Welcome to my blog.

You’ll find I write posts on Academia, Open Access, Phylogenetics, Palaeontology, Conferences and other such #phdchat here.

I’m currently a PhD student at the University of Bath *trying* to investigate the importance of fossils in phylogeny.

However the raison d’etre of this particular blog, is that I feel I’m facing rather too many silly and unnecessary barriers to my research:

• lack of data sharing
• lack of online data availability
• lack of data in immediately machine-readable digital formats

Perhaps all PhD students make such comments? But I feel my case has some uniqueness.

I study the use of comparative morphology in phylogenetic inference, with a keen appreciation for informatics, as demonstrated by presentation below.

If I was doing research with molecular sequences I’d have GenBank, and wouldn’t have so much to moan about. But for morphological data – it’s an entirely different ball game.

I’m trying to constructively point-out these problems where I can, for the benefit of science (my own research, as well as everyone else’s!).

Hence this blog – a platform for open comment on Open Science.

Contact address: Ross.Mounce (at) Gmail