I got my first major local press story since moving to Davis yesterday. The Sacramento News and Review ran a cover story on the U. C. Davis Genome Center, featuring me, Katie Pollard, and the director of the center Richard Michelmore. I of course do not recall saying any of the things that I am quoted saying but I certainly recall saying things close to what was quoted so in this case the reporter (Ralph Brave) seems to have done a fair job. I guess I would quibble a tiny bit with my portrayal in terms of the discussion of synthetic biology (I believe it is a powerful tool but that the practitioners downplay the risks).
The best part of the story - they featured my work on the glassy winged sharpshooter symbionts that we published in PLoS Biology earlier this year. That is (hopefully) good for me since the sharpshooter is a big deal out here in N. California since it is a vector for Pierce's Disease in grapes. Plus, they were able to use a figure from my paper since of course, the paper in fully Open Access. So my work gets some extra exposure that might have been more difficult for the paper to pull off if it was published in a non Open Access journal. In essence, Open Access publishing is the gift that keeps on giving. As long as I keep getting credit for it, it is great for me that people do not have to get permission or pay a fee to use figures from my papers.
Added afterwards:
- Egghead ran a story on this
OK. I know I am not supposed to do this. But hey, are there really any rules for blogs? I got my first major local press story since moving to Davis yesterday.
ReplyDeleteNah, self-promotion is the *main* purpose of running a blog; The ideal case is get mass media recognition for doing nothing more than running the blog itself (cf. Wonkette, Kos, PZ Myers, etc.)
Yeah I guess I knew that
ReplyDeleteJon -- you can still have copyright in your figures if you publish other than in the open access literature, you know...
ReplyDeleteYes I realize that but this was not an issue of copyright. This was an issue of permissions --- in many cases for non Open Access journals, even when the author gets copyright, they sign over permission to distribute their work and thus are not technically allowed to give other people permission to reproduce their figures. For PLoS and other Open Access journals, permission is given in advance and thus the material can be used for basically any purpose without the need to the paperwork of requesting permission.
ReplyDelete