This is who you're reading about

My photo
Wilkommen to my blog - my name is Karin Purshouse, and I'm a doctor in the UK. If you're looking for ramblings on life as a cancer doctor, my attempts to dual-moonlight as a scientist and balancing all that madness with a life, you've come to the right place. I'm training to be a cancer specialist, and am currently doing a PhD in cancer stem cell biology. All original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

If you do one thing today...

.... sign this petition - It's a petition to Barack Obama demanding free access to publicly funded research.  It CAN be done!  It doesn't matter if you're not in the States, your petition signature still counts.  It literally only takes a minute.  If you're still not sure why Open Access matters, read some of my posts below or check out www.righttoresearch.org.

If I can fill it in from the UK in between the 'Childhood Developmental Dance Routine' (new and improved version) and making up yet another ridiculous rhyme for this, that or the other (just discovered a great one for Valproate side effects) then I have every faith that you can too!
Some 'light reading'

Wednesday 16 May 2012

Getting Global with Open Access

Exciting news!  Look here to read all about the Right to Research Coalition's General Assembly in Budapest this July, where the global student community will come together to share ideas and advocacy tools regarding Open Access.  What an awesome opportunity to meet students from all over the world passionate about research being accessible and available to all.

If you're interested in making it happen here in the UK, and all over the world, drop me an email and register for the GA now!

Two weeks (ish) til finals now so soon I will be back in a world that does not revolve around revise-eat-revise-clinical skills-revise-nap-tea-revise-eat-MOSLER practice-revise-.....etc. etc shortly.  You get the drill.  Daumen druecken bitte!

Aaaand.....
Look what the European Commission has recommended?  Absolutely amazing!

Wednesday 2 May 2012

A bit of good news

One of my best friends got married recently, and I'm using his wedding cake as a reminder of happier things!

  You can read some joint BMA/Medsin writing on the PLoS blogsite about the recent respective conferences here. I'll quickly scribble about some Open Access developments to retain some non-revision writing.

Open Access is really, well, opening up, here in the UK.  Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is supporting the Government's plans to make research freely accessible on the internet.  David Willetts made the announcement today, noting that the government spend £5bn on research and could save millions by making research available to all.   Dame Janet Finch has been invited to report on how we can make Open Access a reality.  To have the Minister of State for Universities and Science making such a statement is a huge step forward for Open Access in the UK.  The report is due in the summer.

Not much more to say from me for now.  Apologies if I cry on you at some point in the next few weeks for something as innocuous as making me a cup of tea (this seems to be the current affliction of a lot of female final years at the moment!). Normal service will shortly be resumed. And I'd really appreciate the tea :)