papers. I love the fact that some posts on here have been cited in the literature more than some of my […]