Update: Archive of the show can be viewed or downloaded from here http://odtv.me/2009/08/dr-kikis-science-hour-14/

This Thursday I’ll be joining the managing editor of PLoS ONE, Pete Binfield, live on Science Hour hosted by Leo Laporte and Dr. Kiki.

We’ll be discussing the future of academic publishing, science on the Web, or anything else that comes up.

Those in the U.S. might recognize Leo from his nationally syndicated radio show “The Tech Guy.” We will broadcast from Leo’s live studio just outside San Francisco.

Participate: OK Mendelians, now is your chance to ask all of the important questions you have been saving up. What does Victor eat for lunch? Does the Mendeley dev team room smell? What exactly does the Mendeley logo represent?

Or, you can ask a few more serious questions.

Join the chat room to ask questions or just watch what others are commenting on. The chat room can be found on the same page as the broadcast. Please join so that I don’t just get questions from my mom, who I know will be watching. Sorry, Mom.

Where: http://live.twit.tv/
Audio only broadcast: http://twit.am/listen.m3u
Time: 3:00PM Pacific Time (11:00PM UK) on August 27, 2009

Rebroadcast: iTunes or ODTV a few days later

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Ever hear of Douglas Prasher? Probably not. He just missed out on this past year’s Nobel in chemistry. That’s not unusual, as many scientists never even come close to a Nobel. What is unusual, is that Dr. Prasher works at a car dealership, not in a lab. Despite doing the critical research on discovering GFP that became the work for last year’s Nobel Prize, he was unable to find grant money and a job to continue his work.

Prasher’s story is what concerns me with science, engineering, math, and technology. In the U.S., we are constantly hearing about how the country is falling behind in science. We need more scientists to fill all of those jobs we want to create. And the cure to that is to fund more PhD programs! Yet, when you ask graduate students and postdoctoral scholars what their individual experiences are, a science career is a very tough road with low pay and few career prospects. It’s such a tough path that an entire PhD comic strip was born to alleviate the situation with laughter. Why then, is there such a disconnect?

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Exciting news: Jason Hoyt, the founder of Ologeez (a semantic frontend for PubMed), is joining Mendeley! Jason holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stanford University. At the moment, he is still based in Palo Alto, but once the visa issues are sorted out, Jason will be joining us here in London as our new Research Director. TechCrunch broke the story today with a headline that made our geek hearts beat faster, comparing us to a Klingon battle cruiser de-cloaking in London.

To get started, Jason wrote up his reasons for joining us, and how Mendeley can help change the Impact Factor. Over to him:

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Changing the Journal Impact Factor

Right, so the first thing I had to ask myself was “Why on earth would I move from San Francisco, leaving behind a cushy life for London, and work for a reference management start-up?” Surely any rational person would find this a bit odd.

Well, I’m not going to answer by talking about how great the team is or how enthusiastic the founders are about improving research, which is certainly all true. Rather, let’s take a real-world example of how the “tech” behind Mendeley is already making a difference with how we view the impact factors of research.

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