This week I received the following email stating “The purpose of this letter is to formally invite you, on behalf of the Organizing Committee, to be the speaker at the upcoming “2nd International Conference on Nanotek and Expo” (Nanotek-2012).” This sounds very much like a desirable invited talk in my area of expertise, nanotechnology. The website of the organizer, OMICS looks good and the organization seems associated with a list of proper scientists as keynote speakers and members.

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Summary
Reed-Elsevier’s daughter Elsevier has introduced as an experiment a new way of publishing science. The “paper” is now basically a website, in which the idea of a linear text is abandoned. The web interface implements access to text fragments, graphs, supplementary material, interview with an author, through hyperlinked tabs and mundane hyperlinks. In my opinion this development is a step backward and scientist should avoid publishing their material this way.

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