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Seminarium Lic or Mag

Science seminars

Online seminars

Apart from the software ethical issues of an online seminar (the communicators should preferably be open protocols like Matrix that allow the user to choose his/her own preferred server and software; and ethical software like bbb rather than WikipediaEn:GDPR violating, unverifiable software), should an online seminar primarily aim to reproduce the look and feel of a face-to-face seminar? Given that modern scientific research uses software and communicates over the Internet, and since the seminar itself is conducted over the Internet, shouldn't the seminar help the participants access the free-licensed software and open-access (preferably open-licensed) data referred to by the speaker? Limiting an online seminar to an attempted exact replica of a face-to-face seminar is a bit like printing out the content of all your emails on paper.

What online information should be expected in an online seminar? Some suggestions - the pdf of the talk should:

• be made available to all participants of the seminar (at least)
• should have clickable links to URLs:
  • at least one main URL to online introductory material
  • at least one URL to the main online open-access (preferably open-licensed) data source
  • at least one URL to the main free-licensed software code used
    • a brief description of the main software licence used and author(s) (usually with 'et al')
      • if no licence is indicated, then the WikipediaEn:Berne_Convention quite likely applies, so this could be described with a term such as "(C) non-free" (Debian terminology), "(C) proprietary" (Free Software Foundation), "(C) default copyright" (informal), or "(C) default (all rights reserved)"
  • better display the URL itself (and make it clickable); people watching a presentation might get a copy of the pdf, but might not

Science writing

What to do: write in one's own words

• WikipediaEn:Scientific_writing
• A&A: https://www.aanda.org/for-authors
  • https://www.aanda.org/for-authors/language-editing/1-introduction
  • ...
  • https://www.aanda.org/for-authors/language-editing/7-clarity-and-precision (archive; obsolete?)
• Writing Scientific Papers in Astronomy, Johan H. Knapen, Nushkia Chamba, Diane Black, ArXiv:2110.05503
  • ethical bug: Box 2 recommends finding the most popular reference on a topic, and ignoring the first reference on a topic. Citation is supposed to give credit for scientific precedence, not just scientific popularity.
  • language bug: The authors write "methodology" when they mean "method". Methodology is, unsurprisingly, the study of methods (e.g. see WikipediaEn:Methodology). In astronomy research, although we are aware of arguments for and against different methods, we generally choose a method and don't study methods themselves.

What not to do: copy/paste/modify someone else's words

• Oxford definition: https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism

exceptions

Copying without quotes (attribution still required) is sometimes acceptable:

• free-licensed material: CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, other CC licences, GPL, ...
• PL: Polish equivalent of "public domain": WikipediaPl:Domena_publiczna#Domena_publiczna_w_Polsce

When is a journal serious?

• Check with your supervisor/colleagues for the journal's reputation
• Check archival lists of predatory journals at WikipediaEn:Predatory_open_access_publishing#External_links - but after 2017 these might not be frequently updated - read the full Wikipedia article
• Experiments showing low (nonsensical) journal standards: WikipediaEn:List_of_scholarly_publishing_stings

open access

• At WikipediaEn:DOI you'll see a link to http:doai.io ?

-- BoudRoukema - 26 Feb 2018 + other authors ...