Re: it's back!

[Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>]

David Marjanovic writes:
 > > What love?
 > 
 > You with your <phhh!!!> day job!

:-)

 > Other people's worth and worthiness is judged, nay, calculated by
 > their impact factor, and Nature has an impact factor of 27, while,
 > say, the JVP had an impact factor of 1.649 in 2005.  That's why
 > everyone craves to publish in Nature [...]

Sure, I know all that -- but it all seems like more reason to _hate_
S&N, not love them.

 > [...], that wretched extended-abstract publication* with those
 > cursed coarse-grained photos.

Case closed, m'lud :-)

 > * Though the recent phenomenon of 95-page supplementary information
 > has eliminated a large part of that particular problem.

Not really.  Supplementary information is still treated very much as
second-class, and seems to get quietly lost with horrifying frequency.
For example, I've not been able to get hold of the supplementary
information for Curry Rogers's description of _Rapetosaurus_ in
Nature.

Actually, I can't think of any way that S&N actually benefit science
(at least, palaeo).  We'd all be better off if they ceased to exist
tomorrow.

[Disclaimer ... none of that should be construed as meaning that I
would turn down the chance to have my own stuff appear in them given
the chance :-) ]

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <mike@indexdata.com>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "We don't watch _Batman_ as a documentary on the LAPD" -- Luis
         Chiappe's comment on the inaccuracies in the _Jurassic Park_
         films.