The workshop has today been discussing cross cutting issues between neurosciences and systems biology. Funnily enough, many of them seem fairly familiar: how to visualise complex, multi-dimensional data; how to combine and standardise the representation of data; how to combine models; how to enable scientists to work cross-disciplinary; and, how to train students to work in the area in the future.

One of the main differences seems to be a cultural differences: if you put two bioinformaticians into a room, they will publish a database; in neuroinformatics this tendency doesn't appear to be there. I think that part of the reason for this is the lack of an obvious common standard representation. In bioinformatics, we worked from the DNA and protein sequence outward.

At a workshop in Edinburgh today. Thought it would be a good ideas; the CARMEN project is coming up so having some understanding of neuroinformatics. As for systems biology, thought I'd like to fail to understand some more people telling me what it actually is.

I realised today one of the more obscure advantages of Open Access publishing. This produces a major change in the economics of the scientific publishing, which is that the payment happens during the publication, rather than before reading. This is entirely wrong, it seems to me. Most scientists spend far too much time publishing and not nearly enough time reading. Making people pay to publish, but allowing cost-free reading should help to redress this balance.