Botanics and politics—when plant species become propaganda material

What has the 9-Dash-Line to do with land plants? Nothing of course, no land, no land plants. But these days, science has to please (and serve) politics again as it used. Not only in the world's greatest monetocraty, the U.S.A., but also in its counterpart, the People's Republic of China, the emerging number 1, already in science and, in the near future, in general.

The stag cracked the 30

One of my favourite hobbies as a tax-paid scientist was to check and groom, once in a while, my "impact". I still check, out of curiosity and vanity, and just noticed that my stag cracked the thirty. A little reflection of self-inflating impact with some tips for the game.

The Easter Egg featuring Earth, live

For this Eastern, I'll advertise something colourful to turn our eyes back from ourselves to the planet we inhabit: a live simulation/representation of Earth's dynamic surface and atmosphere.

If you haven't done yet: sign up on The Cost of Knowledge

I got an invitation to review a paper for Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. Naturally, I declined to review. And you should, too. Always. Because it's published by Elsevier.

Would you like to have your own edited paper collection?

One of the biggest problems in peer-reviewed science is editor-bias. So, my answer to Frontiers in Plant Science's nice invitation, even if I would still be in professional science, can only be no!

Trying to feed my Altmetric badges

A few months ago, I added Altmetric badges to my literature list. Because I like colours, and it's a good way to see which paper needs a tweet, blogpost or else.

How to interpret bootstrap values?

A search led me to a question on ResearchGate (RG) issued five years ago: How can I interpret bootstrap values on phylogenetic trees built with maximum likelihood? Quite a bunch people answered it, but, to my mind, only provided easy answers, not the critical ones.

The grey zone between obvious and less obvious scientific crankery

A tweet pointed me to a post with an interesting title "How to spot palaeontological crankery" by Mark Witton which includes (in the second part) "10 Red flags and pointers for spotting crank palaeontology" for non-experts. As an expert, I cannot help but to note that most of the ten points also apply to proper palaeontological science as well.

Bentham wants me as reviewer ... for medicinal chemistry

BSP pretends to be a proper scientific publisher, and not a predatory one. So, why sending an invitation to become a reviewer of some medicinal journal to a former scientist (see counter on my homepage) that dealt in phylogenetics and palaeobotany?

Where to share Wiley's "content sharing link"? Wiley is searching for an answer, too.

A new form of open access, emerged: "Bronze open access". And Wiley informed me that I can ask for a "content sharing link". And I did. But my question of how I'm allowed to share it, lead me into uncharted territory.

Elsevier needs my help: The 10 ... no, not Commandments, just questions

Elsevier is the main publishing platform of RELX, a highly profitable information company. Their business model is quite unique: the public pays for most of the work, it pays for the publication, and it pays for getting access to the publication. And from time-to-time Elsevier asks its only customers – and slaves (scientists) – on their opinion how to make more money.

My first landmark as not-a-scientist: 365 (busy) days out-of-business!

I just noticed (thanks to the counter on my personal homepage) that it has been 365 days, one year, since my last contract as a paid scientist run out (a 2-year mobility grant by the Austrian Science Fund FWF). Time for a resumé.

The Ten Holy Commandments of True Palaeobotany

Deep in the dusty crypts of libraries filled with long-forgotten books, a miraculous find has been made. Folded within the pages, an old parchment was found listing the 10 Holy Commandments of True Palaeobotany.

Germany apparantly plans to end systematic and phylogenetic research

Yesterday, I received a disturbing rumour. Germany finally has a concept to become a lightning star regarding the protection of natural and genetic resources. An add-on to/complete fulfilment of the Nagoma protocol [PDF]. If the plan become law, it's the dawn of phylogenetic research in Germany and German herbaria will become unusable for scientific research.

The most common errors regarding node dating

Many molecular dating studies rely on a few, sometimes poorly understood fossils as age priors to constrain nodes heights (ages) in an ultrametric tree. But do the authors (peers, editors, and – ultimately – readers) know what they do/has been done? Maybe, maybe not; in any case reading the papers can be confusing. In this post, I'll try to give a quick step-in.

Springer Nature is delivering open access. Will you join us? Don't!

But, yes, of course, since we must. Who’s to be credited? Springer Nature or the public paying for it? Too much, and largely ignorant of doing so.

Online proofing, a service to authors (stakeholders) or shareholders?

Elsevier (RELX) and Springer-Nature, two of the maximum profit science publishers, have introduced online proofing as a service to facilitate the work of us unpaid authors and avoid errors. They say. Naturally, it’s not true.

Subtropical ⊊ warm temperate

In this post, I will give an introduction into the main climate zone concepts, which are too often confused in non-climatic literature.

One date that is missing in many scientific publications

In most journals, the peer-review process is poorly documented. Typically, one is provided only several dates, and possibly the name of the editor. I'll share some light onto the dates found on some of my papers. Review process transparency is, ultimately, the only choice, when these dates should have any value for authors (producers) and readers (consuments).

The review process should be transparent not confidential

A few days ago, I was alerted to a paper on Zelkova by Zhang et al., published in Tree Genetics & Genomes, because the authors cited our study from 2005 (Denk & Grimm 2005). Although, I’m out-of-business, I had to look at it (old habits), and I lost it. How could this pass the review process?