Open access and open minded – the Beilstein Magazine offers a platform for essays and interviews with interdisciplinary content, stimulating ideas and fruitful discussions. It is designed for open-minded scientists – from natural sciences and humanities – who are interested in crossing traditional subject boundaries.
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You are cordially invited to submit an essay. For further information please have a look at our Instructions for Authors.
Reducing uncertainty:
the raison d'être of open science?
Jeremy G. Frey* and Colin Bird
Science has been aware for centuries of the idea of known unknowns and unknown unknowns, even though scientists would articulate the notion differently from Donald Rumsfeld. The methodology of science is to investigate the known unknowns, striving to reduce uncertainty, but occasionally the unexpected happens and the scientist enters the realm of unknown unknowns. Uncertainty reduces when research is reproducible...
The SCIentific publishing conundrum:
A perspective from chemistry
Stephen A. Matlin,* Goverdhan Mehta, Alain Krief and Henning Hopf
The present model for scientific publishing – in the field of chemical sciences – is flawed. It is damaging not only to science but also to the careers of many scientists and to the reputation of the field of scientific publishing as an honest, ethical and respected endeavour. It is time for the stakeholders in science publishing to seek new, systemic approaches that comprehensively address the fundamental flaws. The outlines of an action plan for the scientific community to generate such a process are suggested.
Research Integrity starts with educating young scientists.
Interview with Tchavdar Todorov, Atomistic Simulation Centre, Queen's University Belfast
Research integrity in an increasingly competitive and complex world
Irene M. Hames
Researchers cherry-picking results to fit their hypotheses, altering images inappropriately to create cleaner and more convincing data, plagiarizing other researchers' papers and ideas – these are quite common stories nowadays (as even a quick look at the Retraction Watch blog will show). Reports are also appearing in the mainstream media, sometimes with sensationalized headlines...
Calculations and simulations:
an invaluable resource
Timothy Clark
What is the role of calculations, modeling and simulation in chemistry and biology? The answer to this question is time dependent and is changing ever faster as Moore's Law continues to describe the increase in our computational power. Gordon Moore's editorial in Electronics Magazine was published the day before my 16th birthday. Contrary to what we like to believe, Moore was careful to limit his prognosis to the next decade...
How drugs pass through biological cell membranes – a paradigm shift in our understanding?
Douglas B. Kell
It was once widely believed, and text books still portray it thus, that much (or even most) of the flux of pharmaceutical drugs into biological cells occurs by diffusion through whatever lipid bilayers may be present. A number of logical fallacies underpin this belief. Instead, an increasing amount of evidence indicates, perhaps surprisingly, that such phospholipid bilayer-mediated diffusion is in fact negligible in intact cells...
Is Organic Chemistry Science - and does this question make any sense at all?
Andreas Kirschning and Thomas A. C. Reydon
One could say that we live in the molecular age. The biological and biomedical sciences, the geosciences, medicine and psychology, among others, have all been moving towards a molecular description and understanding of the phenomena they study ...
The Internet of Chemical Things
Steven V. Ley, Daniel E. Fitzpatrick, Richard J. Ingham and Nikzad Nikbin
The Internet of Things (IoT) [...] concerns the interconnection and effective networking of machines and computing devices through the infrastructure of the internet. Yet simply stated like this, it does not do justice to what is becoming a revolutionary phenomenon in terms of how our electronic-based physical objects (Things) will communicate and interact into the future ...
Thoughts on organic chemistry
An interview with Victor Snieckus
Victor Snieckus, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, is talking about the biggest challenges in organic chemistry in the next ten years.
Make it visible – Scientific Videos on Beilstein TV
Sometimes written words are not enough. To explain increasingly complex research results text and graphics often reach the limits of what can be represented. It is here that Beilstein TV bridges the gap for a clearer understanding by merging of presentation, animation and documentation into a single sequence ...
In contrast to the peer-reviewed online journals Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry and Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, the Beilstein Magazine offers authors the chance to present ideas that go beyond their everyday research activities. It is an invitation to give new perspectives and thought-provoking views on science which stimulate readers to look beyond the horizon.
When submitting an essay to the Beilstein Magazine, authors are not charged any publication fee. All publication costs for the magazine are covered completely by the Beilstein-Institut. About one to two times a year, selected articles of the magazine are published in print and distributed together with printed volumes of the Beilstein journals.
www.beilstein-magazine.org
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