Talk:Science (journal)

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Contents 1 Excess information 2 Imputation should be removed 3 Science vs Nature 4 History 5 Famous controversies 6 Fair use rationale for Image:ScienceMagCover23June2001 72.jpg

[edit] Excess information

The text dealing with the MDMA article is much too long. The emphasis of the article is now almost exclusively on the failings of the Science editorial policy, something I think is not quite fair. JFW | T@lk 08:00, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 08:41, 2004 May 14 (UTC)) I agree. I've stripped it out to its own page. See talk there.

[edit] Imputation should be removed

May I ask what purpose the link to the article "Science" accused of 'grabbing headlines' is meant to serve? I highly recommend this link to be removed. If someone wishes to criticize that MDMA has been falsely accused of causing neuronal damage, he or she should write a personal webpage on the issue. But I think such a link has no place in an encyclopedia like wikipedia.

The link has been relocated to the more appropriate article discussing the controversy retracted article on neurotoxicity of ecstasy. --Lexor|Talk 12:15, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In addition, the phrase "The publication of one particular article in the 23 September 2002 issue of Science (volume 297, pages 2260-3) has recently been questioned following the publishing and retraction of Dr. George Ricaurte's article on the psychotropic drug ecstasy." seems out of place and completely ridiculous as well. The retraction of an article is something that happens from time to time even in the most prestigious journals. The discussion of whether the editors of Science Magazine played a doubtful role in not rejecting the article from the outset - at a time when antidrug legislation was discussed in Congress - is a matter that should be discussed by the press and by the scientific community. Please remove this entry. In my view, such a discussion has no place in an encyclopedia at all.

Peter, a researcher from the University of Vienna

(William M. Connolley 09:05, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)) I have reverted to an earlier version. Now the para has been removed, but a link to a wiki page about the MDMA stuff is restored. As to the rest, I'm not sure I agre with out about the role of wiki.

ps: you can't add text like "see discussion" to the article.

There are several good reasons to include mention of the retracted article. First, it illustrates that editors and scientists make errors. The way to correct systems that produce errors is to openly discuss the problem. Second, the retraction illustrates an important part of self-correction within the process of doing science. If you look at the Wikipedia article for the New York Times you will see that it includes a section on problems that that publication has had [1]. The fact that a retraction was the first item anyone wanted to add to the Science Wikipedia page is unfortunate. It just needs to be balanced by additional positive information. JWSchmidt 00:49, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, I have reinstated the link to the retracted article on neurotoxicity of ecstasy. --Lexor|Talk 02:54, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Science vs Nature

"Science tends to provide more review articles which summarise recent progress in a field of research to a general audience, whereas Nature tends to have more specialised articles which people from outside the field may find difficult to understand."

The above was called "biased comparison of Nature and Science" and removed from the article by User:Senthil (23:50, 25 September 2005). The article correctly mentions the "competition" between Science and Nature and I see nothing wrong with trying to characterize the differences between the two journals. I think the deleted text (above) is basically a correct characterization of some of the differences between the two journals. Question: in what way was the deleted text "biased"? --JWSchmidt 12:34, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. As a working scientist, I tend to see Nature and Science as being fairly interchangeable. Both have similar classes of articles (normal papers, longer review-like-papers, news items, editorials, readers' letters, etc.), and both cover a similar range of topics (in the distribution of articles on topics, both also reflect the growing size of the biomed field). So although I disagree with the "biased" remark by Senthil, I don't entirely agree about the compositional differences between the journals (although I've never stopped to work it out). When I think of differences between them at all, I tend to think of them as representing the first port-of-call for European (Nature) and US (Science) researchers. I'd be interested to read any detailed breakdown of their contents. --Plumbago 12:59, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd mostly go with Plumbago: they are fairly interchangeable, though with differences in tone perhaps. William M. Connolley 14:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC).

What about PNAS (Procedings of the National Academy of Science)? I believe that "Science", "Nature", and "PNAS" were all voted as the three most respected, high profile general science journals in a survey. I'm 95% sure that I read it in a Science issue, so I may ahve to dig back into by back issues and check. Nevertheless, does anyone else agree of disagree that "PNAS" should also be included as a peer of "Nature" and "Science"?Raivein 05:23, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, what's its impact factor? Nature and Science weigh in at about 30, but I'm not sure where PNAS falls. Can you check? I've certainly never heard them put on an equal footing, but I'm not sufficiently au fait with PNAS to be sure. --Plumbago 09:41, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

PNAS is 10. Nature and Science are 32. I don't think PNAS ranks up with them. In fact...

Mark    Rank    Abbreviated Journal Title
(linked to journal information)         ISSN            Total Cites IF  Immediacy
Index   Articles        Cited
Half-life
        1       ANNU REV IMMUNOL        0732-0582       14357   52.431  6.100   30      5.9
        2       CA-CANCER J CLIN        0007-9235       3725    44.515                  3.3
        3       NEW ENGL J MED          0028-4793       159498  38.570  10.478  316     6.9
        4       NAT REV CANCER          1474-175X       6618    36.557  4.152   79      2.3
        5       PHYSIOL REV             0031-9333       14671   33.918  4.029   35      6.7
        6       NAT REV MOL CELL BIO    1471-0072       9446    33.170  4.167   84      2.8
        7       REV MOD PHYS            0034-6861       17765   32.771  5.826   23      >10.0
        8       NAT REV IMMUNOL         1474-1733       5957    32.695  3.250   80      2.2
        9       NATURE                  0028-0836       363374  32.182  6.089   878     7.2
        10      SCIENCE                 0036-8075       332803  31.853  7.379   845     7.0
        11      ANNU REV BIOCHEM        0066-4154       16487   31.538  4.182   33      7.9
        12      NAT MED                 1078-8956       38657   31.223  5.720   168     4.7
        13      CELL                    0092-8674       136472  28.389  7.632   288     7.9
        14      NAT IMMUNOL             1529-2908       14063   27.586  5.400   130     2.7
        15      JAMA-J AM MED ASSOC     0098-7484       88864   24.831  5.499   351     6.3
        16      NAT GENET               1061-4036       49529   24.695  5.623   191     5.1
        17      ANNU REV NEUROSCI       0147-006X       8093    23.143  2.154   26      6.3
        18      PHARMACOL REV           0031-6997       7800    22.837  1.105   19      6.5
        19      NAT BIOTECHNOL          1087-0156       18169   22.355  4.942   138     4.0
        20      LANCET                  0140-6736       126002  21.713  5.827   415     6.8
        ...
        88      P NATL ACAD SCI USA     0027-8424       345309  10.452  1.923   3084    6.7

But if you refine your criterion to "total cites > 200,000 AND I.F." then PNAS is #3. William M. Connolley 21:49, 19 November 2005 (UTC).

Good point, but journal importance is usually keyed to impact factor. If you publish more far papers per year, your total impact can be greater even if each of your papers is cited far less. The table above does make the interesting point that Nature and Science are both less significant in impact factor than several other journals. Still, outside of biomed, they are still considered (and the table agrees with this) the premier journals of science. Though given their obsession with fashionable/exciting science, and their number of retractions (relative to that of other journals), one could justifiably wonder ... --Plumbago 11:40, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

For astronomy I would tend to agree with JWSchmidt -- the ratios of U.S. to European authors in Nature and Science are similar (although certainly not identical). In astronomy new results tend to appear piecemeal, in cryptic form in Nature followed by a summary article a few months later explaining what has been going on in Science, although this is not a general rule. E.g. gamma-ray burst results (e.g. recent gamma-ray burst observations 1999Natur.398..400A, 1999Natur.398..389K, 2003Natur.422..284F, 2003Natur.423..844P, 2003Natur.423..843U, 2005Natur.435..181B), tend to be published within a couple of months of the burst in Nature (even when most of the authors are from the US) but astronomers would expect to see papers which summarise the gradual progress in theoretical explanation of these events and statistical analysis in Science (I have also just spotted 2005Sci...309.1833B which discusses all bursts with anomalous x-ray spectra between 23 December 2004 and 5 May 2005 -- I have to admit that this is not much of a review really as there are only two anomolous bursts in this period!). Perhaps this is different in other fields. Rnt20 14:48, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

• This observation is useful to document in the article as it helps people understand the relative editorial focus of the two publications. It is also useful to put this observation and others like it in a time-context as the strengths and weaknesses of the two in particular areas of scientific inquiry will change over time as the editorial board changes. Courtland 14:57, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Question for User:Rnt20: So you are not talking about formal review articles? You are talking about "regular" articles such as: "Bright x-ray flares in gamma-ray burst afterglows" (Entrez PubMed 16109845) and "An asymmetric energetic type Ic supernova viewed off-axis, and a link to gamma ray bursts" (Entrez PubMed 16109845)? -- Yes I was talking about the style of "regular" articles, although the second of these is clearly very specific to one astronomical event! Rnt20 17:46, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Oops, I should probably qualify my Europe/US remark. All I meant was that of the scientists that I know (hardly a representative sample) European ones (specifically UK ones) tend to favour Nature, while US ones tend to favour Science. However, even with this preference, I've never heard anyone placing one above the other (although their citation indices are not identical). I think people just prefer their "local". Anyway, I thought that I'd better say something before this (useful) discussion drifts off in a direction I didn't intend. --Plumbago 16:59, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I removed this line ("Science tends to provide more review articles which summarise recent progress in a field of research to a general audience, whereas Nature tends to have more specialised articles which people from outside the field may find difficult to understand.") only because it indirectly implies that regular articles in Nature tend to be incomprehensible and those published in Science tend to be better understood. I feel that both the journals are on the same level when it comes to understanding since both publish reviews, research articles etc. from a fairly common pool of subjects such as biology, astronomy, earth science etc. --Senthil 19:40 27 November 2005 (IST)

I feel like the term "arch-rival" in the intro paragraph smacks of NPOV violation. Certainly, the journals compete to be THE top science journal of the world, but "arch-rival" implies a more aggressive form of competition, and perhaps mutual ill-will. Can anyone provide support of the arch-rivalry, or should we delete it? --ragesoss 07:56, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I was a staff member at AAAS from 1996-2001. There was definitely an attitude within the organization that Nature was our main competitor and rival. "Arch-rival" might be too strong a phrase, but higher level staff members definitely expressed an attitude that Nature was our main rival. Some of my co-workers were miffed that Nature was dragging its feet when it came time to offer libraries and institutions site licenses to the online version of the journal. I also remember some disappointment that the IHGHC were publishing their papers and chart of the human genome in Nature. The human genome was published in both magazines during the same week, with Science featuring the work from Craig Ventner and Celera. Chuck0 18:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History

Most of the information for the history section was taken from the excellent online article at http://archives.aaas.org/exhibit/ This is a great resource for further additions to this article. My question is how to cite it? Should I just have one citation at the end of the history section, or should I cite individual pages of the online AAAS article following each sentence? Sayeth 17:15, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Famous controversies

Why a mention of the MDMA controversy but not the more recent Jan Hendrik Schon or Woo Suk Hwang scandals? Readers who come to this article may be looking for the stem cell information in particular. The Hwang article has been kept nicely up-to-date. Alison Chaiken 03:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:ScienceMagCover23June2001 72.jpg

Image:ScienceMagCover23June2001 72.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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