Tag Archives: research

Help raise awareness of how the FIRST Act will delay public access

Oppose Section 302 of the proposed FIRST Act
A discussion draft of the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology Act of 2013 (FIRST) currently being circulated would impose significant barriers to the public’s ability to access to taxpayer funded research by restricting federal science agencies’ ability to provide timely, equitable, online access to articles and data reporting on the results of research that they support. The proposed FIRST Act is not in the best interests of the taxpayers who fund the research, the scientists who make use of it by accelerating scientific progress, the teachers and students who rely on its availability for a high-quality education, and the thousands of U.S. businesses, both small and large, which depend on public access to stay competitive in the global marketplace. One provision of the bill – Section 302 – would undercut federal agencies’ ability to effectively implement the widely-supported White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Directive on Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research, undermine the public access program pioneered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and put the U.S. at a severe disadvantage among our global competitors.
SPARC.

‘Open’ as the default modus operandi for research and higher education

is a policy paper by SURF (a collaborative organisation for ICT in Dutch higher education and research) commissioned by the European Commission about open access to content and infrastructure. This was done within the e-InfraNet project. (...) European opinion leaders and experts examined the context, motivations, developments and results of each of the ‘Opens’, revealing a collection of joint benefits and issues. Their study resulted in the recommendation for a coordinated policy approach, able to benefit all forms of ‘Open’.
Download Summary here.  

THE FUTURE OF OPEN KNOWLEDGE: WHAT IMPACT WILL OPEN KNOWLEDGE HAVE ON RESEARCH, THE ECONOMY AND THE PUBLIC?

To mark the launch of the Open Knowledge Foundation in Australia, founder Dr Rufus Pollock is touring Australia. His "Open Knowledge Down Under" tour will take in several capital cities and includes a series of public lectures. The focus of the Sydney lecture will be to talk about the impact of open knowledge on research, the economy and the public. Whilst this is a global initiative, it will include specific focus on the impact in Australia.
Registration is free and open: Monday, 26 August 2013 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM (EST), Camperdown, NSW, Auditorium, Eastern Avenue,The University of Sydney.

Open data and open access – what society loses when knowledge is offline

Interesting enough, research shows that there is a weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers’ citations in the digital age. And that can have consequences, according to the authors: ”If this pattern should continue, it might bring an end to the use of impact factor as a way to evaluate the quality of journals, papers and researcher”.

March for public investment and open data

A claim PRO open seed data for better science on nutrition security, sustainability and food systems.
(…) companies need not worry about releasing data about specific genetic traits that bring them profits, but simply the data that could help university scientists improve nutritional conditions for the poor. (…) March for the public investment into agricultural biotechnology research and an open data policy on industry seed research.

Apotheosis of cynicism and deceit from scholarly publishers

Michael Eisen on the Association of American Publishers’ reaction on the open access movement.
 the AAP’s defense of the status quo has descended to new depths: (…)  a letter sent last week to the California Assembly opposing AB609, which would provide the public with access to state funded research.

Knowledge exchange – Value of research: Metrics for datasets from a cultural and technical point of view

This report seeks to further explore the possibilities of metrics for datasets (…) and an effective reward system that aligns the main interests of the main stakeholders involved in the process. (…) The most important recommendations include the general adoption of data sharing and data publication among scholars; the development of a reward system for scientists that includes data metrics; reducing the costs of data publication; reducing existing negative cultural perceptions of researchers regarding data publication; developing standards for preservation, publication, identification and citation of datasets; more coordination of data repository initiatives; and further development of interoperability protocols across different actors.

Mendeley, Open Access, and the Altmetrics Revolution: Implications for Japanese Research

Keita Bando, Mendeley Advisor, Digital Repository Librarian Coordinator for Scholarly Communication, My Open Archive on open access, Mendeley and Altmetrics.
“With Japanese researchers, there’s a kind of resistance or barrier to using a creative commons license; particularly, people tend to have the attitude that the rights to a paper are the publisher’s concern, so they don’t think to actively go for a creative commons license themselves,” Mr. Bando states.

Computational research in the era of open access: Standards and best practices

Ashutosh Jogalekar, a chemist and interested in the history and philosophy of science, proposes on Blogs Scientific American the
requirement for stating as many details of the hardware and software as possible (…) to build a central repository of code that contains a variety of different protocols along with their attendant parameters (…) (and) a uniform standard for the analysis and presentation of data.

The nexus of gov­ern­ment research, reg­u­la­tory agen­cies, uni­ver­sity biol­ogy depart­ments, med­ical schools and drug com­pa­nies

Ethan O. Perlstein hopes that the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity will make big strides toward an open model of drug dis­cov­ery for the ben­e­fit of humankind.
I expect secrecy from Pharma, but not from Acad­e­mia, which I think abuses the free­dom to pur­sue knowl­edge for its own sake on the public’s dime. At the same time, I expect more inno­va­tion to orig­i­nate within Pharma and not sim­ply be imported from Acad­e­mia with tax­payer subsidies.
See also the NHS Hack Day, Oxford, UK, 26-27th January of 2013 at Tingewick Hall, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DU :
NHS Hack Days are weekend events that brings together doctors, nurses, developers, designers, and other “geeks who love the NHS” to create disruptive solutions to problems in the health space.
See also this event by John Wilbanks.

If research is not reproducible then what is the point in publishing?

If research is not reproducible then what is the point in publishing?

Marcus D. Hanwell, open science activist and Technical Lead in the scientific computing group of a private company, calls for open access to research publications.

We need to work harder to engage people in the work we are doing, especially those of us who are funded by the various research agencies and trusts from around the world. We need to take a stand against publishers demanding too many rights over our work, which we give to them freely thanks to the funding we receive.

Why all pharmaceutical research should be made open access

Why all pharmaceutical research should be made open access

The government wants to make all publicly funded research available – but the same must be demanded of pharmas also.

Cory Doctorow’s column series Digital Rights, Digital Wrongs for The Guardian.

Read also this blog entry on open access to all data from clinical trials by Tom Jefferson, member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.

This article on how open data can save money refers to Tom Jefferson’s blog entry advising that

pharmaceutical companies must release all the results of their clinical trials as open data, so that independent researchers can check what has been found.

How to act against faked research in China

How to act against faked research in China

Shi-min Fang, who has just won the inaugural Maddox prize, announced by the British journal Nature and charity organization Sense about Science, on risking his life and libel writs to expose scientific misconduct in his native China.

“The majority of cases exposed are plagiarism, the exaggeration of academic credentials and faked research papers, which are endemic in China.” says Shi-min Fang in an interview refering to the question if dubious claims would be a big problem in China.