Germany: Government’s Commission of experts is pro open access
In German.
See also the expertise by the Commission of Experts for research, innovation and technological performance in Germany and this press release by German Democrats.
News blog
9 thoughts on “What counts as ‘citizen science’?”
Blog entry by Karen E. James, visiting staff scientist at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, ME, USA.Scientific publishing: Changing „Nature“
For all the differences, the fates of Nature and Frontiers have become intertwined. On February 27th Nature Publishing Group (NPG), which owns Nature and 81 other scholarly journals, announced that it has bought a controlling stake in Frontiers for an undisclosed sum. Besides 30 titles in 14 scientific fields the Swiss upstart brings a social-networking platform—a LinkedIn for boffins, if you like—to share not just research, but news, job offers, information about conferences and events. It currently boasts around 80,000 members.The Economist. See also the article on Frontiers’ website.
How Obama changes sciences
Der Freitag. In German.Open access community in the German speaking countries
Check out the discussion.Royal Society Meeting on Open Access in the UK: What Willetts Wants
Stephen Curry on the last meeting of the Royal Society on open access. Follow also the discussion.Managing data and software liberation
Blog entry by Peter Murray-Rust, chemist at University of Cambridge and open data advocate.Neo4j: A way to create an online database using social network systems
To build a network of species, the Open Tree of Life team has adopted Neo4j, an open-source database that stores information structured in graphs rather than in tables. It is developed by Neo Technology, which has offices in the Silicon Valley, England, Germany, and Sweden.Neo4j website, download free tool for online property graph database.
Funding councils publish REF open-access proposals
The UK’s higher education funding councils will not express a preference for either green or gold open access in their submission rules for future research excellence frameworks.Paul Jump for Times Higher Education.
Gold on hold
The move towards providing full open access to research papers was undermined last week, but should prevail in the long term.Nature.
Permission barriers to text mining
Publishing Research Consortium 2013: Text Mining and Scholarly Publishing by Jonathan Clark, independent advisor on strategy and innovation. Prior he worked with Elsevier for 20 years in various roles in publishing, product management, technology, strategy & business development. Clark is a former Chair and Director of the International DOI Foundation.
Blog post by Peter Suber, director of Harvard open access project.
Scientific Peer Review in Crisis
An opinion on the Danish Cohort study.Seafarer science: Sailors asked to help measure plankton
Scientists are enlisting sailors and fishermen to help with what they hope will be the world’s biggest study of plankton in the oceans.BBC News.
White House directs open access for government research
The White House has moved to make the results of federally funded research available to the public for free within a year, bowing to public pressure for unfettered access to scholarly articles and other materials produced at taxpayers’ expense.Reuters. See also here (In German).
Open Access & Open Science
Coming soon:
Angebot und Nachfrage: Was erwarten unsere Nutzer und unsere Nichtnutzer von uns?
12. InetBib-Tagung vom 4. bis 6. März 2013 im Audimax der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
See also Lambert Heller’s Blogpost: Inetbib’s Bet on Open Access and Open Science
On The Concept Of Shaping Thought With Language
Psychologist Lera Boroditsky says she’s “interested in how the languages we speak shape the way we think”
Out of great, lifelong Joy
S/He who thinks Science is something for Scientists only is mistaken.
(FAZ. In German)
Why should we continue to pay typesetters/publishers lots of money to process (and even destroy) science? And a puzzle for you.
The average large STM publisher receives several thousand USD (either in subscriptions or in author processing charges (APC)) to process an article. This huge and unjustified sum contains not only obscene profits (30-40 %) but also gross inefficiencies and often destruction of scientific content. The point is that publishers decide what THEY want to do irrespective of what authors or sighted human readers want (let alone unsighted readers or machines).Peter Murray-Rust’s Blog.
New Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences is misguided
We should celebrate the scientific breakthroughs that benefit the many, not the few
Says grrlscientist in the Guardian Blog.
IT WAS A VERY BIG YEAR, I THINK, FOR OPEN ACCESS
Stephen Curry, professor for biophysics at Imperial College, London and open access advocate, in an interview with Katherine Powell, currently studying an MSc in Science Communication and one of the editors of Refractive Index, a bog on science communication, Imperial College London.Amendment to copyright in Germany: First draft of the Federal Ministry of Justice
See also the draft (in German).Publishers Flip Out, Call Bill To Provide Open Access To Federally Funded Works A ‚Boondoggle‘
Last week, a new version of Doyle’s bill was introduced and it’s been improved. First off, it’s got some nice bipartisan backing in both parts of Congress. On the Senate side, it was co-sponsored by Senators Cornyn and Wyden, while on the House side we’ve got Doyle along with Reps. Yoder and Lofgren. Also, it reduces the time to open publishing from one year down to six months (like a NY bill that came out last year). It doesn’t spread the policy to all federal agencies, but the vast majority of federally funded resarch would qualify (all agencies that spend over $100 million on research are covered).TechDirt.