Juliet Dobson: Open journalism and social media

The Guardian is well known for being at the forefront of journalism and for pushing forward ever more innovative ways of covering the news. A talk at King’s Place on Friday 14 September looked at how journalism is changing and how social media, particularly Twitter, are changing the way news is reported and read. The […]

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Richard Smith: Is the BMJ too sensitive about libel?

I must begin by making clear that I think the BMJ magnificent, much improved from when I was the editor. I particularly applaud the introduction of indepth investigative journalism. I’m also extremely grateful to the journal for publishing my blogs, some of which seem to push close to the edge of sanity. But I want […]

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Vivienne Bachelet: Medical editorial and publishing worlds – are they working together or not in the Chilean outback

I am writing from London and due to get back home in a few days. Home for me is Santiago, Chile, a beautiful place to live in and to visit. My stay in the UK has been extremely fruitful, and it all started on a medical editor’s course held last week in Oxford. You may […]

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David Payne: Happy 13th birthday, (scary) Google

In Washington DC last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt defended the company’s business practices when he appeared before a Senate antitrust panel. Down the road at Georgetown University the following day, his colleague Darcy Dapra was doing a similar thing to an audience of scholarly publishers. Mr Schmidt’s appearance was to reject claims that Google, […]

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Gaurav Gulsin, Sachin Gupta, Mostafa El Dafrawi: Read it and weep

In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on keeping up to date with the current scientific literature. To practise evidence based medicine, we have to constantly read and appraise medical journals, and implement (or disregard) their teachings into our everyday work. This means that students and clinicians alike are required to read more […]

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Stephen Ginn: First impressions on being the BMJ’s editorial registrar

Last Wednesday I joined the BMJ as the Roger Robinson editorial registrar. This is my first despatch from the frontline of medical publishing. The registrar role has been running for 22 years and is named after the late Professor Robinson who was an associate editor at the BMJ for ten years. It’s for one year […]

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Richard Smith: Scientific communication is returning to its roots

A compelling piece in the Economist argues that social media are returning news to the “more vibrant, freewheeling, and discursive ways of the pre-industrial era” and that newspapers will prove to have been a historical aberration. The same, I think, will be true of scientific journals. […]

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Liz Wager: How should editors respond to plagiarism?

Gross plagiarism is easy to spot and most people agree it’s wrong, so it’s relatively easy to deal with. But while stealing somebody else’s paper and pretending it’s your own is obvious misconduct, it’s surprisingly hard to define exactly what plagiarism is, especially for more minor offences. It would be helpful if we could agree […]

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Richard Smith: Might copies of PLoS ONE change journals forever?

I continue to be amazed that despite the appearance of the internet, which some have compared with the invention of fire, our methods for disseminating scientific studies are essentially the same as they were 50 years ago. We still have journals, and, although papers have electronic versions, those papers are indistinguishable from those of 50 […]

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