News blog

Danny Kingsley on the state of Open Access: Where are we, what still needs to be done?

This is the seventh Q&A in a series exploring the current state of Open Access (OA). On this occasion the questions are answered by Danny Kingsley, Executive Officer of the Australian Open Access Support Group (AOASG), an organisation founded at the end of last year by six Australian universities in order to provide “a concerted and coordinated Australian voice in support of open access.”
Blog by Richard Poynder.

Open Science for Development Project

A collaboration of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and the OpenUCT Initiative at the University of Cape Town in an International Development Research Centre funded project to develop a southern led research agenda for open science for development.
We hope to use this as an opportunity not only to explore research into open science but also to really push community building efforts in the global south and identify a strong network of open science advocates and practitioners (...) You can read more in our project proposal.

GitHub’s Wild West Approach To Licensing Has Hidden Costs

The GitHub generation doesn't seem to like the bother of licenses, but is it prepared to stomach the costs? (...) As new research from Black Duck Software shows, today's developers aren't just moving away from the General Public License (GPL). They're moving away from open-source licensing altogether. Analyzing over one million projects on GitHub and other code repositories, Black Duck Software found that while 40% of open-source projects industry-wide carry no declared license, 77% of projects on GitHub have no declared license, open source or otherwise.
See also GitHub's open source license webpage.

Data Sharing Using Difference-on-write

From the abstract:
When a virtual machine writes to a page that is being shared across VMs, a share value is calculated to determine how different the page would be if the write command were implemented. If the share value is below a predefined threshold (meaning that the page would not be “too different”), then the page is not copied (as it would be in a standard copy-on-write operation). Instead, the difference between the contents of the pages is stored as a self-contained delta. The physical to machine memory map is updated to point to the delta, and the delta contains a pointer to the original page. When the VM needs to access the page that was stored as a delta, the delta and the page are then fetched from memory and the page is reconstructed.
 

Call for Papers: BerlinEarly Stage Researchers Colloquium on Internet and Society 2013

Extended deadline: Apply for the Early Stage Researchers Colloquium 2013. Take your chance, check out the Call for Papers and apply via colloquium.hiig.de
The Early Stage Researchers Colloquium provides a stage for new perspectives on current issues of Internet and society. The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in cooperation with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung wishes to gather together early stage researchers (Ph.D. candidates and post-docs) from all disciplines in order to push ahead with the discussion revolving around Internet research.

TYT Science on Open Access and Open Data

An overview of two big "open science" changes presented by Mike Galsworthy from TYT Science.
Open Access is the drive to make sure all the academic literature is freely available to everyone. Open Data is the drive to get scientists to publish their actual raw data so that integrity of science can be assured and the data can be re-used by others. Together these movements are ushering in something of a scientific revolution - but how will this all be done in practice? Mike takes us through what is happening right now. To see his recent article on Open Data, please click here.

Evaluating the Open Access software toolchain

This is an article on how to build open access publishing websites, what needs to be done it says is the formation of an Open Access Toolset Alliance:
If we want tools that can plug in to any architecture, then we need to start working out where we have tied things too closely to our platforms, come up with standard interface formats and begin abstracting the functionality.
 

Open data for science education

Open data is the idea that scientific data should be freely available to all, without restrictions, in searchable online repositories. The open data movement is gaining momentum in the scientific community because of its promise to enable more frequent replication of studies and to accelerate the pace of research. But the advantages for science education are just as compelling.

PLOS Blogs.

Young Researchers in Digital Humanities: A Manifesto

The Humanities and Social Sciences are a vital component of human culture and offer an essential insight into the world in which we live. The Digital Humanities reflect the transition of the Humanities to the digital age. However, they do not only bring with them new technical means, but also new forms of knowledge creation and dissemination within, across and outside academic disciplines.

Open Access Button

We’re calling it the Open Access button. Every paywall met is an isolated incident; it’s time we capture those individual moments of injustice and frustration to turn them into positive change.
Here is a new project that wants to track potential readers that were rejected access to research papers published behind paywalls.

Scientists undertake effort to launch video data-sharing library for developmental science

In the largest open-source video-data sharing project of its kind, behavioral researchers, digital library scientists, and computer scientists are undertaking the creation of Databrary, a web-based video-data library sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The Databrary project includes not only a web-based repository for open sharing and preservation of video data and associated metadata, but also a free, open source video-coding software, that enables coding, exploring, and analyzing video data. The data management system supports data-sharing within labs, among collaborators, and in the Databrary repository. Read more here.