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Month: September 2015

  • Using the NHM Data Portal API

    Anyone care to remember how awful and unusable the web interface for accessing the NHM’s specimen records used to be? Behold the horror below as it was in 2013, or visit the Web Archive to see just how bad it was. It’s not even the ‘look’ of it that was the major problem – it was…

  • Who actually has access to paywalled research?

    Yesterday, I tried to read a piece of research, relevant to my interests that was published in 1949. Sadly as is usual, I hit a paywall asking me for £30 + tax to read it (I didn’t pay). Hincks, W. D. 1949. IV.—systematic and synonymic notes on passalidae (col.). Annals and Magazine of Natural History 2:56-64. …

  • I am supporting RIO Journal. I think you should too

    Today (2015-09-01), marks the public announcement of Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO for short), a new open access journal for all disciplines that seeks to open-up the entire research cycle with some truly novel features I know what you might be thinking: Another open access journal? Really?  Myself, nor Daniel Mietchen simply wouldn’t be involved with…