News blog

Ireland has announced a National Open Access Policy

Ireland has announced a National Open Access Policy

Peer reviewed journal articles and other research outputs resulting in whole or in part from publicly-funded research should be deposited in an Open Access repository and made publicly discoverable, accessible and re-usable as soon as possible and on an on-going basis. 

The national principles are planned to effective from January 2013.

Also Taylor & Francis plans to go more open access within hybrid open access program Routledge Open Select

Also Taylor & Francis plans to go more open access within hybrid open access program Routledge Open Select

(…) we believe that adding social science, arts and humanities journals to the Open Select programme will provide important venues for scholars in these fields who wish to publish in highly-regarded journals on an Open Access basis. We will offer authors the choice to pay to make their research Open Access upon payment of an Article Publishing Charge (APC), or to publish without the APC, whereby research is available for individuals and institutions to purchase.

Librarians talk about how open access affects their business

Librarians talk about how open access affects their business

The most vocal bodies or individuals to talk about this issue have generally been from either the researcher or the publisher side, which are the two groups it most affects. But what position should the library take in these discussions, and how will an increase in the volume of open access material (and a potentially exponential one) change the type and volume of work for the librarian? (…)

We posed 4 questions about how open access will affect the role of the librarian to June Hedges (University College London, UK (UCL)) and Chuck Hamaker (University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA (UNC)).

http://vimeo.com/51075488
Knowledge as a public good

Open Educational Resources (OER) include full courses, course materials, knowledge activities, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

Knowledge is a public good and OER gives everyone the opportunity to learn.

(Source: http://vimeo.com/)

The DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinde, announces competition for new models of open access publication for monographs

The DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinde, announces competition for new models of open access publication for monographs

For detailed information see the announcement (in German).

Die Ausschreibung richtet sich an Wissenschaftlerinnen oder Wissenschaftler, die – gegebenenfalls im Verbund mit Wissenschaftsverlagen oder vergleichbaren Dienstleistern – im Rahmen von Pilotprojekten tragfähige und nachnutzbare Geschäftsmodelle für die Publikation von Monographien im Open Access entwickeln und umsetzen.
Anträge werden bis zum 1. März 2013 entgegengenommen.

Publish means “make public”. Paywalls are the opposite of publishing

Publish means “make public”. Paywalls are the opposite of publishing

Mike Taylor, open access advocate and research associate at the department of earth sciences, University of Bristol says that preventing publication to make profit is wrong.

Nothing is wrong with publishers making a profit. (…)If you can make money by publishing research, that’s great. The issue is not publishers who make money. The issue is corporations that go by the title “publishers”, but which in fact make money by preventing publication.

Digital access to knowledge: Research chat with Harvard’s Peter Suber

Digital access to knowledge: Research chat with Harvard’s Peter Suber

“Imagine what would happen if all journalists who write about scholarship had access to primary sources themselves,” Suber says. “Imagine if they could put links to primary sources in their publications, and imagine if readers could click through for free online to those primary sources.”

Journalist’s Resource.

Crowd-sourcing a cure for cancer through the internet

Crowd-sourcing a cure for cancer through the internet

Mr Iaconesi has been diagnosed with cancer. He set up a website where he shares his medical records. He is crowd-sourcing a cure. 

“Grab the information about my disease if you want and give me a cure, create a video, an artwork, a map, a text, a poem, a game, or try to find a solution for my health problem,” he wrote.

                     

BBC News.

CC0 the no-copyright license

CC0 the no-copyright license

The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

Excerpt of CC0 1.0 (universal) public domain dedication.

The 7th Munin Conference on Scientific Publishing 2012

The 7th Munin Conference on Scientific Publishing 2012

The Munin conference is an annual conference on scientific publishing, with an Open Access approach. The duration of the conference this year will be held at 22–23 November 2012 at the University of Tromsø, Norway.

See the conference’s program on open access and how publishers see their publishing process could work in the future.

Registration is open until November 9th 2012 (registration is not free of charge).

Anatomy of a crowdfunding process

Anatomy of a crowdfunding process

Ethan O. Perlstein, PhD. at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics Princeton University on the structure and dynamics of a crowdfunding process:

Crowd­sourc­ing Dis­cov­ery our “Open Sci­ence” study of the effects of amphet­a­mines on brain cells, went live last Thurs­day Octo­ber 4th. We kicked off the 45-day crowd­fund­ing cam­paign with an evening launch party at Deweys Flat­iron in New York City.