News blog

Open Citations and Semantic Publishing

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.
David Shotton. See also this and this post.

Citizen Science, Citizen Policy

 

“When you think of citizen science, what do you think of? I know in my case, I think of people out (maybe with their kids) measuring snowfall, finding birds, or listening at night to hear different kind of insects in various environments.

And yes, that is all definitely citizen science. But citizen science can be, and should be, much more than that.”

Scientific American Blogs.

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.

Announcement: 2nd Summit of the Global Research Council will be hold in Germany, May 2013

Hosted by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) of Brasil, the 2nd Summit of the Global Research Council will take place from 27 to 29 May 2013 at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin, Germany. (…) Participants of the summit will establish and endorse a Statement of Principles on Research Integrity and agree on an action plan for implementing Open Access to Publications as the main paradigm of scientific communication in the following years.

From January 2013 Ireland has taken over the EU Presidency: what will this mean for Open Access policy?

Ireland already has considerable expertise in developing Open Access to publicly funded research, aligned with international thinking and initiatives, and is now seeking to strengthen its approach to support international developments on Open Access led by the European Commission, Science Europe and other international agencies.

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.

In search of credit: make science more searchable

In search of credit: make science more searchable

Any referee who, in a given year, has refereed three or more papers for any of the journals will receive a letter acknowledging their contribution and a free subscription to their choice of one of the journals. More importantly, we have recently introduced a system by which our referees can download a statement of the number of papers they have refereed for us. This report is available by logging into the ‘My Account’ page on any Nature journal’s manuscript submission and tracking system and reflects the refereeing activity across all Nature journals.

Nature.

Open Science Challenge

Open Science Challenge

To support data reuse and reproducible research, rOpenSci is happy to announce an open science challenge. If you can propose a research project (or enhance an existing effort) involving one or more of our packages, our team will provide you with all the support you’ll need to complete and publish this effort.

Deadline to application: Janary, 31st, 2013.

See also this blog entry.

Opus 4: Open Access Repository Software new version out now

Opus 4: Open Access Repository Software new version out now

OPUS 4 ist eine Open Source-Software unter der GNU General Public License für den Betrieb von institutionellen und fachlichen Repositorien. 

Try out the open access repository demo software here. It shall help to access, publish, administration, research and distribution of documents with or without full text.

See reference here.

What does it cost to publish a Gold Open Access article?

What does it cost to publish a Gold Open Access article?

An emerging preference for Gold Open Access publishing has been stirring emotions. Mike Taylor highlights where the Finch Report goes wrong on cost and argues that academics should redirect their anger at publishers taking $1973 from academia in return for each paper they receive.