Video on USA petition for open access by FakeElsevier.
Visit www.access2research.org and sign the White House petition. We are closer than ever to making open access to taxpayer funded research a reality.
You do not need to be a US citizen to sign the petition for open access.
It is “big data,” the vast sets of information gathered by researchers at companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft from patterns of cellphone calls, text messages and Internet clicks by millions of users around the world. Companies often refuse to make such information public, sometimes for competitive reasons and sometimes to protect customers’ privacy. But to many scientists, the practice is an invitation to bad science, secrecy and even potential fraud.
New York Times.
For our German readers:
Eine interessante Umfrage der Kieler Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften (ZWB) bestätigt diese Einschätzung jetzt. Die ZBW befragte 813 Ökonomen – und der Großteil von ihnen gab sich gleichgültig. Gerade einmal acht Prozent hatten den Boykottaufruf gegen Elsevierunterschrieben. Weitere 46 Prozent hatten nicht von der Aktion gehört, schließt aber eine Teilnahme nicht aus. 39 Prozent hatten sich bewusst dagegen entschieden, acht Prozent hatten noch nicht davon gehört und interessieren sich auch nicht weiter für das Thema.
To make it easier for EU-funded projects to make their findings public and more readily accessible, the Commission is funding, through FP7, the project ‘Open access infrastructure for research in Europe’ ( OpenAIRE). This ambitious project will provide a single access point to all the open access publications produced by FP7 projects during the course of the Seventh Framework Programme.
Essay on open access process: chronology and compared data on profit:
How profitable publishing Science can be, is illustrated by the following figures: in 2011 Elsevier asked $ 7089 for a subscription to Theoretical Computer Sciences (source: American Mathematical Society). That same year Elsevier also made a profit of £768 million on a turnover of £ 2.1 billion, a margin of 37.3%. 78% of those sales came from selling subscriptions to scientific journals. Compare this with a margin of 24% in 2011 for Apple, the highest profit ever in the history of this company. Another example: during the last 6 years, average prices for access to online content from 2 large scientific publishers have increased by an incredible 145%.
Repository Analytics tool.
CORE harvests, maintains, enriches and makes available metadata and pdf full-text content from many Open Access repositories.
The release of the new Statement of Principles for Scientific Merit Review highlights six “key elements necessary for a rigorous and transparent review system.” They include the use of expert assessment of proposals and a transparent, impartial, and confidential review process.
Scientific American:
We considered submitting to an open access veterinary megajournal, but immediately bumped against the prestige problem.
From Knoepfler Lab Stem Cell Blog. A poll on open access publishing.
Academic publisher Versita announced today the launch of a new program of Open Access journals. 100 Emerging Science Journals are being launched in 2012. The program’s focus is on young and rapidly developing fields of science, which have not yet been covered by a designated journal. The emerging topics have been identified in Life Sciences, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics and Mathematics.
Peter Binfield leaves PLoS ONE to start PeerJ.
After four years of dedicated service and steady leadership, Peter Binfield, Publisher of PLoS ONE, will be leaving us on May 18th. Under his stewardship, PLoS ONE has grown into the largest peer reviewed journal in the world. In the process, PLoS ONE has pioneered new editorial models that are being widely adopted by many publishers. We part on the best of terms – Pete is leaving to start his own company, and so we wish him well in this new Open Access Initiative.
A new open access publishing model starts in Fall 2012.
PeerJ is establishing a new sustainability model. Researchers will be able to purchase Lifetime Memberships, starting at just $99, giving them the rights to publish their articles in our peer reviewed journal. All published articles are made freely available to the public. Subscription fees made sense in a pre-Internet world, but now they just slow the progress of science. It’s time to change that.
University of Colorado: Initiative is advocating for a legislative bill that, if passed by Congress, would make academic journals more accessible in the sense that tax-funded research shouldn’t be bought back by students. In 2011, CU library spent $7.5 million on serials.
Essentially, the legislation would expand the National Institutes of Health public access policy — which already guarantees that research funded by the NIH will be accessible to the public — to additional agencies, including departments of defense, agriculture, education, commerce, health and human services, homeland security and transportation. It would also apply to the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the National Science Foundation.
The UK public sector spends £135 million a year, made up of subscriptions and time spent trying to find articles, accessing the journal papers it needs to perform effectively. Each extra 5% of journal papers accessed via open access on the web would save the public purse £1.7 million, even if no subscription fees were to be saved.
The UK’s valuable voluntary and charitable sector would also benefit from open access to academic research. For survey respondents, the two most frequently mentioned barriers to accessing research were cost (80%) and lack of time (46%).
The Alliance of German Science Organisations have agreed to coordinate their activities and to expand on the ideal of the innovative information environment by means of a Joint Priority Initiative from 2008 to 2012. Guiding Principles as pdf download available.
Oxford, Rodes House: An outstanding group of people debates publicly ’The Scientific Evolution: Open Science and the Future of Publishing’.
The diverse panel included publishers, funders, academics and entrepreneurs: Tim Gowers the Fields Medal winning mathematician, Victor Henning the co-founder and CEO of Mendeley, Robert Kiley from The Welcome Trust, Alison Mitchell from Nature Publishing Group, Cameron Neylon the open science activist and blogger, Lord Robert Winston the advocate of public engagement, and Alicia Wise from the publisher Elsevier. The event was organised by Victoria Watson and Simon Benjamin, and Simon also chaired it.
Australian researchers discuss freeing up access to the “source code” of clinical trials.
David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science, UK fosters public access to publicly-funded research. Full speech.
Michael Eisen writes about the opportunities universities have missed.
Universities should have stopped paying for subscriptions, forcing publishers to adopt alternative economic models. And they should have started to reshape the criteria for hiring, promotion and tenure, so that current and aspiring faculty did not feel compelled to publish in journals that were bankrupting the system.
Academic spring campaign aims to make all taxpayer-funded academic research available for free online.
The Guardian.
The UK plans to give the public access to academic research via the internet free of charge.
Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales might have agreed to advise the UK government on how to ensure the move would promote “collaboration and engagement”.
BBC.
Friday, 25 May 2012 from 12:00 to 14:00 (GMT) London, United Kingdom.