Scholarpedia:Invitation to Gastropod Neuroscience
Dear %NAME%,
As an editor, I would like to invite you to write a short entry entitled "%TITLE%" for Gastropod Neuroscience (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Category:Gastropod_Neuroscience), which is hosted by Scholarpedia - the free peer-reviewed encyclopedia. This project, being a synthesis of philosophies of Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, is ambitious and unique. You can read more about it at http://www.scholarpedia.org. Your article will be peer-reviewed, and upon acceptance, you will become the curator of the whole topic of "%TITLE%" in Scholarpedia (see below).
The goal of Gastropod Neuroscience in Scholarpedia is to provide a perpetually up-to-date reference about model gastropod nervous systems, such as Aplysia, Hermissenda, and Tritonia. This can be a starting point for students seeking to learn about these model systems. It will also serve as a reference for general aspects of Gastropod nervous systems and behavior, such as feeding, development, and learning and memory.
You can write your article alone. However, I encourage you to take a co-author, e.g., a colleague, a former student or postdoc, who will become your co-curator. If you want to change the title or have other preferences, please let me know.
I have created the following account for you in Scholarpedia: Username: %USERNAME% Password: %PASSWORD% To accept this invitation, please click %URL%
If you cannot write this article within a reasonable period of time, please let us know as soon as possible by clicking %URL%&no=1 In this case, we would highly appreciate your suggesting the names of the best experts to invite to write this article.
Sincerely Yours,
Paul S. Katz [1]
Editor of Gastropod Neuroscience in Scholarpedia
<pkatz@gsu.edu>
Here is a description of Scholarpedia written by the Editor-in-Chief, Eugene M. Izhikevich [2]:
Most articles in Scholarpedia are written by the original authors. For example, Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractals, writes "Fractals" and "Mandelbrot Set". Franz Halberg, who coined the word 'circadian', writes "Chronobiology" and "Circadian Rhythm". Lotfi Zadeh, the inventor of fuzzy logic, wrote "Fuzzy Logic". Edward Lorenz, the discoverer of phenomenon of chaos, writes "Butterfly Effect". Vernon Mountcastle writes "Cortical Columns". Robert Galambos, the discoverer of sonar in bats, writes "Echolocation in Bats" (Galambos is 93). Larry Weiskrantz, the discoverer of the phenomenon of blindsight, wrote "Blindsight". Eugene Roberts, the discoverer of GABA, writes "GABA Receptors". Graham L. Collingridge, the discover of NMDA receptors, writes "NMDA Receptors". Thomas Reese and John Heuser, the discoverers of synaptic vesicles, write "Synaptic Vesicles". Paul Lauterbur, the co-inventor of MRI, writes "MRI". Seiji Ogawa, the inventor of fMRI, writes "fMRI". Brenda Milner is writing "HM Patient". Tim Bliss, the discoverer of LTP in neurons, writes "Long-Term Potentiation". John O'Keefe and Lynn Nadel are writing "Cognitive Map" (they both are also nominated for the "Place Cells"). Edvard Moser writes "Grid Cells". H. Barlow, the discoverer of lateral inhibition and the inventor of the concept of a grandmother cell, writes "Lateral Inhibition" and "Grandmother Cell". Michel Jouvet, the discoverer of REM sleep, writes "REM (paradoxical) Sleep". Gordon Shepherd, the discoverer of dendro-dendritic synapses, writes "Dendro-Dendritic Synapses". Ichiji Tasaki, the co-discoverer of saltatory conduction (with Hodgkin in 1939), writes "Saltatory Conduction" (Tasaki is 97). Lawrence B. Cohen, the inventor of foltage-sensitive dyes, writes "Voltage-Sensitive Dye". A. Damasio writes "Emotions". Gerald Edelman writes "Neural Darwinism".
The original discoverers were invited for such articles as "Patch Clamp", "Working Memory", "Split Brain", etc.
To see a sample peer-reviewed article, go to http://www.scholarpedia.org and click "Random article" on the left navigation menu.
The main idea of Scholarpedia is that articles should outlive their authors via the process of curatorship. Similarly to Wikipedia (a free non-reviewed encyclopedia), anybody can edit or revise articles in Scholarpedia, even after they are peer-reviewed and published. For example, other scientists may find and correct an error in your article, add a figure, rewrite a paragraph that is not clearly written, and so on. In contrast to Wikipedia, each article in Scholarpedia has a Curator (typically, its author), whose name is at the top of the article and who accepts or rejects each such revision. For example, if you read an article in Wikipedia "Kolmogorov-Sinai Entropy", you do not know who wrote it and whether or not you could trust it. If you read Scholarpedia article "Kolmogorov-Sinai Entropy", which is written and curated by Yakov Sinai, then you know that everything there is either written by or was later approved by Dr. Sinai. In this sense, Scholarpedia is unlike anything else that has ever been done with scientific publications. Just think of what your article would look like 50 years from now!
The 13th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica has "Space-Time" entry written by A. Einstein and "Psychoanalysis" entry written by S. Freud. If Britannica had the feature of curatorship, physicists and psychologists of today would be fighting each other for the honor to be curators of these articles. The goal of Scholarpedia is to invite today's Einsteins and Freuds to write entries on their major discoveries so that future generation of experts would be willing to maintain these articles via the process of curatorship.
Another unique feature of Scholarpedia is that its authors are either invited by the editor-in-chief (this letter) or elected by the public. Public election of authors ensures fairness in assigning articles to the corresponding experts in each field. Soon Scholarpedia will be transferred to election-only regime. Among first elected experts were Gyorgy Buzsaki (Hippocampus) and Rodolfo Llinas (Neurons). There is still an ongoing election of authors for such articles as "Synapse", "STDP", "Dynamic Clamp", "Memory", "Cell Assemblies", and many others, since it is not clear who would be the best expert to write such articles (click on these articles in Scholarpedia to see who were nominated; you are welcome to participate in the election; some of the nominated experts already agreed to write the articles, if elected).
