Though the website is not very lively these months, we are still doing our best to make the project sustainable!

Since last summer, we have presented our initiative to the tenth conference of the European Association of Science Editors. This conference, held in late September 2009 in Pisa, adressed the issue of "Misconduct in Science Communication" and gave us the opportunity to write an essay in European Science Editing journal.

The first aim of this website is to make information about the reliability of scientific publications easily available by listing on the web the articles for which fraud, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) was demonstrated. The focus is on fraudulent articles and not scientists. Then arise several issues: how to decide which articles to list? And after all, is it legally authorized to make this information public?

According to the number of emails we received (although the forum is rather quiet), the « Scientific Red Cards » project seems to foster interest and curiosity. However, as you may have noticed, the web site is still a beta version. Indeed, we are currently figuring out some details such as the legal framework in which we want to carry on this initiative. But that's not all, and here comes the part where we ask for your advice...

In science, measuring the performance of a researcher, a lab or a country is a difficult and critical task. So far, evaluation has relied mostly on quantitative criteria, measured by bibliometrics (the number of publications, the impact factors of the corresponding journals, the number of citations) or the number of patents.
However, it should be clear that quality and not only quantity matters for fostering competitive research and that other parameters, such as the working environment and the values it conveys, and the organisation of the research system should not be overlooked.

It is our pleasure to report this news from the European Science Foundation's (ESF) website.

They advertise on this project and introduce it in a really authentic manner. As you can read, it is time for us to build up sound legal basis for this action: any helpful contribution would be appreciated.