News blog

And This is Why We Should Always Provide Our Data. . .

For a long time now, I’ve been beating the drum of “provide your data.” If you’re willing to take take a whole mess of measurements and do a whole bunch of analyses for a published paper, why not share the raw data? New techniques and research questions continually arise, so it can be invaluable for other workers to be able to draw upon previously published databases. Although the situation is improving, it’s still far from perfect. Even today, I’m somewhat embarrassed to point out that some articles in PLOS ONE (a journal whose mission I support as advocate and volunteer academic editor) don’t provide relevant supporting data (recent examples here and here). But rather than dwell on the negatives, I want to point out a recent case study (also in PLOS ONE!) where data reuse benefited authors, journals, and science as a whole.
PLOS Blogs (Andrew Farke).

Is it immoral to hide your research behind a paywall?

As noted a few days ago, I recently had an article published on the Guardian site entitled Hiding your research behind a paywall is immoral. The reaction to that article was fascinating, exhilarating and distressing in fairly equal parts. Fascinating because it generated a fertile stream of 156 comments, most of them substantial. Exhilarating because of some very positive responses. And distressing because some people who I like and respect absolutely hated it. 

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The Open Library of the Humanities aims to provide a platform for Open Access publishing that is:
  • Reputable and respected through rigorous peer review
  • Sustainable
  • Digitally preserved and safely archived in perpetuity
  • Non-profit
  • Open in both monetary and permission terms
  • Non-discriminatory (APCs are waiverable)
  • Technically innovative in response to the needs of scholars and librarians
  • A solution to the serials crisis

The Open Knowledge Foundation asks for help to cultivate the digital commons

At the Open Knowledge Foundation we work to cultivate a global commons of digital material that everyone is free to use and enjoy. This digital commons includes everything from open data about carbon emissions or spending from governments around the world; to open access research in the sciences, the humanities, and many otherdisciplines; to public domain works from galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conference

Date: 1 and 2 July 2013
Location: The British Library, London, UK
JISC Collections, in partnership with OAPEN Foundation, is holding a two-day international conference intended for all stakeholders in scholarly communications including European research funders, senior institutional managers, publishers, learned societies, librarians and researchers. The conference aims to raise awareness of open access, to increase understanding of key challenges and to identify where international common policies and frameworks could support the adoption of open access monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences (HSS).

Open Peer Review for the Humanities

HWPP is an online space for scholars to share works-in-progress with their peers.  After uploading a conference paper, essay, or article manuscript to the HWPP website, authors can invite others to read their work and make comments in the margins.  As more people respond, writers get more feedback.  But, unlike traditional comments done on paper, HWPP allows commenters and authors to interact with each other.

What is ScienceOnlineTEEN?

We plan to bring scientists of all ages together with students and teachers, from the beginners to the experts, to discuss a variety of topics related to science communication in education and technology. We will do this through engaging, casual conversations. ScienceOnlineTeen is not a conference; it is an unconference based off of the original ScienceOnline conference. ScienceOnline2013, the seventh annual conference exploring science on the Web, will take place Jan. 30-Feb. 2, 2013, in Raleigh, NC.

Open Science – Investigating parameters for participation

Do you want to practice open science?
At the moment I am working on a research design that helps me investigating parameters for participation in open science. The design is, to be honest, not cut in stone yet and my methodological ideas change every now and then. Nonetheless, I documented my overall ideas for a research design in an open 1.5 pages document, accessible via Google Docs (this link). If you have a few minutes free on your hand and interest in the topic, I invite you to scim through the document and leave comments if you have any good thoughts, ideas, criticism and suggestions.

Rising demands around world for copyright exceptions

Internationally, the World Intellectual Property Organisation was looking at a range of new copyright exceptions and limitations. Nationally, an increasing number of EU countries were recognising the need for reforms while testing new ideas in this field. But it was suggested that a common European solution was needed to avoid fragmentation and to seize benefits for a European Digital Single Market.
University World News.

Mathematicians aim to take publishers out of publishing

Episciences Project to launch series of community-run, open-access journals. Mathematicians plan to launch a series of free open-access journals that will host their peer-reviewed articles on the preprint server arXiv. The project was publicly revealed yesterday in a blog post by Tim Gowers, a Fields Medal winner and mathematician at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Nature News. 

Why openness benefits research

Transparency is essential for trust and credibility in the research community, and true openness brings great opportunities for academia. The internet facilitates the free flow of information and knowledge, and permits new forms of communication both for researchers and for the general public. Already, today’s children can listen freely on the internet to university courses taught by world-leading scientists, and everybody has the best encyclopaedia ever written (Wikipedia) at their fingertips.  These are real game changers. Opening up the research literature is the next logical step.
Blogpost by David Shotton and Heinrich Hartmann.

Elsevier In Advanced Talks To Buy Mendeley For Around $100M To Beef Up In Social, Open Source Education Content

The world of ed-tech is ramping up another notch, and getting a lot more open in the process: educational publishing giant Elsevieris in advanced talks to buy Mendeley, a London/New York-based provider of a platform for academics to share research and collaborate with each other via a social network. TechCrunch understands from sources close to the companies that the deal is underway and should close this quarter, possibly by the end of February — all things being equal — and will be in the region of $100 million.
techcrunch.