Podcasts about brembs

Im Gespräch mit Björn Brembs diskutiert Konrad Förstner den Elsevier-DEAL-Vertrag. Es werden Hintergrundinformation zu einem dazu gemeinsam verfassten Artikel in der FAZ dazu gegeben. Quelle: https://www.openscienceradio.org/2024/01/07/osr210-der-elsevier-deal-vertrag-de/ / Bitte abonniert den Original-Podcastfeed: https://openscienceradio.org/feed/mp4/

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2022.12.16.520755v1?rss=1 Authors: Ehweiner, A., Brembs, B. Abstract: Motor learning is not only a key invention of the many new animals evolving new body plans during the Cambrian, it is also central to human existence such as in learning to speak or walk, rehabilitation after injury, or sports. Evidence suggests that all forms of motor learning may share an evolutionary conserved molecular plasticity pathway. Here we present novel insights into the molecular processes underlying a kind of motor learning in the fruit fly Drosophila, operant self-learning. We have discovered that the Forkhead Box gene FoxP is not required in the fly brain for this type of learning. Instead, atypical protein kinase C (aPKC) appears to be a central component in a plasticity process that takes place in FoxP-expressing motor neurons in the ventral nerve cord. Using CRISPR/Cas9 to knock out canonical aPKC interaction partners bazooka and the kidney and brain gene (KIBRA) in adult animals, we found that aPKC likely acts via non-canonical pathways in this form of learning. We also found that 14 but not 7 days after CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout of FoxP in adult animals, learning is impaired, suggesting that adult FoxP expression is required for operant self-learning. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by Paper Player, LLC

I Indien pågår en rättegång mot Sci-Hub, en databas som erbjuder fri åtkomst till tiotals miljoner vetenskapliga tidskrifter. I USA är FBI ute efter databasens skapare, Alexandra Elbakyan. Samtidigt pågår i Sverige och i hela forskarvärlden en diskussion om Open Access, och om hur vi kommer att läsa vetenskapliga artiklar i framtiden. Att få en artikel publicerad i en vetenskaplig tidskrift med hög status, som Nature eller Science, kan lägga grunden för en hel forskarkarriär. Men samma system av vetenskapliga tidskrifter kostar samtidigt tiotals miljarder varje år och anses av många inte tillföra speciellt mycket till vetenskapen - förutom just status och attraktiva bylines. En som tog saken i egna händer är Alexandra Elbakyan, forskare och programmerare från Kazakstan. Hon skapade Sci-Hub, en databas som olagligt erbjuder fri nerladdning av över 80 miljoner vetenskapliga artiklar. Själv säger hon att hon är en del av en vetenskaplig revolution som handlar om att göra vetenskapliga resultat tillgängliga för alla, inte bara de som kan betala dyra prenumerationer. Nu utreds hon av amerikanska FBI och är samtidigt mitt uppe i en rättegång i indisk domstol. Även i Sverige är fri tillgång till vetenskaplig litteratur aktuell. En grupp från Sveriges universitets- och högskoleförbund, SUHF, håller på att ta fram en strategi för publiceringar där både sänkta kostnader och Open Access är viktiga bitar. Förra gången när det var förhandlingar med det största förlaget, Elsefir, slutade det med att prenumerationerna för Sveriges universitet och högskolor sades upp och samma sak kan hända igen. Medverkande: Alexandra Elbakyan, grundare av Sci-Hub, Wilhelm Widmark, överbibliotekarie vid Stockholms Universitetsbibliotek, Gustaf Nelhans, universitetslektor i biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap vid Högskolan i Borås, Björn Brembs, professor i neurogenetik vid universitetet i Regensburg i Tyskland. Reporter Lasse Edfast lasse@edfast.se Producent Peter Normark peter.normark@sverigesradio.se

The machine journalist "BIS" interviews the Professor of Neurobiology Björn Brembs to learn more about our human intelligence. http://brembs.net/ Subscribe so you don't miss new interviews: #carneesperta #smartmeat https://twitter.com/carneesperta https://www.instagram.com/carneesperta https://www.tiktok.com/@carneesperta fb.me/carneesperta m.me/carneesperta https://www.linkedin.com/company/carneesperta https://open.spotify.com/show/2H7YXepIPLgRGlam0SUkCY https://podcasts.apple.com/pt/podcast/carne-esperta/id1528942902 https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8zMmM1YTk5MC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw== https://radiopublic.com/carne-esperta-GOKmQL/episodes https://pca.st/vq2t1l46 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCybiOAXQm2UYP9rKhIssFTA To suggest a guest: https://bit.ly/carneespertaguests

Der Wandel der großen Wissenschaftsverlage vom Content Provider zum Data Analytics Business wird in den zurückliegenden Jahren verstärkt beobachtet und dokumentiert. Das damit auch ein zunehmend umfangreicheres User Tracking stattfindet wurde erst jüngst durch Offenlegungen belegt - immer mehr Verlagsplattformen werden durch eine Vielzahl von Technologien entsprechend aufgerüstet und sind somit in der Lage das Informationsverhalten der Nutzer (insbesondere Hochschulangehöriger) zu tracken, zu speichern, zu analysieren und zu personalisierten Profilen zu aggregieren. Die Gefahr personalisierter Profile ist auch in diesem Bereich sehr kritisch zu betrachten, insbesondere wenn diese Daten nicht nur bei den Verlagen verbleiben, sondern zunehmen in ein Netz von Data Brokern fließen und damit potentiell Akteuren zugänglich gemacht werden, die einem freien Wissenschaftssystem entgegenstehen - neben kommerziellen Konkurrenten öffentlicher Forschung dürften speziell wissenschaftsfeindliche und –verfolgende Akteure (wie z.B. Regierungen) problematisch zu sehen sein. Wir haben mit Dr. Renke Siems und Prof. Björn Brembs über die Trackingaktivitäten der Verlage und die potentiellen Gefahren gesprochen und einen Blick darauf geworfen welche möglichen Ansätze es gäbe damit umzugehen.

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.07.15.204677v1?rss=1 Authors: Palazzo, O., Rass, M., Brembs, B. Abstract: The FoxP family of transcription factors is necessary for operant self-learning, an evolutionary conserved form of motor learning. The expression pattern, molecular function and mechanisms of action of the Drosophila FoxP orthologue remain to be elucidated. By editing the genomic locus of FoxP with CRISPR/Cas9, we find that the three different FoxP isoforms are expressed in neurons, but not in glia and that not all neurons express all isoforms. Furthermore, we detect FoxP expression in, e.g., the protocerebral bridge, the fan shaped body and in motorneurons, but not in the mushroom bodies. Finally, we discover that FoxP expression during development, but not adulthood, is required for normal locomotion and landmark fixation in walking flies. While FoxP expression in the protocerebral bridge and motorneurons is involved in locomotion and landmark fixation, the FoxP gene can be deleted from dorsal cluster neurons and mushroom-body Kenyon cells without affecting these behaviors. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info

Who gets positions and funding in academia should depend on the merit of the researcher, project, or institute. But how do we assess these merits fairly, meaningfully and in a way that makes it comparable? I talked about metrics with Steffen Lemke, PhD student at the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW), in Kiel, Germany. He is part of the *metrics project, which investigates new research metrics and their applicability. The project is funded by the German Researcher Association, DFG. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Citation Based Metrics In episode 9 I talked with Björn Brembs about the most prevalent metric used: the Journal Impact Factor. It turns out that the “JIF” is not a good metric. Another commonly used metric is the “H-index”. Like JIF it is based on citations - the number of times a scientific paper was mentioned in another scientific paper. But it aims to measure the output of a researcher rather than the journal. Both, H-index and JIF, have their own specific disadvantages. But they also share problems due to the source of data they use: citation indices. Citations are slow to accrue, which means it takes time to build a sufficient amount of data for proper evaluation. The indices are also incomplete and mostly locked behind paywalls. And finally, they are solely focused on journal articles. But peer-reviewed research articles aren’t the only output scientists generate. Especially social sciences often publish in other formats, like books and monographs. STEM researchers, too, often create other outputs, such as designs for experimental setups, or code. Finally, citation based metrics focus solely on the communication between scientists, not with the public. Altmetrics New, alternative metrics aim to change all that. "Altmetrics" is an umbrella term for a range of still experimental metrics. They use data one can find openly on the internet. This makes them fast and diverse. They look, for example, at the dissemination of research articles on social media. But they also look at the download numbers of open repositories for code, lecture videos, presentation slides, and other resources. In this way they may cover any research product you can find on the internet. Whether a metric predicts a scientific impact (citations) fast and well, can be tested. So far it appears that data from online reference managers can predict citations well. You don’t need to wait for citing authors to write and publish their own papers, you just look if they bookmarked your paper for later use. An obvious disadvantage of altmetrics is that they can be gamed. One can buy services from social media providers to advertise posts. Or one can use bots to amplify the impact on social media, or download files thousands of times. Soberingly, researchers found altmetrics not to cover humanities and social sciences, sufficiently. Less than 12% of the research output from these fields showed up in the altmetrics tested. Social Media Use Steffen Lemke and his co-authors asked why there is so little representation of social sciences on social media. Surprisingly, while social scientists usually justify their work with the relevance for the public, they see interacting with it on social media as a waste of time. Some answered in the survey, that they would be overwhelmed by information. It was hard to tell the quality of information on the internet. Others say they’d not be seen as serious would they be caught using social media - even for work - by their supervisors. Metric-Wiseness In Steffen’s article you will find the interesting term “metric-wiseness”. Coined by a different research group, it describes the knowledge of researchers about metrics, and the ability to understand their meaning and applicability. In their research surveys, the *metrics project asks researchers about their knowledge of metrics. Even very junior researchers know about JIF.

This episode of Bart and Dennis Talk is actually our first anniversary episode! While Science for Progress was founded in July 2017, the podcast went online on February 20th 2018! Announcement At the beginning of the episode I announce that I will be on the Twitter “rotating curation account” @RecovingAcad, which belongs to the Recovering Academic Podcast. We had a crossover episode with them, last November. I will be tweeting about leaving academia and transitioning into industry from February 25th to March 2nd. On March 3rd I will do a live video AMA on the account @theaddictivebrain on Instagram. Addictive Brain is a science communication project that was initiated by Chinmaya Sadangi, who was curator on our twitter rotating curation account @sfprocur. My AMA on Instagram starts at 3 p.m. UTC and will take about an hour. Anniversary! At this time we have had 20 episodes, 10 of which were from the phase when I did an episode every three weeks. But since we started doing the B&D episodes, we're publishing an episode every other week. I hope you agree that the production quality has increased. I am still working on improving my editing skills but I think that is also becoming better. Compared to the early episodes we went from one hour to 30 minutes, which I think is better. We also went from a conversation style to a narrative style in our interviews. I would be very interested to and to know what you think about that! Do you prefer the heavily edited version where I try to make everything more clear, or do you prefer to listen to a more natural conversation? I personally think that every episode has actually pretty good content, but the journal impact factor episode with Björn Brembs is a clear winner when it comes to downloads. In terms of content for the future I will continue to do episodes on Academia, topics of general interest like the GMO episode, and science communication. We then looked at some data from the paper on science communication podcast by Lewis MacKenzie. He looked at a number of science podcasts. I am not sure whether our podcast really fits in the study, because it doesn’t fit the criteria 100%. But still we compared our outcomes with those described in the paper. It turns out we are above average dedicated to this podcast! The median lifespan of independent (not affiliated to an institute or company) science podcast is just 16 episodes. I am happy to see that we did beat that already in the first year! The median survival rate of podcast that are affiliated with a company or an Institute of some sort, is 24 episodes, and I've already recorded our episodes 21 and 23, episodes 25 and 27 are in planning (update: actually, by the time this episode is published, I already recorded episode 25, too). Podcast Preview On March 3rd there will be an episode on alternative metrics, with Steffen Lemke. These “Altmetrics” are supposed to complement citation based metrics such as the journal impact factor or the H-index. I talked with Steffen about the advantages and disadvantages of these metrics. On March 31st there will be an episode called “Sleep Faster” with Lars Dittrich. Until recently, Lars studied sleep, and we talked about whether it is a good idea to try shave off a few hours of sleep every night in order to get more productive hours during the day. On April 28th there will be an episode about the Pint of Science with Elodie Chabrol. Pint of Science is a science communication event that happens once a year and has grown massively over the last six years. And finally on May 26th there will be an episode called “Energiewende” with Tanja Kneiske. Tanja works for the Fraunhofer Institute on smart power distribution systems. We will talk about the German transition out of fossil fuels and nuclear power, the efforts to replace them completely with renewable energy. He Jiankui The Chinese researcher who created the first genetically edited babies,

This episode is the first 'Q&A' episode, where my new co-host Dr. Bart Geurten (see episode 8) and I talk about what's new in academia. Our conversations are free form and may lead us astray here and there. We discuss the concept of 'merit' in the natural sciences. And we begin with a quick recap on episode 9, where I talked to Dr. Björn Brembs about the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). The JIF is a metric designed to measure the impact a journal had in the scientific community. There are many problems with how JIFs are generated. What is even worse is the misuse of this metric for estimating the scientific ability of a single author of one article published in a journal. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Bart tells us about how he himself took the news about how the JIF can be influenced by the journals, and the reactions of his colleagues. The omnipresent use of the JIF is guiding the decisions of our generation and it's not questioned enough. Björn Brembs had mentioned how the reviewers at 'top' journals blocked his attempts to publish an article about how the JIF is created. The reviewers claimed that everybody would already know about this. Based on Bart's experience, and the feedback I received on Twitter, this is definitely not the case. Bart suggests bypassing commercial journals to reach the community through society communications and similar outlets (for example 'DZG news', an outlet of the German Zoological Society). We point out a couple of characteristics which make a successful scientist in our eyes, and talk about the difficulty of measuring these. One metric in use is the Hirsch index, which also uses citations of each single article. In principle, this is one step better than the JIF. But it has it's own problems, since the potential citations differ widely, for example by accessibility of the paper (open access versus closed access), dissemination on social media, size of the research field the work is directly relevant to, the type of the article (research report, method paper, review article, etc.). And non of these things have anything to do with the abilities of the authors. What would be merits other than the success of an article? Obviously we didn't find a solution, but we talk about: having an impact on the field by making tools and data availableoutreach to the publicresearcher autonomynovelty of the research approachthe ability to turn funding into positive outcomes (efficiently)leadership and management skills Resume Our advise for early career researchers: Go for high journal impact factor journals, and apply to ALL of the grants and awards. Apart from that, we think it is important for the scientific community to move away from the JIF and towards new metrics, Open Science, leadership training for postdocs and young principle investigators, and modern team management techniques. notes and further readings JIF is positively correlated with retraction raterecent German language article by Björn Brembs in labjournal10 Easy Ways to Increase Your Citation Count: A ChecklistThe open access advantage considering citation, article usage and social media attention

In this week of the Recovering Academic podcast we talk with Dr. Dennis Eckmeier, his journey outside academia and his actual advocacy projects, including the Science for Progress podcast and its twitter rotating twitter account @SfPRocur. This was a joint podcast between the Recovering Academic and the Science for Progress podcasts, so we all discuss our reasons for leaving academia and realized Amanda was the only one of us that never did any experiments in the dark! There's always the transition period, but after you decide that you're going to do it, it feels good. @Doctor_PMS One of the challenges Dennis is facing is that, although advocacy is supposed to be for free, he is still trying to find alternatives of how he can proceed with this and make money with it. Some people make it sound like networking is like another skill, is like learning to act, but I've learned that it's not like that @DennisEckmeier The goal of the Science for Progress podcast is to explain how academia works to people that are not academics. What is sort of the opposite of our recovering academic podcast that tries to show what PhDs can do outside academia. You can contact Dennis through his webpage or his Twitter account: @DennisEckmeier Mentioned in this podcast: Marcha pela ciencia // March for science Lisbon EAT CHEESE LIVE FOREVER This Is Why The 2018 Nobel Prize In Physics, For Lasers, Is So Important Science Magazine article: Sunshine outside the ivory tower Science for Progress podcast: The Journal Impact Factor: how (not) to evaluate researchers – with Björn Brembs

Just some announcements this time In contrast to what was promised in the last podcast episode, we don't have a full question and answer episode this time. I hope this will not happen too often, in future. Dennis is a freelancer now. First thing is that I quit my postdoctoral fellowship to become a freelancer. You can see how I approach this on my website. Basically I want to offer my skills and expertise in scholarship and neuroscience to help people with their academic writing, be it papers or funding applications. This means that I am currently a bit low on finances, which makes financing Science for Progress more difficult, of course. More about how you can help me with that further down. Science for Progress News new volunteers for @sfprocurSusan Leemburg and Katharina Hennig are now helping me to find and curators, and manage the schedule. looking for a facebook page moderatorI have not given our facebook page the love it deserves. So I am looking for someone who would share relevant articles on there and in general keeps it lively. If you are interested, send me an email to socialadmin@scienceforprogress.eu inviting opinion piecesI hope you noticed that I made some design changes to make these bog posts more pleasing to the eye, in particular for longer reads. This is because I want to invite writers to publish opinion pieces with us. Sadly, I can not pay for such articles. I would really like to commission pieces to professional writers, but I simply can't. So if you are thinking about contributing an article despite of that, make sure it includes some promotion for yourself or your own project. More podcast episodes!I want to add some more discussion to the podcast. But because the interview episodes are usually already pretty dense in information and fill 30 minutes easily, I don't want to add this discussion to the interview. It is also good to have some time between interview and discussion so I can gather some feedback from you, our listeners. So we will alternate interviews and 'Q&A episodes', in which we will talk about some news, what is going on in Science for Progress, and then discuss the previous interview. This format should also be about 30 minutes in duration. This also means that we are moving from an episode every three weeks, to an episode every two weeks. Feedback Intersting interview with @brembs about journal impact factors- for people who know about the issues always interesting, for those who don’t even more important! #science #WhatScienceIsImpacting https://t.co/RnQwpajLc5— Simon Sprecher (@simon_sprecher) 17. September 2018 This is a great comment! Being interesting to people who know about the issue while being important to those who know is pretty much the sweet spot where I want the podcast to be. I hope there will be many more episodes receiving praise like this! I'm listening to @SciForProgress podcast on impact factor. Everyone should listen at least to the 1st 5 minutes of it. When they say this is known: I did not know! And I've been doing science for 10 years now.— Science is not Glamorous (@Science_glamour) 29. September 2018 I have been thinking the exact same thing! I knew things weren't 100% correct with the Journal Impact Factor, but I didn't know about the details, either! When Björn Brembs says 'it is known' he didn't mean everybody is aware, but that the information is openly available, if you look for it. Which I think most of us don't! Well, its wonderfull. As authentic and on spot as everything in the project— Zé (@93Antidote93) 13. September 2018 What more can I say than that this warms my heart. :D BECOMING A PATREON COMMUNITY! Become a Patron! As I mentioned further up, I currently do not have a steady income and it may take a while to get there. This is why I need your help to continue investing my time and money into improving and growing Science for Progress activities.

What is the Journal Impact Factor? The Journal Impact Factor is widely used as a tool to evaluate studies, and researchers. It supposedly measures the quality of a journal by scoring how many citations an average article in this journal achieves. Committees making hiring and funding decisions use the 'JIF' as an approximation for the quality of the work a researcher has published, and in extension as an approximation for the capabilities of an applicant. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! JIF as a measure of researcher merit I find this practice already highly questionable. First of all, it appears the formula calculates a statistical mean. However, no article can receive less than 0 citations, while there is no upper limit to citations. Most articles - across all journal - receive only very few citations, and only a few may receive a lot of citations. This means we have a 'skewed distribution' when we plot how many papers received how many citations. The statistical mean, however, is not applicable for skewed distributions. Moreover, basic statistics and probability tell us that if you blindly choose one paper from a journal, it is impossible to predict -or even roughly estimate - its quality by the average citation rate, alone. It is further impossible to know the author's actual contribution to said paper. Thus, we are already stacking three statistical fallacies by applying JIF to evaluate researchers. But this is just the beginning! Journals don't have an interest in the Journal Impact Factor as a tool for science evaluation. Their interest is in the advertising effect of the JIF. As we learn from our guest, Dr. Björn Brembs (professor for neurogenetics at University of Regensburg), journals negotiate with the private company Clarivate Analytics (in the past it was Reuters) that provides the numbers. Especially larger publishers have a lot of room to influence the numbers above and below the division line in their favor. Reputation is not quality. There is one thing the Journal Impact Factor can tell us: how good the reputation of the journal is among researchers. But does that really mean anything substantial? Björn Brembs reviewed a large body of studies that compared different measures of scientific rigor with the impact factor of journals. He finds that in most research fields the impact factor doesn't tell you anything about the quality of the work. In some fields it may even be a predictor of unreliable science! This reflects the tendency of high ranking journals to prefer novelty over quality. How does this affect science and academia? The JIF is omnipresent. A CV (the academic resume) is not only judged by the name of the journals in a publication list. Another factor is the funding a researcher has been able to get. However, funding committees may also use JIF to evaluate whether an applicant is worthy of funding. Another point on a CV is the reputation of the advisers, who were also evaluated by their publications and funding. Another important point on a CV is the reputation of the institute one worked at, which is to some degree evaluated by the publications and the funding of their principle investigators. It is easy to see how this puts a lot of power into the hands of the editors of high ranking journals. Björn Brembs is concerned about the probable effect this has on the quality of science overall. If the ability to woe editors and write persuasive stories leads to more success than rigorous science, researchers will behave accordingly. And they will also teach their students to put even more emphasis on their editor persuasion skills. Of course not all committees use JIF to determine who gets an interview. But still the best strategy for early career researchers is to put all their efforts into pushing their work into high ranking journals. What now?! We also talk about possible solutions to the problem.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Academic publishing that is. And actually not only in Denmark. Even though open access publishing has picked up quite a bit over the last years, academic publishing today is still rather dominated by legacy publishers who mainly play their old game without much signs of changing and adapting to current technological and scientific developments. In fact, many of them are not even showing much willingness to consider changing. A lot of the recent studies and arguments point out that a complete transition to open access publishing potentially yields many positive social effects for the academic system and society as a whole, and even might achieved quite substantial savings. We had the great opportunity to talk Björn Brembs about these points, the obstacles, the necessary steps and a vision of how a publishing infrastructure could look like. We apologize for the less optimal audio quality and hope you're still enjoying the conversation. Have fun!

I talk to scientist Bjoern Brembs about the problems with proprietary journal companies control over scientific publishing. We imagine a better world of open science that is technologically feasible, discuss the German consortium negotiation with the journal companies, and think about what academics could start to do in this world about the problem.