Definition of a Drug

A drug is "any substance which, when injected into a laboratory rat, produces a scientific paper". An interesting definition that I found in Technical and Regulatory Challenges to Biomedical Research on Dietary Supplements.

Recognizing and Encouraging Timely Dissemination

There is an interesting Guest Editorial published in Winter 2009/2010 issue of Biomedical Computation Review entitled Recognizing and Encouraging Timely Dissemination. One of the differences between scientists and open source developers, that I can see, is that open source development is done by programmers who stay longer at their position. In contrast, postdocs, who write large number of publications, are not interested in investing more time to make their results more accessible to public.

That being said, there are also many open source project that are no longer being developed. What I think is missing in modern scientific publications are some of the Web 2.0 features that make sites like Wikipedia a success. One interesting development in this respect is PLoS Currents: Influenza.

Speaking of PLoS, check out this funny "Down the impact factor ladder" video: