You may not realise it but if you like the Motherlode (viewable here: Lode), you can create your own similar resource very easily. Basically the Motherlode is built on RSS feeds which automatically update when things are published on their websites. Most blogs, news sources and philosophy journals now have RSS feeds which is what made putting together the Motherlode possible. However it is quite easy to set yourself up with a similar personalised resource. Below the fold I will tell you how.
Primarily what you need is an RSS feed aggregator of some kind, these are often called News Readers or Personalised Home Pages. The difference roughly is that News Readers live on your computer, and Personalised Home Pages live on the web. Which you use is a matter of personal preference, I prefer Netvibes which is a personalised home page, primarily because I have integrated into it my emails for all my different accounts as well as a few other handy tools and the RSS feeds I like to keep up with. You can start from scratch and build up a list of things you like to read yourself of course, but that can take some time and effort. However if you want a lazier approach then you can use the feeds that form the Motherlode as your starting point. I use opmlmanager.com to host the OPML file that the Motherlode is based on. OPML is basically a file format for making hierarchical lists, and has been adopted by many feed readers and personalised home pages as a means of importing and exporting multiple RSS feeds at once. To get the OPML file for the Motherlode you can just click here: Motherlode OPML
Depending on which personalised home page/feed reader you pick you can either import the feeds directly from that webpage by copying its address into the feed reader or you may need to download the OPML and then upload it into the feed reader/ personalised home page.
I’ve shown below what the RSS feeds from the Motherlode look like in three different feed readers/personalised home pages:
Bloglines:
Bloglines is a popular personalised home page which functions just as a feed reader.
Feedreader:
Feedreader is an open source News Reader.
Netvibes:
Netvibes is my personal favourite personalised home page.
Friday, July 06, 2007
A motherlode of your very own
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Reviewing articles
An interesting article on reviewing academic papers can be found here (Hat tip to Academic Productivity)
While it is an article about reviewing psychology papers the general points seem sound and generalizable across to philosophy. I particularly liked the first piece of advice:1. Know your mission. A reviewer’s job is to evaluate a submitted article, not (necessarily) to criticize it and certainly not to trash it. The editor is seeking your advice on whether or not to publish the paper, so you should point out both strengths and weaknesses of the paper and come to some balanced conclusion. Keep the big picture in mind: Is the problem addressed an important one in the context of the field? Does the current paper push knowledge forward in a substantive way? The question at issue is not “does this paper answer all the questions about this particular problem?” because the answer to that question is always “no.” The critical issue is whether the paper under review advances knowledge on the issue under consideration enough to be published. Yes, this requires human judgment, a notoriously fallible quality, but that is why there are two or three reviewers plus an editor. (Sometimes there are even more reviewers — too many, in fact — but I’ll save that problem for another column.) Always keep in mind that, as a reviewer, you are just one piece in the puzzle. You offer advice to the editor, and the editor decides on the publishability of the paper.
This is particularly useful advice since it can be hard as a new reviewer to figure out what your role is, its not something that gets covered in most postgraduate courses.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Ethics in Biomedical Research DVD
Excellent review of this Ethics in Biomedical Research DVD over at Adventures in Ethics and Science
It sounds like quite a useful DVD, and it is free and easy to get hold of if you are based in the States, harder if you are overseas, I will let people know how I have got on with it.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Ethix Bioethics Database search
An excellent resource for researching in bioethics can be found here: Ethix
This is a fairly comprehensive bibliographic database of articles relating to bioethics and is a good first step in getting to know a field. As they put it:Citations, some with abstracts or tables of contents, to literature on bioethics and professional ethics from many disciplines and publication types including journals, newspapers, books, bills, laws, court decisions, reports, and audiovisuals.
Brought to you by the Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Friday, March 16, 2007
Motherlode of Philosophy Journal Tables of Content, News, Blogs and Resources
So it turns out, that things on the internet go obsolete quite quickly, particularly when you learn more and more about how to do stuff. So I've now introduced an even better way of keeping up with what's going on in bioethics, ethics, political philosophy and general philosophy journals than I introduced here, or via the tabbed links at the top of the page. This is using the drop down box on the left called the Motherlode.
The motherlode is javascript box which contains all of the rss feeds that can be gotten from the tabs on this site, the table of contents for 22 ethics journals, for 22 bioethics journals, 14 political philosophy journals, 11 general philosophy journals. It also has 15 bioethics news sources, 36 ethics related blogs and 9 philosophy resources. I will be keeping the tabs on this site updated, but I think the best way is through the Motherlode. Although it is set to slider view you can customize it for example by using the three panel view. If you want a copy of the Motherlode on your own site just click the "add to your page" in the menu. I'd appreciate an acknowledgement on your site though.
****Update****
The Motherlode now contains 23 ethics journals, for 26 bioethics journals, 23 political philosophy journals, 11 general philosophy journals. It also has 17 bioethics news sources, 45 ethics related blogs and 9 philosophy resources. You can get to the Motherlode directly here: Motherlode
Enjoy
David
Sunday, March 11, 2007
A useful resource for keeping up with research ethics
In the UK the Central Office for Research Ethics Committees (COREC) publishes a monthly summary of major papers and policy shifts in regards to research ethics called RECs in the News.
Although this is UK centric, it does typically include news from the US and elsewhere as well, and papers regarding other research ethics systems. As such its a handy way of keeping up with what is going on in research ethics. Its buried quite deep into the structure of the COREC website, but you can find a direct link to it here: RECs in the News
Saturday, March 10, 2007
INPAB & INEIRA Resources
As part of this network, and the Resource Allocation Network we have developed this website here: http://www.pageflakes.com/idmonfish.ashx
The site is based on and hosted by the pageflakes personalised home pages but is public. What it contains is a page with the latest table of contents of major ethics journals, another page with the latest table of contents of political theory journals, and of course another page with the table of contents for bioethics journals. There are two further pages, one with the feeds from bioethics and ethics blogs (broadly conceived) and another collating bioethics news feeds. All of these feeds are RSS feeds and as such will automatically update.
Update:
While the pageflakes site will be maintained, I have found pageflakes to be rather slow and a bit buggy. As such I have incorporated the above resources into this blog which can be gotten at via the tabs at the top of the blog, or via the Resources label or the links below:
Bioethics Journals Latest Table of Contents
Ethics Journals Latest Table of Contents
Political Theory Journals Latest Table of Contents
Bioethics News feed
Ethics Related Blogs
Flash journal table of contents, news, blogs
The last of these links is to a flash based RSS feeder which incorporates all the feeds on the other pages. However at this stage the feeder is a bit hard to navigate because certain journal publishers (Springer here is looking at you...) put their name, rather than the journal name in the title field of the feed.
On this site are the table of contents for 19 Bioethics Journals, 21 Ethics journals, 13 Political Theory Journals and 9 General Philosophy Journals.
The page flakes site and the rss feeds incorporated into this blog are still very much a work in process in terms of the available journals, and certainly some significant journals are not represented. This is primarily because either their publishers didn't think having an RSS feed for the journal was a good idea, or because I didn't find it. So if you know of any other ethics, bioethics or political theory journals with RSS feeds for their table of contents, or for that matter other ethics/bioethics related blogs or news feeds, please let me know and I will add them. If others are keen on making similar pages for other areas of philosophy, again let me know I would be happy to help.
Hope the site is of some use to you.
David
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
CiteULike.org
Awhile ago I emailed the philos mailing list with a few tips on being a more efficient academic. This post is regarding one of my favourite websites, www.citeulike.org. This is a free online citation manager with one click integration into your browser, so you can gather citations literally while you read.
Its a powerful tool especially when combined with using rss feeds to keep track of your favourite journal's table of contents. Basically this is an online citation manager website as they say:“CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software.”
We are no doubt all familiar with citation managers like Endnote. But personally I find these too much hard work, they don’t tend to work the same way I do. I tend to do a fair amount of reading online, particular from RSS feeds of the latest published papers. This means that when I find something I like if I was using endnote I would have to start it up, then cut and paste the details across a laborious enough task to put me off. But because CiteUlike is now part of my web browser and it is literally two clicks to store the citation, I now keep a much better track of what I read, which when I come around to writing makes things much easier, I just go to CiteULike and find the relevant references. Likewise if I want to re-read something finding it from CiteUlike is a synch because it keeps track of the weblink for the paper as well, it even keeps the abstract for you.
Finally it has a social aspect to it, as you post things to your library you add tags to help you sort things, these tags and the associated papers can be searched by anyone on the site giving you another way of finding interesting papers.
Their website is here: http://www.citeulike.org/
Hope you enjoy using it as much as I do.
Tables of Contents: Ethics Journals
These are the latest table of contents for 23 Ethics Journals (Including Theoretical and Applied Ethics) To see the different journals table of contents click on the title of the journal.
If you know of any other ethics journals that publish an RSS feed and should be included please let me know via email or comment.
Cheers
David Hunter
Foldershare
This is another one of my academic ease series, posts aimed at making the life of academics easier. Again I emailed the philos list with this suggestion awhile ago, but have expanded upon it here. A classic problem for at least me, and I suspect other academics, is making sure that multiple computers ie the office, the home and possibly the laptop and/or handheld have the most up to date files on them. There are a variety of different ways to achieve this, from emailing yourself copies, to putting files on a USB stick and carrying them everywhere you go. Inevitably though each of these solutions carries costs and risks, of having to remember which copy is which, of having large quantities of emails gumming up your computers, copying the wrong file on top of the right one, and leaving the darn USB stick at home. Microsoft have a program which might well solve your problem in this regards, it certainly has for me.
This is a piece of software called Foldershare.
Developed by someone else but now provided for free by Microsoft, basically what foldershare allows you to do is to set it up to automatically sychronise the contents of selected folders on two machines that the program is running on via the internet.
I use this to keep the my documents folder on my home pc, my laptop and my office pc the same. Basically as soon as I save a document, it updates the other machines with the new version of it. This means no more messing about with emailing myself various works in progress, or mucking around with usb drives. It’s a huge time saver and I no longer suffer from the old copied over the top wrong version problem.
Their website is here: https://www.foldershare.com/info/aboutFoldershare.php?
It does work best if you can arrange it so that at least two of your machines are frequently on at the same time. This works for me because my wife often has the home computer on while I am at work.
In any case I hope this helps you.
Cheers
David
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Journal Table of Contents, News & Blogs via flash
This is a flash based rss reader which contains all the links on the other pages on this site. If you want a copy of it for your own website, just click the link below the reader.
If you know of any other ethics journals that publish an RSS feed and should be included please let me know via email or comment.
Cheers
David Hunter
Email Lists, Conferences & Call for Paper feeds
This is a variety of resources related to philosophy & ethics.
If you know of any other resources that publish an RSS feed and should be included please let me know via email or comment.
Cheers
David Hunter
Ethics Related Blogs
This is the contents of 46 blogs which are broadly related to philosophy & ethics.
If you know of any other blogs that publish an RSS feed and should be included please let me know via email or comment.
Cheers
David Hunter
Bioethics News
This is the contents of 14 news sources which are broadly related to philosophy & ethics.
If you know of any other news sources that publish an RSS feed and should be included please let me know via email or comment.
Cheers
David Hunter
Tables of Contents: Political Theory Journals
These are the latest table of contents for 23 Political Theory and Philosophy Journals. To see the different journals table of contents click on the title of the journal.
If you know of any other Political Philosophy journals that publish an RSS feed and should be included please let me know via email or comment.
Cheers
David Hunter
Tables of Contents: Bioethics Journals
These are the latest table of contents for 24 Bioethics Journals (Including Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine) To see the different journals table of contents click on the title of the journal.
If you know of any other bioethics journals that publish an RSS feed and should be included please let me know via email or comment.
Cheers
David Hunter
Tables of Contents: Philosophy Journals
These are the latest table of contents for 11 general Philosophy Journals. To see the different journals table of contents click on the title of the journal.
If you know of any other general Philosophy journals that publish an RSS feed and should be included please let me know via email or comment.
Cheers
David Hunter
