Bishop Hill Nature Climate Change
Nov 4, 2010 Climate: other FOI Nature's new journal Nature Climate Change edges its way closer to launch. There is a puff piece from the editor, Olive Heffernan here.
The journal's policy on data and code is worth a comment:
By ensuring that our authors make their data available to readers on request, the editorial team at Nature Climate Change will commit itself wholeheartedly to promoting transparency in climate research.
I would have thought a wholehearted commitment might involve the authors of papers submitting data and code to the journal at the same time as they submit the manuscript. A commitment merely to ask authors after the event was, of course, behind most of the scandals over climate science data in the last ten years.
Will Nature Climate Change demand that code be available as well as data? Will they withdraw papers if authors refuse to release data and code? I can't say I'm confident.
Reader Comments (13)
Only Nature could bring out a new journal as the whole genre goes down the toilet pan!
" in subject areas from atmospheric physics to psychology and policy"
And there we go again, what has
science got to do with psychology and even greater, policy! Once again politics creeping in!
Just do the science!
Dear Bish
Did you catch the latest article from Simon Lewis in the latest issue of Nature? 'Interesting' would be one way of putting it. :)
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101103/full/468007a.html
Olive tells us: With this new journal, we aim to take the discussion on climate change both to a new level and to a broader range of readers.
A broader range of readers? I just whisper this, lass, but the readership of this subject has gone about as far as it can go and is already draining... Check the next story on Bishop Hill below (Where did they go wrong?) for a hint; a nudge even.
I hope that readers will support Nature in their endeavour and automatically request the data on publication of any paper that interests them.
Poor old Nature forever damned by "Mike's Nature trick"
"Until readers' preferences change and we can move fully into the digital domain, we are working to ensure that we produce the print version of our journal as sustainably as possible."
hahahaha.
A simple Google search shows that Olive Heffernan is twice as likely to use the word 'denier' than 'sceptic'.
I don't see how Nature Climate Change will be any different from Nature Reports Climate Change with Olive Heffernan remaining as Chief Editor.
The psychology aspect is probably going to be along these lines: those who do not accept catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, have a cognitive "blind spot".
I had forgotten the wonderful Marty Feldman still used to accompany that article. Ah, he was wonderful -- maybe I'll browse through a scene or two of "Young Frankenstein" tonight.
I find it interesting that olive is a mixture of mostly a mid-to-pale green with tones of earth brown.
Harold W - seconded!! One great movie!! :-)
Next initiative:
Nature Journal of Unicorn Studies
"the editorial team at Nature Climate Change will commit itself wholeheartedly to promoting transparency"
As opposed to the policy of its parent publication, presumably...
Data without the methodology is useless, as shown in the Harry_Readme file.
It is what is done with (and to) the data that matters, given that there seems to be so many statistical tricks and manipulations being done to it.