The month ahead

Capitalising on the rise of open-access scientific publishing—with papers available for free on the internet, instead of through expensive subscriptions—Nature is launching a no-frills, online journal called Scientific Reports to enable “rapid dissemination of accepted papers to the widest possible audience.” If successful following its June debut, it could presage the end of traditional science publishing. Scientific Reports will be a rival to the pioneering, non-profit, online journal Public Library of Science One, and will use its model of charging academics a $1,350 publication fee.

The final frontier is a crowded, anarchic one. Although satellites delivering services like telecommunications, sat-nav and climate monitoring are threatened by space junk, there is no comprehensive cross-national oversight of what’s hurtling round up there. The European Space Agency will tackle the issues of governance, debris surveillance and collision warning at a June meeting in Madrid. Britain (a leading satellite builder), Japan and Nasa are among those attending.

For some light relief, sample the Cheltenham Science Festival, which begins on 7th June. Top of my warped wishlist is a seat at Timandra Harkness’s “Your Days are Numbered,” about the mathematics of death. Bonuses include a better class of heckling (“Show Us Yer Control Groups!”) and a mere 0.000043 per cent chance of dying during the show.