How science is distilling its message | Times Higher Education

The tongue-in-cheek paper, titled “The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of ‘writer’s block’”, contained no words except the title, the author’s name and affiliation, one self-reference, and words of praise from one reviewer who examined the manuscript “very carefully with lemon juice and X-rays”.

When physicists found that neutrinos travelled faster than the speed of light, a claim that would break Einstein’s universal speed limit, Sir Michael Berry of the of Bristol and his colleagues published a paper in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical titled “Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?” Their abstract revealed their stance: it read “probably not”.

Although some may be under the impression that this needed a bit more elaboration, the “probably not” abstract was a “precisely crafted answer to the question posed in the title of the paper”, Sir Michael told Times Higher Education.

The abstract was “perfectly informative”, in light of the title, he said: “not” because of their negative result, and “probably” because they needed a calculation to arrive at this conclusion. A “one-word abstract ‘no’ would not accurately reflect the work we had to do while writing the paper”, Sir Michael added.

In 1974, clinical psychologist Dennis Upper of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Massachusetts, US, published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis the shortest-ever paper.

 

Key leads from this articles:

Data Visualisation

Seal level rise

These days I’m an independent data journalist and information designer. A passion of mine is visualizing information – facts, data, ideas, subjects, issues, statistics, questions – all with the minimum of words.

I’m interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through BS and reveal the hidden connections, patterns and stories underneath. Or, failing that, it can just look cool!

Myself, and the rest of the crack team here at Information is Beautiful, are dedicated to distilling the world’s data, information and knowledge into beautiful, interesting and, above all, useful visualizations, infographics and diagrams.

@infobeautiful (just infographics)@mccandelish (details of my tawdry life too)This site’s RSS Web FeedFacebook email: pa [dot] david [dot] mccandless [AT] Gmail [dot] com.

I’m David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer. I’ve written for The Guardian, Wired and others. I’m into anything strange and interesting.

Curated from Hello | Information Is Beautiful

It’s been a year since I started Draw Science. Can’t believe it. The idea’s come a long way, from just a blog that I started for fun, to an open-access journal in the works. Now, I’m travelling while I set up the journal and doing a study on behalf of my other organization,

 

I’ve already ranted about the problems with science communication. Even when a layperson gets access to a paper despite all the pay-per-view journals, the use of esoteric jargon makes it practically impossible for the public to read fresh-from-the-lab-bench science. For the last few months, I’ve been working on a solution through Draw Science. Now it’s time to take off the band-aid and treat the wound.

 

Curated from Draw Science

Valuable Other Scholarly outputs

“The Winnower is an excellent forum for sharing ideas and rapidly disseminating work that might not otherwise have a great forum. I think it’s an excellent tool to engage a community with a very easy to use interface that generates great discussion between authors and reviewers. In total, it was the most supportive peer review process thus far, and allowed me to engage in great scholarly discussion with my reviewers in an open and transparent way.”

“The Winnower is paving the path to the future of science communication in the most radical, exciting way. Scientists can finally put a name and a story to the research they publish; this is the definition of “open and transparent.””

“The Winnower is one of the first that rightfully recognizes the educational value of both transparent peer reviews and open access scientific material. It is a modern scientific publication in the truest sense of the word”

“Re-imagine scientific publishing, unhindered by external pressures, with the sole focus to communicate science. Don’t be surprised if you end up exactly at what The Winnower is doing.”

“Although I did not ever think I would aspire to have my work highlighted in a section referred to as “The Chaff”, I find the idea of your new journal interesting and likely informative for the scientific community”

Curated from The Winnower | Open Scholarly Publishing

So without further ado….Today we are happy to announce that you can now assign a digital object identifier (DOI) to your WordPress.org blog via The Winnower. This is a first step of many that we are taking towards bringing scientific publishing into the modern era (we’ll soon be releasing an interface for Blogger blogs and WordPress.com blogs).  We hope you’ll help us create this “agora of the modern age” by participating and by letting us know what you think needs changing or improving.  Of course, one way to do that is to publish with us and another is to write a blog post!  Together we can create an archived virtual library that is accessible to not only those that can pay thousands of dollars to publish but to all.

Scientific research requires a free and open dialogue to thrive. Scientists must communicate their ideas through scientific journals for debate, testing, and often retesting. Today, this is the standard process by which new ideas advance in science. Currently, one major barrier to co… …

The 2013 Wolf Prize in , often referred to as the Nobel Prize in agriculture, was awarded earlier this year to Dr. Joachim Messing. Messing’s work over the years has spanned many fields but what may be considered his most important work was the development of a seminal te… …

Science publishing is a multi-billion dollar industry that brings investors and owners a spectacular 30% profit annually. How are they able to maintain such high profits and what does this mean for science? Pretend you’re a scientist who’s made an important discovery. Your next step… …

The value of blogs and bloggers in science is well recognized.  Blogs serve as an excellent form of post-publication peer review and host much of the scientific discussion that occurs on the web today.  Indeed, it is probably true that more interaction between scientists and between scientists and the public occurs away from traditional scientific articles themselves and in “alternative” forums such as Twitter, Facebook, and of course, blogs.  These mediums are becoming increasingly important in scholarly discourse and often times shape what is written in traditional scholarly articles themselves (i.e. they are often cited).  But for all the benefits blogs provide they are not afforded an equal footing.  They are superfluous and can disappear without a trace.  We want to change that. The content of these discussions can sway opinion and act as authoritative sources in their own right.  Blogs are without a doubt valuable and as such deserve to be archived and aggregated, just like traditional scholarly publications are.  They deserve to “count,” to be elevated to a level that is not viewed as something extra but as something integral to scientific communication (Nicholson 2014, Nicholson 2015).  We need to get around the notion that where you publish actually matters.  It doesn’t.  It is the content, not the wrapper, and the sooner we act accordingly, the better.

Curated from The Winnower | Open Scholarly Publishing

The Journal of brief ideas

We think that that there is an inherent inefficiency in scientific publishing due to the quantum (or minimum publishable amount) of research being too large. It can takes many years to do enough research for a publication in a top-tier journal. Meanwhile, all that intellectual capital is tied up solely in the heads of the researchers rather than circulating where it could be doing some good. Also, many research ideas and results are not publishable because they are small, negative, partial, or just don’t fit the criteria of other journals. But many of them can be expressed briefly and could aid other researchers.

Primarily because it is part of being a good scientific citizen but you also might get the feedback you need to improve your research. Entries in the Journal of Brief Ideas are permanently archived, searchable, and citable, so they have the same publication status as in any other journal. That means that you can get credit for your idea as soon as you have it. You can put the entry on a CV, attach it to your ORCID profile, or use it as you would any other publication.

In addition, if you are a good researcher, you have more ideas than you can pursue at length. Wouldn’t you rather be credited for those ideas and see somebody else build on them than have them disappear from the research community completely, or have somebody later come up with the same idea and have them get credit for it?

For something as brief as 200-words, wouldn’t you rather just judge the quality of an idea yourself rather than have that judgement proxied by an anonymous peer reviewer? It is impractical to have 200-word ideas reviewed pre-publication so we choose to have a post-publication review system. There is a rating for each idea and for each researcher so you can judge quality by those ratings if you don’t trust your own judgement.

The Journal of Brief Ideas is a research journal, composed entirely of ‘brief ideas’. The goal here is to provide a place for short ideas to be described – in 200 words or less – for these ideas to be archived (courtesy of Zenodo), searchable and citable.

Curated from The Journal of Brief Ideas

The Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal

The Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal publishes all outputs of the research cycle, including: project proposals, data, methods, workflows, software, project reports and research articles together on a single collaborative platform, with the most transparent, open and public peer-review process. Our scope encompasses all areas of academic research, including science, technology, humanities and the social sciences.

Curated from Research Ideas and Outcomes

Brevity of Communication

THE UP-GOER FIVE TEXT EDITOR

CAN YOU EXPLAIN A HARD IDEA USING ONLY THE TEN HUNDRED MOST USED WORDS? IT’S NOT VERY EASY. TYPE IN THE BOX TO TRY IT OUT.

Curated from The Up-Goer Five Text Editor

The 1000 Word (or ten hundred word to be exact) Challenge was born out of the XKCD comic strip Up Goer Five, a very successful attempt at using only the 1000 most common words to describe the blueprints of the NASA rocket Saturn V. Geneticist Theo Sanderson created a text editor that tells if each word typed is one of the 1000 most common words (and thus allowable), and soon scientists around the world were challenging each other to describe their own research using only these 1000 words. The Burke Museum was already planning an end-of-the-quarter happy hour and invited FOSEP to hold their 1000 Word Challenge during the event.

FOSEP received almost 40 individual entries from across the campus, from researchers in atmospheric science to biology, from anthropology to applied materials science. David Domke (professor and acting chair for the Department of Communication at the University of Washington (UW)), Alaina Smith (Director of External Affairs at the Burke) and Andrea Cohen (Museology Program Assistant at the Burke) served as the judges for the event.

On Friday afternoon, the judges narrowed down the entries to the top 15. These 15 contestants were then each given an opportunity to share both how they would normally describe their research at a scientific conference and how they describe their research using only the 1000 most common words in the English language. Contestants were judges on three criteria: Language – Does the entry convey the work of the grad student in a clear and concise manner, using the 1000 words in an economical and grammatically correct fashion? Style – Does the entry go beyond clear word choice to incorporate humor, prose, rhythm or other elements of style to good effect? and Presentation – Does the candidate present their entry effectively?   Considerations are enunciation, volume, posture, and dress?

Yasmeen at a scientific conference: I study the link between sperm chemotaxis and fertilization success. Eggs in animals such as sea urchins release chemicals that act as sperm attractants. Sperm use chemotaxis – that is, orientation towards the source of a chemical gradient – to find the eggs. However, it is unknown whether sperm chemotaxis directly contributes to reproductive success.

Last Friday the Burke Museum hosted FOSEP’s inaugural 1000 Word Challenge with fantastic results. Just under 200 people were in attendance, and the grand prize winner by Yasmeen Hussain included, “Some man things are better at listening than others. I want to know if the man things that are better at listening are also better at making babies.”

Curated from Inaugural FOSEP 1000 Word Challenge Was a Great Success! | The Seattle Forum on Science Ethics and Policy

 

To Do List: Sankey Diagram

Sankey diagram would be a very good way of mapping the connections between the types of science journals I cite from and the types of science journal where I get cited. It may make this diagram clearer

From Consumer to consumed from
Comparing the science I consume with the place my science gets consumed showing a clear difference in subject categories with less and more Engineering, Technology and Multi-disciplinarity.

That is originally posted in this blog post: http://www.OR4NR.interdisciplinary-science.net/2015/09/04/which-journals-are-best-who-do-i-cite-who-cites-me/. It would be good to do this for a Toastmasters Speech I am preparing that puts the proposal from my election as a Fellow of a Learned Society.

The hard part of Sankey diagrams is doing them as Excel is little use., but I have found one method on Google Developer… and a useful blog site

 

 

 

 

For the curious, they’re named after Captain Sankey, who created a diagram of steam engine efficiency that used arrows having widths proportional to heat loss.

A sankey diagram is a used to depict a flow from one set of values to another. The things being connected are called nodes and the connections are called links. Sankeys are best used when you want to show a many-to-many mapping between two domains (e.g., universities and majors) or multiple paths through a set of stages (for instance, Google Analytics uses sankeys to show how traffic flows from pages to other pages on your web site).

To my opinion, Sankey diagrams are underestimated, and should merit a greater attention. Sometimes they are a better choice than a pie or bar chart to visualize information.

Hi, my name is Phineas. With this blog I would like to share with you my fascination for Sankey diagrams. My goal is to present to you Sankey diagrams I find on the net, and discuss them. I am mainly focusing on the graphical aspect, layout, methodological issues or shortcomings of diagrams. I do not intend to discuss the scientific content or the data behind them. Neither the politics.

Do you have a Sankey diagram you wish to share? Have you seen an interesting Sankey diagram that should be presented here? Or do you have a great idea what Sankey diagrams can be used for?

Acknowledgement: The guys at ifu (e!Sankey) kindly ceded this domain to me. I asked them politely, if I can use it for a blog on Sankey diagrams, and they said ‘yes’. They reserve the right to put up a banner here, but so far this hasn’t happened.

I am using Sankey Helper 2.1, STAN 1.1 and e!Sankey 3.0pro for drawing my Sankey diagrams. I have used test or demo versions of most of the Sankey diagram software tools available, like S.DRAW, or Sankey 3.1. Although I do find some tools better than others, I don’t intend to endorse any of them.

 

Now done using Google Developers tools.

Citations I've made are on the left. The citations I've made are grouped into subjects. Engineering is in a darker shade. Citations to me are on the right. This shows how I transform science into science of use by stakeholders of agri-environmental systems
I’ve made are on the left (Web of Sciences Journal categories). The citations I’ve made are then grouped into subjects. Engineering is in a darker shade. Citations to me are on the right, again by Journal category. This shows how I transform science into science of use by stakeholders of agri-environmental systems, such as engineers.

The live interactive version is here: http://www.OR4NR.interdisciplinary-science.net/2015/09/12/what-journals-do-i-cite-and-which-journals-cite-me/

Project AC0114 – Data synthesis, modelling and management

WP 3 Farm Practice Synthesis

This work package will develop an archive of farm practice or activity data for representative farm systems in the UK, including information on fertiliser inputs; fertiliser and manure management; livestock feeding and breeding practices; and industry trends on the adoption of key mitigation practices such as anaerobic digestion and increased efficiency of nitrogen use.  These data will be key to representing the impact of changes in farm practice on methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Whilst the work package intends to make best use of existing national surveys and industry monitoring data, it is recognised that not all aspects of UK are adequately surveyed. Therefore, we will also scope a UK wide systematic survey of farm practices targeted at meeting the future needs of an improved gaseous emissions calculation methodology.

The first stakeholder workshop was held in March 2011 in Birmingham, with the aim of gathering feedback on the farm systems proposed for inclusion within the inventory and to gather recommendations on the mitigation methods that will need to be captured through the reporting:

Project AC0114 is managed as a collaborative project through an Expert Steering Group made up of the following principal investigators from the project partners:

Dr Steven Anthony (ADAS UK Ltd – Project Manager) Dr Tom Misselbrook (North Wyke Research – WP 1 Lead) Dr Kairsty Topp (Scottish College – WP 2 Lead) Dr Adrian Williams (Cranfield – Science Director and WP 3 Lead) Dr Ulli Dragosits (CEH Edinburgh – WP 4 Lead) Professor Andy Whitmore (Rothamsted Research – WP 5 Lead) Mr Laurence Smith (Organic Research Centre – WP 6 KE Lead) Dr Eileen Wall (Scottish Agricultural College – WP 7 Lead) Professor Pete Smith (Aberdeen University) Dr Catherine Watson (AFBI-NI) Dr Les Crompton (Reading University) The AC0114 project will span January 2011 to June 2015 and is composed of 7 separate work packages:

 

 

EU Impressions

The end of June was an eventful time for the IMPRESSIONS project when we hosted two important meetings: (i) a stakeholder workshop for our Iberian case study; and (ii) our 4th project steering committee meeting combined with our international advisory board. The first IMPRESSIONS Ib…

 

The first IMPRESSIONS Hungarian Case Study workshop took place on 13 &14 July 2015, in Szekszárd, Hungary. The event brought together key stakeholders from public institutions, civil society and companies. During the 2-day workshop, participants discussed and determined future driving …

 

Despite the increasing plausibility of these high-end scenarios, there are few studies that assess their potential impacts and the options available for reducing the risks. Existing modelling tools and methods fail to account for potential tipping points, the need to cope with radical rather than gradual change, the complex interactions between sectors and the synergies and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation actions. It is vital that decision-makers have access to reliable scientific information on these uncertain, but potentially high-risk, scenarios of the future, so that they can make effective adaptation and mitigation plans.

 

There is widespread acceptance that the climate is changing. Although the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change warns that the increase in global temperature should be below 2°C to avoid severe impacts, projections based on current emission trends point to much more substantial warming, with possible increases of 4°C or more in the long-term unless there is radical action to cut emissions.

 

IMPRESSIONS aims to advance understanding of the implications of high-end climate change, involving temperature increases above 2°C, and to help decision-makers apply such knowledge within integrated adaptation and mitigation strategies.

 

 

CLIMSAVE

CLIMSAVE outputs will inform many policy processes ensuring that decisions on how best to adapt to climate change are based on solid scientific analysis. This includes the EC White Paper on Adapting to Climate Change and national adaptation strategies which have been adopted, or are under preparation, in many European countries. CLIMSAVE’s integrated assessment approach will enable stakeholders to explore and understand the interactions between different sectors, rather than viewing their own area in isolation. This contributes to the development of a well adapted Europe by building the capacity of decision-makers to understand cross-sectoral vulnerability to climate change and how it might be reduced by various adaptation options.

CLIMSAVE is a pan-European project that is developing a user-friendly, interactive web-based tool that will allow stakeholders to assess climate change impacts and vulnerabilities for a range of sectors, including , forests, biodiversity, coasts, water resources and urban development. The linking of models for the different sectors will enable stakeholders to see how their interactions could affect European landscape changes. The tool will also enable stakeholders to explore adaptation strategies for reducing climate change vulnerability, discovering where, when and under what circumstances such actions may help. It will highlight the cost-effectiveness and cross-sectoral benefits and conflicts of different adaptation options and enable uncertainties to be investigated to better inform the development of robust policy responses.

There is widespread acceptance that the climate is changing due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. Such changes in climate will affect all sectors of society and the environment at all scales, ranging from the continental to the national and local. Decision-makers and other interested citizens need to be able to access reliable science-based information to help them respond to the risks of climate change impacts and assess opportunities for adaptation.

CLIMSAVE is a pan-European project that is developing a user-friendly, interactive web-based tool that will allow stakeholders to assess climate change impacts and vulnerabilities for a range of sectors, including agriculture, forests, biodiversity, coasts, water resources and urban development.

Curated from

http://www.climsave.eu/climsave/index.html

Change The Way You See Fear And Change Your Life

Fear

Yesterday I identified procrastination and insecurity esp fear of criticism as the two things most likely to hold me back in increasing my publication rate. They are subtle once they take hold. I’ll ponder these a bit to distil some take-out actions.

 

Frequently, in business and in life, we get too comfortable. We find solid ground – a place that feels safe – we get comfortable, and we settle in. We’re programmed to do it. It’s how we operate. Look for safety and stay there. But these days, it’s imperative that we act against our programming to truly succeed and find our own greatness.

 

What’s holding us back? Ultimately, it’s fear. It’s almost always fear. Fear is the number one reason why people stay in their safety zones. It’s why people don’t start new businesses. It’s why people stop looking for love. But what are we afraid of? After studying fear for several years and working with countless clients who were letting fear hold them back, I’ve become convinced that when it comes down to stepping outside one’s comfort zone, there are really two things at work for most people: fear of success and fear of failure.

 

Many people say they have a fear of success. What does this mean? It means that when these folks envision their success, they see the ways in which they’ll disappoint people, the ways they won’t be able to handle the success, the ways they’ll mess up their success… ultimately, I actually believe that a fear of success is a fear of failure in disguise. In my experience, most people aren’t actually afraid of success, but rather of failing after the success. They’re afraid they can’t handle it and they’ll fall much farther than if they’d never tried at all. It’s much more painful to fall from, say, a 20-story building, than it is to fall from a sidewalk curb. It’s the fall from the height of success that we fear, not the success itself.

 

Let’s look at fear of failure, since that’s at the core of what’s holding people back. I’ve recently updated my thoughts about fear of failure. I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s book, Tribes, and Godin has some absolutely profound and brilliant thoughts on the fear that keeps us in our comfort zones. In Tribes, Godin says that there’s a common misconception about a fear of failure. He says that the fear of failure isn’t actually fear of failure at all – it’s a fear of criticism. We’re more afraid of being judged for our failures than anything else.

 

When was the last time you took a risk? Not something major and life-threatening, but something that represented a step outside your comfort zone. Can you recall a time recently when you did something that felt uncomfortable for you? If not, get ready to take a major step forward.

 

One of the best ways to “change the channel” of procrastination is to change your scenery. Rather than sit in front of your computer or TV all day, get up, do some stretches, jog in place, do pushups, and move until your frame of mind has changed.

 

Setup a daily (or hourly) reminder that you should be working on something or at least not wasting your time (unless you have time to waste). You can also set up reminders that give you motivational quotes.

 

There is nothing like having someone on your side when it comes to making your goals a reality. If you start to slip into procrastination, your motivation buddy will get you back in the game.

 

You can do this with people around you or even with your motivation buddy above. A great way is to announce your change publicly and be vocal about it. Hit the social networks, your blog, write letters, whatever it takes to make yourself more accountable to getting work done.

 

We all procrastinate. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing, but it can turn into something evil and nasty if we aren’t careful. Try these procrastination beating techniques to destroy this deadly foe once and for all.

 

 

Physical assessment of the environmental impacts of centralised anaerobic digestion – CC0240

CAD has already been adopted in other parts of Europe and new sites are planned in the UK. Until now, the claimed environmental benefits of CAD could be based only on extrapolation of results from other countries, and are therefore uncertain for UK conditions. Hence, when the first UK CAD site comes into operation in 2002, it will provide an ideal opportunity for this project to complete a of the process, based on physical measurements of actual emissions, so enabling performance and cost comparisons to be made with other manure management strategies.

 

This project will help to meet DEFRA’s policy needs in connection with international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Burden Sharing Agreement. Specifically, it will provide research evidence to determine the true potential of CAD as a cost-effective control option. This will be relevant to meeting the requirements of the Working Group within the European Climate Change Programme. The project will also begin to establish â??bench marksâ? for good practice, so helping with assessments of the possible impacts of other CAD plants that may be proposed in the future.

 

01 To establish a detailed working plan in conjunction with the owners, constructors and operators of the CAD plant to be monitored. This will also include formulation of an outline LCA and the definition of the key process and environmental measurements needed.

 

03 To undertake a period of at least 18 months of plant monitoring, comprising three campaigns, each of at least six months duration. This will include sufficient time for any start-up difficulties to be resolved, and will thus establish a clear picture of true plant performance. The monitoring will also include emissions from the peripheral activities such as collection, transport, storage and land spreading. These will be undertaken on a periodic basis according to process schedules.

 

Stored slurries on UK farms emit substantial amounts of methane. Previous MAFF funded research (e.g. CC 0222), has shown that farm-scale anaerobic digestion (AD) can reduce in these emissions as well as generating useful amounts of heat and electrical energy and assisting in the safe recycling of wastes (in the interests of sustainable waste management). However, despite these benefits, AD is not widely used in UK agriculture. Capital costs and substantial management requirements are obvious dis-incentives to its adoption, although both of these charges can be reduced substantially per unit volume of slurry treated by using much larger, centralised AD (CAD) plants. For instance, co-processing with other wastes can generate revenues from gate fees.

 

 

Citation Alert: GHG emissions from the ornamental plant nursery industry: a LCA approach in a nursery district in central Italy

Lazzerini, G., Lucchetti, S., & Nicese, F. P. (n.d.). GHG emissions from the ornamental plant nursery industry: a LCA approach in a nursery district in central Italy. Journal of Cleaner Production. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.08.065

I shall obtain this article and give it a good read. This citation is probably of the defra contract report:

Williams, A. G., Audsley, E., & Sandars, D. L. (2006). Final report to Defra on project IS0205: Determining the environmental burdens and resource use in the production of agricultural and horticultural commodities. Food and Rural Affairs. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=14171078129357067523&hl=en&oi=scholarr

 

Conducting the Life Cycle Assessment of Tomato production in England and Wales was a challenge.  Many areas of horticulture are very heterogeneous and it is often hard to interpret the few national statistics in terms of definable representative production systems.

The full citation and abstract are below

Highlights

•The production method used has great importance in defining the total level of GHG.

•The most emitting inputs in the nurseries are plastics and peat.

•“surface unit” was used as functional unit to compare different kind of nurseries.

•The plants grown in a nursery can be considered as carbon sinks.

•Other impact categories can be useful to evaluate the environmental impact of nurseries.

Lazzerini, G., Lucchetti, S., & Nicese, F. P. (n.d.). GHG emissions from the ornamental plant nursery industry: a LCA approach in a nursery district in central Italy. Journal of Cleaner Production. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.08.065

Citation Alert: Sustainability assessment of food supply chains: an application to local and global bread in Italy

Galli, F., Bartolini, F., Brunori, G., Colombo, L., Gava, O., Grando, S., & Marescotti, A. (2015). Sustainability assessment of food supply chains: an application to local and global bread in Italy. Agricultural and Food Economics, 3(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40100-015-0039-0

They cite this work that I was involved in:

Williams, A. G., Audsley, E., & Sandars, D. L. (2010). Environmental burdens of producing bread wheat, oilseed rape and potatoes in England and Wales using simulation and system modelling. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 15(8), 855–868. Scopus. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-010-0212-3

This citation, welcome though it is will probably not count in my Web of Science or Scopus metrics because the ‘journal’ “Agricultural and Food Economics” may be too new.

Agricultural and Food Economics (AFE) is an international peer-reviewed and open access journal published on behalf of the Italian Association of Agricultural Economics. AFE welcomes research articles from economists, scholars and researchers from all over the world to publish problem-oriented and high quality articles. AFE publishes only original articles from a wide variety of economic perspectives that address current and relevant issues related to the agricultural and food system. AFE publishes articles focused on applied analysis, the discussion of innovative results, and relevant policy and managerial implications. AFE seeks clearly written articles from experts in the field, to promote insightful understanding of the current trends in the agri-food system.

Topics of specific interest to AFE include agricultural and food market analysis, agri-food firm management and marketing, organization of the agri-food chains, consumer behavior, food quality and safety issues, economics of nutrition and food security, food and health economics, agri-food policy and trade, sustainable rural development, natural and marine resource economics, land economics.

All articles published by Agricultural and Food Economics are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

The full abstract of the citing article is here. I hope to find time soon to read their work carefully.  Watch this space

Galli, F., Bartolini, F., Brunori, G., Colombo, L., Gava, O., Grando, S., & Marescotti, A. (2015). Sustainability assessment of food supply chains: an application to local and global bread in Italy. Agricultural and Food Economics, 3(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40100-015-0039-0

This paper has been selected as a best paper of the 51th SIDEA Conference in Benevento (18-20 September 2014). It has been accepted for publication in this journal following the usual revision process.

Abstract

Over the 2000s’, consumers’ food purchases have been increasingly informed by supply chain-related issues, with growing concerns about the sustainability of chains differing for their geographical scope. As a result, short food supply chains and local food systems have risen to policymakers and food chain stakeholders’ attention as more sustainable alternatives to mainstream food networks. However, associating food chain’s geographical scope and sustainability performance may not be straightforward. This paper aims at shedding lights on the connection between geographical scope and sustainability by comparing and discussing 19 attributes owing to different sustainability dimensions. The analysis anchors on the wheat-to-bread chain, due to its global relevance. Bread is a worldwide staple food and wheat is (generally) a commodity traded globally. However, wheat processing often occurs locally and baking is influenced by local heritage and consumption patterns, particularly in the EU and in Italy, where gastronomy is culturally embedded. The paper identifies critical aspects and provides a qualitative assessment of the performances of local vs global wheat-to-bread chains. The assessment is carried out on Italian case studies.

JEL: Q18 Agricultural Policy, Food Policy, Q10 General.

Keywords: Sustainability assessment; Food supply chain; Local; Global; Bread

About us | Publons

I get asked to review half a dozen times a year. I turn down a good few if I am under too much pressure at work or feel its is a shade out of scope.

The concept of Publons sounds great. Merit for hard work. Reviewing manuscripts is intellectually demanding, time consuming and unremunerated. It is generally thought of a part of your citizenry duties and partly`justified if you want a sneak peak at upcoming papers.

Reviewing is not fallible and journals do retract papers due to fraud, ethical violations, and plagiarism. I am not sure what happens to a reviewer’s reputation when that happens, especially if they have given up their anonymity.

Reviewers control how each review is displayed on their profile (blind, open, or published), and can add both pre- reviews they do for journals and post-publication reviews of any article.

 

Giving for peer review allows researchers to build their academic reputation through their peer review activity. The hypothesis is that when reviewers get official recognition for their work, they are more willing to accept review requests, more willing to prioritise time to do the review quicker, and more likely to do a comprehensive review. In short, they are more willing to put aside their own research to selflessly help with someone else’s.

 

Welcome to the Publons community! To get a feel for Publons, try adding a few reviews to get an idea of how your profile, stats, and official reviewer report will look. You could also start forwarding your review receipts, browse the top reviewers, and see where your university sits on the university leaderboard.

 

By default, when a review is added to your profile only the journal and the month of the review are shown (e.g. “Richard Feynman reviewed for Reviews of Modern Physics during December 1947”). All identifying information is kept hidden from the public, unless you explicitly choose to share it. You personally can see all additional details of your review record (and make changes to what is displayed for each review) from the review history tab on your dashboard.

 

We work with peer reviewers, editors, and publishers to motivate reviewers by giving credit for peer review. For peer reviewers, Publons provides a way to get credit for their contributions (without breaking reviewer anonymity) in a format they can include in job and funding applications.

 

 

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