ScienceBlogs is no more: Confessions of a Science Librarian is moving As of November 1st, 2017, ScienceBlogs is shutting down, necessitating relocation of this blog. It's been over eight years and 1279 posts. It's been predatory open access publishers, April Fool's posts and multiple wars on science. A long and wonderful trip, career-transforming, network building and an awful lot of fun. Over that period of time, ScienceBlogs has gone from the 800 pound gorilla of…

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Science in Canada: Save PEARL, The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory Deja vu all over again. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Canadian science under the Harper government from 2006 to 2015 was a horrific era of cuts and closures and muzzling and a whole lot of other attack on science. One of the most egregious was the threat to close the PEARL arctic research station. (PEARL website) Fortunately,…

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The Trump War on Science: Daring blindness, Denying climate change, Destroying the EPA and other daily disasters The last one of these was in mid-June, so we're picking up all the summer stories of scientific mayhem in the Trump era. The last couple of months have seemed especially apocalyptic, with Nazis marching in the streets and nuclear war suddenly not so distant a possibility. But along with those macro-level issues, Trump and his cronies are…

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Friday Fun: Is Game of Thrones an allegory for global climate change? After a bit of an unexpected summer hiatus, I'm back to regular blogging, at least as regular as it's been the last year or two. Of course, I'm a committed Game of Thrones fan. I read the first book in paperback soon after it was reprinted, some twenty years ago. And I've also been a fan of the HBO series, which though a…

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The Trump War on Science: EPA budget cuts, More on climate change, The war on wildlife and other recent stories Another couple of weeks' worth of stories about how science is faring under the Donald Trump regime. If I'm missing anything important, please let me know either in the comments or at my email jdupuis at yorku dot ca. If you want to use a non-work email for me, it's dupuisj at gmail dot com.…

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Around the Web: A quick list of readings on "predatory" open access journals As a kind of quick follow up to my long ago post on Some perspective on “predatory” open access journals (presentation version, more or less, here and very short video version here) and in partial response to the recent What I learned from predatory publishers, I thought I would gather a bunch of worthwhile items here today. Want to prepare yourself to…

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The Donald Trump War on Science: Pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement and other recent stories For people who are wondering why I'm not doing more of my patented chronologies or collections of posts, the answer is pretty simple. There's so damn much going on it's hard for me to find the time and mental energy to bring it all together. I'm currently working on posts covering the Trump budget proposal as well as…

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Job posting: Physical Sciences Librarian and Head of Steacie Science and Engineering Library, York University, Toronto Come work with me! Be my department head! Here's the full posting: Position Rank: Full Time Tenure Stream - Assistant/Associate/Senior LibrarianDiscipline/Field: Head of Steacie Science and Engineering LibraryHome Faculty: LibrariesHome Department/Area/Division: Steacie Science and Engineering LibraryAffiliation/Union: YUFAPosition Start Date: October 1, 2017 Physical Sciences Librarian and Head of Steacie Science and Engineering Library, York University Libraries, York University York…

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Friday Fun: Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary Like with La La Land a few months back, here we have a jazz-themed documentary that I haven't seen yet but have read an awful lot about. Unlike La La Land, I actually intend to see Chasing Trane and actually have tickets to see an upcoming showing at a Toronto theatre. The reviews seem fantastic, with more or less unanimous opinion that the film does justice to…

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My remarks at the Toronto March for Science Many thanks to the organizers of this past weekend's March on Science here in Toronto. They invited me to be part of the amazing roster of speakers for the event. I was honoured to take part and offer some of the lessons I've learned in the course of my various listing projects over the last number of years, especially the epic chronology of the Harper years. There's…

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