Shanghai Ranking

I think for breaks at work you can consider to explore the new Shanghai Ranking. It might be time consuming to understand the entire system of criteria and procedures. Nevertheless it might give you an impression of the daily business of your dean of you faculty or the president of your University. If your University is doing well you will receive this information via press anyway. If you do not get any information, maybe the ranking was not that good.

Have fun in exploring the statistics, which is an easy ranking from
number one to infinity. Jürgen

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Social media for dummies

Social media have become a new tool to get publicity. Some journals run their own social media divisions. Some researcher are very keen to be represented in social media by their own blogs or tweets. However, there are different options around and the decision for a specific type of social media requires some thinking.

The decision which tool might be appropriate to communicate about science with which audience is really difficult and any effort is limited by available resources. A recently published paper in PloS Biology summarizes pros and cons of different options. Maybe this an entry point for you to go this way – maybe this is the stopping point to end with rumination about the question “Should I invest time in social media?” by answering this question with NO.

Here is the paper.Quite short. Well written.

Enjoy reading, Jürgen

Corrections of proofs

An accepted manuscript will be send to a type setting service and you will receive the typeset proofs of your manuscript. Sometimes very important things like tables, figures, headings are missing. But also minor changes might be required.

Nowadays PDF proofs allow you to work electronically on these proofs. But sometimes extensive changes are needed which can not be insert in the proof itself and additional handwritten feedback is required. For such purposes there are “codes” you should use for such corrections. You find a list of such codes here (GERMAN) or here (ENGLISH).

I wish you many proofs with a low number of errors.

Best, Jürgen

Impact Factor 2012

The new list (xls) for journals, impact factor and maximum ranking is available.
Maybe you can increase the number of target journals with this list. The
increase of impact is nice – the increase of submission options is much better.

Journalindex_2012
Best wishes

Jürgen

Booklist scientific writing

Here you find a list of useful books with a short description of what you get there (before buying it). There are loads of books around – this is just a pre selection to make the choice easier for you. If you have any suggestions on other useful books, please leave a comment in the comment field.

Very best wishes,

Jürgen

Booklist Writing Jürgen Barth

Polite or critique?

Sometimes you get feedback from a person in UK and you are not sure about the meaning between the lines. Question: what does “That’s not bad” really mean?

The answer on this question and some funny examples about the meaning can be found in a table summarised by the Telegraph. Visit page here.

Have fun

Jürgen

Language exercises (free)

Some of you might want to improve style and grammar by exercises. This is initially time consuming but maybe in the long run it is worthwhile. Here you find a page for some exercises. Enjoy!

Best wishes,

Jürgen