HENRY

Q: Dear Nature, if the quality of writing helps someone get published, is this fair for non-native English speakers? Read the interesting debate on “Ask the Nature Editor”

Editor Henry Gee continues the discussion on his blog:

…scientists in some disciplines keep their papers inaccessible on purpose, as they are less reports of great discoveries than placeholders in the never-ending battle between competing research groups. The relationships that such authors have with journals is congruent with that between dogs and lamp-posts. The urinous signal is meaningful to other dogs, if not to cats or horses. But it’s the same old lamp-post that gets peed on.

Huh, the urinated-upon-lamp-post theory of scientific publishing?

Posted on October 10th, 2007 by Simon Greenhill