let journals bid: our long article got triaged today by a bunch of low-level editors at a “prestigious” commercial journal for “lack of potential for high-level impact”. of course, it took them two weeks to tell us this. and of course, we disagree, and now have the option of either appealing their decision not to send it out for review or to try another journal. plos one is a great step forward, but for now, impact factors still matter, and my friend david zetland has a very interesting idea to let journals bid for articles placed in an e-bay like repository. of course, it may not come to pass any time soon unless there is concerted support, but the idea and the details are very interesting and could spur a movement of some sort.

applied knowledge: From this week’s Nature: “Canadian scientists have found that being close to the starting gun startles runners into a speedier start. The team suggests that Canada’s Olympic runners wear cranked-up hearing aids in Beijing to get the best reaction time off the blocks.” Of course, reaction-time decreases with loudness, and those milliseconds matter in the short sprints. As usual, wonder why no one thought of this before !