Closing down all comments
After receiving a devastating amount of comment spam in the last couple of days, I have decided to close all commenting functionality, at least temporarily, on this site. If you want to discuss or comment on anything, please send me an e-mail. I would love to re-post your thoughts on the website! It’s sad that it has come down to this, but I never received as much comments as I did e-mails anyway. Thanks for your understanding, and let’s keep in touch over e-mail (or ResearchGate)!
The quest for better annotation
My colleague Henrik Nilsson has been interviewed by the ResearchGate news team about the recent effort to better annotate ITS data for plant pathogenic fungi. It’s an interesting read, and I think Henrik nicely underscores why large-scale efforts for improving and correcting sequence annotations are important. You can read the interview here, and the paper they talk about is referenced below.
Nilsson RH, Hyde KD, Pawlowska J, Ryberg M, Tedersoo L, Aas AB, Alias SA, Alves A, Anderson CL, Antonelli A, Arnold AE, Bahnmann B, Bahram M, Bengtsson-Palme J, Berlin A, Branco S, Chomnunti P, Dissanayake A, Drenkhan R, Friberg H, Frøslev TG, Halwachs B, Hartmann M, Henricot B, Jayawardena R, Jumpponen A, Kauserud H, Koskela S, Kulik T, Liimatainen K, Lindahl B, Lindner D, Liu J-K, Maharachchikumbura S, Manamgoda D, Martinsson S, Neves MA, Niskanen T, Nylinder S, Pereira OL, Pinho DB, Porter TM, Queloz V, Riit T, Sanchez-García M, de Sousa F, Stefaczyk E, Tadych M, Takamatsu S, Tian Q, Udayanga D, Unterseher M, Wang Z, Wikee S, Yan J, Larsson E, Larsson K-H, Kõljalg U, Abarenkov K: Improving ITS sequence data for identification of plant pathogenic fungi. Fungal Diversity, Volume 67, Issue 1 (2014), 11–19. doi: 10.1007/s13225-014-0291-8 [Paper link]
Regarding ResearchGate and paper requests
I have recently started to receive requests for full-text versions of my publications on ResearchGate. That’s great, but I have yet to figure out how to send them over, without breaking any agreements. As I am in a somewhat intensive work-period at the moment, please forgive me for not spending time on ResearchGate right now. And if you would like full-text versions of my publications, please send me an e-mail! I’ll be glad to help!
I have joined ResearchGate
On a side note, I just joined Research Gate (my profile). I’ve noted that it generates kind of the same kind of belonging-to-a-group feeling that registering on Facebook did way back, when co-author after co-author starts following you. Still, I haven’t figured out exactly what to use it for yet; it certainly seem more useful than academia.edu, with abilities to ask questions etc., but is anyone of you really using ResearchGate for this? Or is it rather just another showcasing window for researchers (much like my Publications page)? Please feel free do add your opinions as comments to this post!