News blog
Open-Access for the 3rd World
Scientists should submit their work to open-access repositories to support research in parts of the world that don’t have access to the vast libraries of pay-wall-constrained literature.Blog entry on The Scientist.
I LOVE OPEN ACCESS
French - English website to promote open access.
This article published in LeMonde has been translated also:
This text was first published on 15 March 2013 in Le Monde by sixty professionals belonging to the community of higher education and research: university presidents, directors of several Maisons des Sciences de l’Homme, publishers, representatives of journals, representatives of university libraries, professors and researchers. The call is open to everyone: engineers, scholars, students, information professionals, librarians, journalists, etc.
“WE ARE ENTERING AN ERA OF OPEN SCIENCE” SAYS EU VICE PRESIDENT NEELIE KROES AT LAUNCH OF NEW GLOBAL RESEARCH DATA ALLIANCE
Speaking at the launch of a new global Research Data Alliance, she said that we are entering a new “era of open science”, which will be “good for citizens, good for scientists and good for society”.
Challenge launched to promote open data for education
The LinkedUp project is very pleased to announce the launch of the LinkedUp challenge. This is a series of three competitions (Veni, Vidi, and Vici) promoting the innovative use of linked and open data in an educational context.OKFN Blog.
#btpdf2: My first day impressions: academia is sick and getting worse
No realisation that many of the people outside academia are doing a far more better job than academics. Those people who are using data to manage their cities. That’s science, scholarship and relevant. That writing and criticism can be done by everyone. That high schools can be research laboratories. It’s just not in the ivory towers.Peter Murray-Rust’s Blog.
The Price of Innovation
How to pay for the development of new scientific infrastructure and tools is something that I think a lot about science moving away from academia to become a developer of scientific software last year.Martin Fenner’s Blog.
EU Opens Up Access to Scientific Research
New scientific research must be published for free online, the vice-president of the European Commission said, in a move designed to increase the knowledge pool open to small business and lead to more innovative products.TechEurope.
It’s Time to Resist the Pressure
So it is up to us, particularly the more senior, not only to push RCUK to state categorically that impact factors will not be used in the assessment of researchers in the future, as Stephen urges and as is the stated case in the current REF guidelines, but also to reinforce that position any time we find ourselves in a position of ‘judging’ others: appointments, promotions and so on. We should not use impact factors as a spurious proxy for judging the science itself.
Athene Donald’s Blog.
Open Access Survey: Exploring the views of Taylor & Francis and Routledge authors
Yet another survey on open access. Have a look.Opening up Scientific Data
Because those tools can take us into a new era: the era of open science. I’m in no doubt we are entering that phase: and that the impact will be good for citizens, good for scientists and good for society.
Neelie Kroes.
Hot off the press: The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Germany
We discuss the results of a survey conducted in fall 2012 and covering 2,151 researchers in Germany. We show that there are significant differences between the scientific disciplines with respect to researcher’s awareness of and experience with both open access (OA) journals and self-archiving. Our results reveal that the relevance of OA within a discipline may explain why researchers from particular disciplines do (not) publish OA. Besides, several aspects like copyright law, age, profession or the inherent reward system of a discipline play a role. As a consequence, the paper emphasizes that a “one-size-fits-all” approach as promoted by most recent policy approaches is little promising for providing an effective framework for shaping the future of scholarly publishing.Abstract.
Crowdfunded science exhibit encourages duplication
The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization headquarters in Paris recently hosted the launch of IMAGINARY, a new platform for collaborative mathematics and maths art, or open mathematics. The launch was part of the Mathematics of Planet Earth Day and the opening of the first international crowdsourced science, open source exhibition hosted by the platform: Mathematics of Planet Earth.
How institutional repositories are already working to solve the Open Access problem
Natalia Madjarevic, Dave Puplett, and Neil Stewart clarify the existing capabilities of institutional repositories and highlight the powerful transitional role they can play in providing greater access and benefits for individuals, institutions and disciplines.LSE Blog.
We Need Open Data To Change The World
Social sector organizations are in the business of changing the world, and the information they collect and use should be the catalyst for making that happen. Courtesy of broadband Internet and mobile wifi we now have global, low-cost ways to share data that every social-purpose organization can plug into. From it, they should be able to draw what they need about previous experiments, effective practices, and achieved outcomes, as well as what has failed and why. That way, local social entrepreneurs can mimic what works elsewhere and share their ideas, successes, and failures.
HBR Blog Network.
Are Some Current Open Access Mandates Backfiring on the Intended Beneficiaries?
The OA bargain is becoming a bit more fraught as more people get involved and as founding concepts are stress-tested by practical matters. If the OA movement remains dogmatic about the details, and is not willing to compromise or improve on ideas established years ago and never thoroughly validated on a large scale, it run some serious risks of losing support in the wider world.Times Higher Education.
Open Access, “Neoliberalism”, “Impact” and the Privatisation of Knowledge
Martin Paul Eve, Lecturer in English Literature, University of Lincoln on the economies of knowledge.American Anthropological Association Will Experiment With Open Access
The public currently has to wait 35 years after publication to have free access to articles, according to a spokeswoman for the group. That will change early next year, when the journal Cultural Anthropology switches over to a fully open-access model.The Chronicle.
Shareconomy: The most important „open“ initiatives
Check the initiatives listed on Open Data, Open Government, Open Access, Open Education, Open Content, Open Hardware/Open Compute.
Article in German.
Open Access server of the German National Library of Economics
EconStor is the new Open Access server of the German National Library of Economics – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. EconStor provides a basis for the free publication of academic literature in economics. Any research facility wishing to publish and permanently preserve relevant publications in economics under the terms of Open Access can do so on EconStor. EconStor offers a full service for entire working paper series and e-journals. This includes the uploading of PDF files as well as the processing of all corresponding title data such as abstracts, keywords and JEL codes. Scholars have the option of self-archiving their so-called postprints (free author’s versions of articles from publishers’ journals) to make them accessible. At “Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving (SHERPA/RoMEO database)” authors can find out whether a publisher permits parallel, free publication of previously published articles as postprints on EconStor.
Live Chat: Should scientific articles be free?
Read the archived chat between Heather Joseph, who advocates for open access as the executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, and Frederick Dylla, who has expressed concerns about the implementation of open access as executive director of the American Institute of Physics.
Science Magazine.
Call for proposals: Open access advocacy campaigns
Following the success of 2012 and 2011 grant competitions, the EIFL-OA programme invites new proposals for organising national or institutional open access advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities. We particularly wish to involve researchers and students, research administrators and policy makers, university presses and society publishers.
“A MODERN DIGITAL LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA”
Preparations are underway for the much-anticipated launch of the Digital Public Library of America. The public unveiling is to occur on April 18th and 19th at the Boston Public Library. This ambitious project, envisioned by Harvard University Librarian, Robert C. Darton to be an important step towards “a modern Digital Library of Alexandria”.
Interview with PeerJ Editor Fabiana Kubke
This is the second in our Series of Interviews with PeerJ Editors, giving them a voice to express their thoughts about academic publishing, open access and PeerJ. This time around we spoke to Fabiana Kubke who is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Medical Sciences (Department of Anatomy with Radiology) and a member of the Centre for Brain Research at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.