Day 2 of the SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing) meeting started with what was probably the best attended session of the whole event. “Geoff and Kent redux” featured the always entertaining duo of Kent Anderson (Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery) and CrossRef’s Geoff Bilder, who, in their own inimitable fashion, presented their take on […]
Category: Editors at large
Birte Twisselmann: Is there an app for that?
This year’s SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing) annual meeting, “A Golden Opportunity,” started on Wednesday, 2 June 2010. The evening’s “networking reception” in the exhibition space was buzzing, creating great expectations for the next couple of days’ actual sessions. And although librarians, assorted publishing types, web hosts, and providers of all manner of publishing related services may […]
Domhnall Macauley on Regina Benjamin, the Surgeon General of the US
One of her ambitions is to climb Kilimanjaro. It’s a tough climb even for a determined and committed woman like Regina Benjamin, Surgeon General of the United States. And, if the Surgeon General sets a target, people will remember. We met, appropriately, at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting in Baltimore after she had […]
Domhnall MacAuley on tackling sedentary lifestyles
Twenty five percent of children age 2 have a television in their bedroom, as do 65% of all children. Is it any wonder that physical activity is a concern. In his opening address to the American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting in Baltimore, Jeffrey Koplan (Emory University, Atlanta) pointed out that being sedentary was the […]
Wim Weber on the future of scientific publishing
On 28 and 29 May a small, but highly engaged audience appeared in Leiden for the 3rd European Conference on Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine and Medicine. The printing press made penning book-copiers obsolete, and these days one fears librarian extinction by computers. But no, they appear to be very much alive, and have taken on […]
Domhnall MacAuley on WONCA Part II
The picture screamed at me. It was of a ragged traveller child playing by a caravan at a halting site strewn with rubbish. It could have been from our practice. To travel half way around the world and be confronted by the failures of our local health care was humbling and embarrassing. Millennium Development Goals, […]
Domhnall MacAuley on WONCA
“When you look in their mouth you can tell their social class.” Jan de Maeseneer used this stark example of dental caries to highlight continuing health inequality in the developing world in his opening address on the UN 2015 Millennium Development Goals. He listed the many areas where primary care can make a difference but […]
Peter Lapsley: ACHCEW – bless you!
No doubt, countless pressure groups will be beavering away, bending the new government’ s ear, each with its own agenda and promoting its own interests. Few will take account of the “bigger picture” or consider whether their aspirations have widespread support. […]
Edward Davies: Dads and depression
One in 10 men suffer from “postnatal depression”, The Journal of the American Medical Association has just informed me. Postnatal depression in men often goes “undiagnosed”, and “men are as likely as women to suffer from postnatal depression,” say various reports. Apparently it’s at its worst between 3 and 6 months post partum and in […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Epidemiology pitfalls and high jumps
Cyclists sweated and panted alongside the car as we climbed the switchbacks of Holmenkollen mountain. At the top, a huge metal and concrete ramp stretched up towards the sky. And at its base, steep tiers of concrete seating circled the sunken gladiatorial arena. […]