When I began work at the University of Auckland I inherited Bill’s post-graduate diploma and MSc course on Marine Reserves. We became close friends and spent a lot of time talking about reserves and other topics. Here are some links to articles about him and radio interviews. They list his numerous awards. Movies Bill Ballantine:
We should think carefully about where we publish. Not only should we ask ourselves if the journal is appropriate (right audience) and well-respected (who else publishes there and who is on the Editorial Board), but who profits from our work. Apparently, the big science publishers make larger profits than most industries, in the order of
History tells us that, as human populations expanded from Africa, there was a coincidental extinction of large animals in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. People then could not have known that their hunting was causing global-scale extinction of species. We know better. Business, as usual, will see the extinction of more large
One needs to be time-efficient in doing peer review. If one followed the lengthy guidelines provided by some journals to do peer-review it could take days. I suggest it should not take more than the time to read the paper twice and write up one’s comments, so perhaps 1-3 hours and 1-3 pages in length.
This glossary was developed as a collaboration between the scientists of the GEOHAB (Marine Geological and Biological Habitat Mapping) and WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species) communities. It was published online on WoRMS from 2010 and comments by users led to additions and corrections. As it was removed after a few years with the intention
Recent terrorist events in New Zealand and around the world have prompted reflection on how such hate and discrimination arises in a society, whether considered racism or other forms of harassment and bullying. The latter anti-social behaviours may underlie and lead to more extreme examples. Definitions of forms of harassment are outlined here. International surveys
It is increasingly important for scientists careers and their institutons reputations that their papers are highly cited. So what factors increase citation rates? We recently analysed citation rates of about 6,000 papers published in the journal Biological Conservation from 1968 to 2012. Google Scholar H-index ranks this as the top conservation-focused journal in ‘biodiversity and conservation
The wave of open-access journals shifts the cost of access from readers to authors. The older former print-only publishers often charge authors over $2,000 or more per paper. Comparison with new scholarly journals who are also open-access but only charge authors $100’s to around $1,000 indicates these charges include a huge profit. This high cost
We are passionate about the need for more Marine Reserves, that is no-take Marine Protected Areas. News about their development is regularly posted to the Marine Reserves Facebook page. Please follow it and we hope you “like” it too. Mark coordinates the university’s Marine Protected Areas course (Marine 703) since 2004.
