Following on from the last Tutorial, we’ll now take a look at the License category and how to search using the three categories of scientific terms found in The Cell. License The License category is useful for selecting images when a certain use is intended. For example, if you are in the media and wanted [...]

This is the third in a continuing series of tutorials on getting the most from ‘The Cell: An Image Library-CCDB’. The first tutorial described setting up and using a free account and can be found here http://microscopy.bitesizebio.com/articles/the-cell-an-image-library-ccdb-tutorial-part-1/. The second tutorial described various ways to interact and find cell images and can be found here http://microscopy.bitesizebio.com/articles/the-cell-an-image-library-ccdb-tutorial-part-2/. In this [...]

Scientists publish with the expectation that others will take their work on board to discuss it, validate it and build upon it in future publications. Unfortunately, a common mindset is that once a paper is out the door and printed, the hard work is finally done. Only the hard work is actually just beginning. To [...]

Who wants to know how many cells are in a single colony of Escherichia coli? (3.39). Or the egg size of Drosophila melanogaster? (12.3 nL). Or how about the genomic mutation rate in Arabidopsis thaliana? (0.28 – 0.42 mutations per diploid genome per generation). Who am I kidding? Who wouldn’t want to know those numbers?! [...]

Peer-reviewing scientific papers is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) bottlenecks of scientific articles publishing. You – a final year PhD student or postdoc at the end of a grant – submit a manuscript to a Top Journal and are happy to hear from the editor that it’s been sent to reviewers. A [...]

I recently became aware of Webmedcentral.com, a collection of biomedical journals that publishes research articles online under the unique philosophy of “post-publication peer review”.  The flagship journal of this website, WebmedCentral, promises publication of any article within 48 hours, with absolutely no review process beforehand.  Articles are then open for commenting by members of the [...]

This is the second in a continuing series of tutorials on getting the most from The Cell: An Image Library-CCDB. The first tutorial described setting up and using a free account and can be found here. Searching The Cell There are a number of ways to find the cell images for which you are looking, [...]

Setting up and using a free account Although you don’t need an account to use The Cell (and many features are available without one), a free personal account gives users some additional features. In this tutorial you will learn how to set up an account, define Areas of Interest, and create and tag images to [...]

In times of financial crisis, as we are currently experiencing, some governments think that it’s OK, or even wise, to cut down on funding for scientific research. Even though we know better, we are still faced with a situation in which it is much harder to get our science financed. Similar funding cuts have been [...]

Much more than just an archive, The Cell: An Image Library-CCDB (Cell Centered Database; ‘The Cell’) serves many additional purposes. Whilst many researchers use The Cell to organize their own images for research and archival purposes- the real value of The Cell is the ability to share those images with other researchers. In many scientific [...]