# Paper of the Month?



## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

I'd really like to see DB have a paper of the month for discussion purposes or something like that, but I have no idea how many people here have institutional journal access. Are there enough of us here that this is something we could do? I think it'd be a good learning experience for all of us, and a chance to discuss ongoing Dendrobatid research. Good for husbandry, good for science, and good fun! If this is something any of you can and/or want to do, I'd love to hear it.


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## allegedhuman (Nov 19, 2014)

Fun idea. I'd hate to excluded anyone interested just because they don't have access to the journal databases through. Many papers are open access but for the others journal that are not so easy to get if not at an institution could we offer to share pdfs (of the journal articles...not frogs...hah) of the articles so nobody was left out who really wanted to learn and discuss?


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

allegedhuman said:


> Fun idea. I'd hate to excluded anyone interested just because they don't have access to the journal databases through. Many papers are open access but for the others journal that are not so easy to get if not at an institution could we offer to share pdfs (of the journal articles...not frogs...hah) of the articles so nobody was left out who really wanted to learn and discuss?


I thought about just posting the pdf for folks, but I figured I'd be violating a large number of copyright laws by doing so if the journal wasn't open access. I'm not sure of a way around that at this point, but I'm open to suggestions.


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## medusa (Oct 30, 2011)

Ya its a big copyright violation to post the pdf. You can post the citation for those with journal access to track down, or if the pdf version is on google scholar you can post a link for people to retrieve it through there. Otherwise, people can usually at least view the abstract on google scholar.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Not sure how this works for copyright, but many faculty members will post .pdfs of their papers on their website (or at least they used to when I was in the game). Would it be a violation to link to the .pdf that the authors post on their websites?

Mark


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## medusa (Oct 30, 2011)

Yes, when you publish a peer reviewed paper the stipulations are usually that you, as the author, are allowed to post it on your own personal website. The journal has control of all other avenues of distribution. I do not think there is a problem with posting a link to a pdf on a website, but someone please correct me if I am wrong. Posting links to open access journals, special free issues or those on google scholar should be fine.


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

We could initially try to stick to just public/google scholar papers; but I'm not sure what all is available that way. I guess we can all start looking, find a good one, and then have at it!


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

I actually did find a paper on maternal provisioning of alkaloids that is public through google scholar, it's short, easy read. Any interest in that one?


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## hydrophyte (Jun 5, 2009)

It takes some effort to find them, but you could just use papers that are published on the Internet for open use. 

How about a second club for publications about plants?


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

Yeah, I think for the time being, we'll have to stick with public papers. Which is fine, definitely some good ones out there. And I'm all for including plant papers! We could alternate every other month, or, if there's enough interest in a planted paper of the month we could do that too in addition to the dart frog paper.


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

Well, I'm getting ready to head out on a 7 day drive here in the next few days as the wife and I prepare to move, once I get back into civilization and settled into a new (temporary) place, should we try and get this started? I suppose I could certainly post the paper I was thinking of earlier, and just miss out on any discussion/questions on it, but I'd like to be around for that . Also, we should discuss a method of picking the paper. Vote on a selection at the end of a month? Rotate picking papers between participating members?


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## Groundhog (Dec 17, 2006)

Tarantula Guy: Yours is one idea I wish I could have "Liked" twice! This is a wonderful idea. Q: Why, as a learning/teaching entity, would we be violating any laws to post papers? 

--We would of course cite the author;
--Are not charging any fees;

Don't these cats want people sitting around discussing their papers? Or is the idea that, once published in the _American Journal of Neotropical Dickbones_,
we need to be buying said journal in order to read the paper?

What is so different from a professor xeroxing an article for a class to read?!?


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## spider107 (Apr 1, 2008)

A good source of free peered reviewed papers is https://peerj.com/


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## spider107 (Apr 1, 2008)

This is a cool paper, Number of genes controlling a quantitative trait in a hybrid zone of the aposematic frog Ranitomeya imitator | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

Groundhog said:


> Tarantula Guy: Yours is one idea I wish I could have "Liked" twice! This is a wonderful idea. Q: Why, as a learning/teaching entity, would we be violating any laws to post papers?
> 
> --We would of course cite the author;
> --Are not charging any fees;
> ...



I agree completely in a philosophical sense. I have idea what the legal requirements are for that though. Something to look into I suppose, we might also be able to email the author of said paper and ask their permission to reprint it here. That being said, should we go ahead and get this started? I'm now officially (temporarily) moved into a new place back down in the lower 48, so I've got some time! Should we start with that paper posted by spider? I was thinking something a bit less technical than genetic analyses to start with though, something a bit more accessible to get our feet wet, as it were.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

I am not at all familiar with this domain of literature, but in the journals that I (used to) read, there were occasionally survey or review papers that were sort of meta analyses of the current state of the field. Are there any relatively-recent papers that could get us caught up on what the general areas of research on Dendrobatids are? Maybe it would have to be more specific like the ecology or classification/cladistics of the Family, but a survey paper might be a better entry point. Is anyone aware of anything like that?

Mark


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

Let me do some looking. Hopefully there's something out there like that. Sound like a good first paper then? A meta-analysis of ongoing research or something close to those lines?


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

Well, there doesn't seem to be a paper that I can find publicly that summarizes dendrobatid research efforts. The one that got closest talked about husbandry in labs, and ongoing alkaloid research. It actually would make a decent first paper, it's easy reading, and most of it is stuff we should already know, but it'd make a good intro paper to get us warmed up I think. Should we go ahead and go with it? I'd like to get this actually started!


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

a hill said:


> I believe you should be fine in terms of it being for non-commercial use and for educational purposes. Ed would be the person to ask.
> 
> If not, people who are seriously interested could subscribe to the journals or something.
> 
> ...



Journal access is prohibitively expensive. Even a single *article* can run 40$. Access to just one journal can be several hundred to 1000+ per year. It's why those of us with institutional journal access treasure it . We can do more digging, maybe asking author for reprint permission, or something like that. I wouldn't expect dendroboard to shell out for institutional access tho; that's obviously out of the cards. Too much money, not a restricted user base, etc.


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## ryangreenway (Apr 30, 2010)

I think the best way to implement this might be to follow the format that most journal clubs at universities follow. The person who picks the paper provides a short synopsis of the article, then poses 3-5 questions to the group (regarding the applicability of the methods, what the results show, how the authors interpret the results, possible implications, etc.) in the hopes of fostering a good discussion.

Also, for posting papers on DB, we could use a simple disclaimer such as this one from a colleagues website: 
"By accessing any of the following PDF files, you are effectively requesting a reprint for research or educational purposes. These publications may not be used for commercial purposes under any circumstances, and the definitive version of these journal publications are found on respective publisher websites."
Seems to be how websites like Research Gate get around copyright infringement. Then again, I'm no lawyer and this could all very well still be illegal.


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