News blog

Microsoft Adds Momentum to “Open Science”

Momentum continues to build behind the “open science movement,” propelling the debate over publication of scholarly works and the scientific process itself. Last week, Microsoft Research announced it was adopting a policy that allows it to retain a license for research submitted to conferences or publishers in order to post it to a freely accessible online site as well. And earlier this week, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson said it will release data from clinical trials, through an agreement with the Yale University Open Data Access Project.


re/code.

EuroScientist: Special Issue on Research Evaluation

As the title suggests, here is a link to the current special issue on research Evaluation from the EuroScientist. And here is an overview to the special issues and link to articles in it:
Editorial Alternatives to peer review See also our previous coverage on related topic New methods of evaluating research

It’s the Neoliberalism, Stupid: Why instrumentalist arguments for Open Access, Open Data, and Open Science are not enough.

The Open Movement has made impressive strides in the past year, but do these strides stand for reform or are they just symptomatic of the further expansion and entrenchment of neoliberalism? Eric Kansa argues that it is time for the movement to broaden its long-term strategy to tackle the needs for wider reform in the financing and organization of research and education and oppose the all-pervasive trend of universities primarily serving the needs of commerce.


LSE Impact Blog.

Data-Sharing Angst: An Insight into an ongoing Research Project (Feedback appreciated)

Benedikt Fecher, one of our editors here, wrote a blog entry about a systematic review on data sharing in academia that he and his colleague Sascha Friesike conducted. It is part of his doctoral research. Particularly interesting might be the Data Sharing Angst:
Data sharing in academia is good for everyone. It allows better and more research. For the single researcher, however, these advantages are not so apparent. The category Returns indicates that sharing research data is rather related to negative than positive individual outcomes. For instance: Inhibiting returns include concerns about competitivedisadvantage regarding other researchers, commercial misuse of data, the falsification of results and flawed data interpretation by others – all of which can be subsumed as Data sharing Angst. They exist, whether justified or not.
Feedback, questions and ideas are more than welcome!

Interview with Malcolm Burrows

What do you think are the biggest challenges to the scientific community?
There are many aspects that currently make science an unattractive career to enter. We need urgently to make it more attractive to young people by enabling them to develop their own ideas, and that means giving them access to funding early in their career. The support of large groups should be tempered and more support given to individuals with great ideas and to those willing to tackle important and difficult ideas with uncertain outcomes.

Book Release: Opening Science – The Evolving Guide on How the Internet is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing

by Sascha Friesike and  Sönke Bartling.

The book is Open Access by Springer. You can read it for free and edit it online here.

The authors of this book try to give researchers, scientists, decision makers, politicians, and stakeholders an overview on the basics, the tools, and the vision behind the current changes we see in the field of knowledge creation often called "Open Science". It is meant as a starting point for readers to become an active part in the future of research and to become an informed party during the transition phase.  Everyone is invited to contribute to it and adopt and reuse its content.
 

Please spread the word and of course feel free to edit the book!

 

Impediments to Information and Knowledge Sharing Within Policing

Interesting article by Abrahamson and Goodman-Delahunty.
Information sharing is the lifeblood of policing, yet information/knowledge sharing within and across organizations remains problematic. This article elaborated on previous research on organizational information culture and its impact on information use outcomes in policing by examining perceived impediments to information sharing of 134 officers in three Canadian police organizations.

When do firms benefit from academic research?

The abstract:
Firms' access to academic discoveries through R&D collaborations has been shown to enhance their patent performance. However, increasing both internal and external R&D activities can lead to high knowledge redundancy and coordination costs. This paper examines what kind of R&D focus inside the firm will improve or reduce the benefits of R&D collaborations with universities. Our results show that technological recombination focus strengthens the relationship between university collaborations and patent performance, whereas scientific research focus weakens the relationship. These results also differ between young and old firms, implying that firms may shift their R&D focus according to their collaborative objectives.

Amazing! Your Smartphone Can Do Science!

Is there anything my smartphone can't do?
That smartphone in your purse or pocket isn’t just for viewing movies and checking Facebook. By putting data collection, visualization and learning in the palm of your hand, it’s helping to transform science education and open up unprecedented opportunities for citizen science.
For all of those that always wanted to science on the train instead of playing Angry Birds... read on!

Sustainable Software for Science

'Let's collaborate' is the daily mantra of open science advocates. But how? The first workshop on "Sustainable Software for Science" gives some answers from the infrastructure perspective. But read for yourself:
The first workshop on "Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experience," was held at the Supercomputing Conference in Denver, CO on November 17, 2013. This meeting was organized by the Software Sustainability Institute at the University of Edinburgh and the National Science Foundation to examine how we can create sustainable software platforms that can best serve the needs of scientific research.  
Follow the link to read more about software solutions for open science.

In the Internet era, research moves from professionals’ labs to amateurs’ homes

FOR THOUSANDS of ordinary people around the world, one of biology’s hardest problems is just a game. Both scientists and supercomputers have long struggled to predict the three-dimensional structures of the biological molecules called proteins. These structures are crucial to understanding proteins’ roles in fundamental cellular processes and disease, but predicting them is no easy task—which is why some researchers have turned to laypeople for help.


Harvard Magazine.

Opening Science to Society

From the abstract:
Cloud computing put up on established trends and offers a variety of services that can profit its customers, by means of providing quick access to their data, scalability, data storage, data recovery and guard against various hackers, and usage of the network and infrastructure conveniences for motivating the outlay exposed of the deliverance of services despite the fact that growing the speediness and suppleness with which services are organized.

More on Elsevier and Academia.edu

Here is a bit more juice on the Elsevier Academia.edu entanglement.
Tom Reller, Elsevier’s vice president for global corporate relations, said via email that the publisher “does issue takedown notices from time to time when the final version of the published journal articles has been, often inadvertently, posted. However, there are many other good options for authors who want to share their article. We aim to ensure that the final published version of an article is readily discoverable and citable via the journal itself in order to maximize the usage metrics and credit for our authors, and to protect the quality and integrity of the scientific record. The formal publications on our platforms also give researchers better tools and links, for example to data.”
All in all there are four observations that can be drawn from this:
  1. It had to happen sometime: publishers don't let you sign copyright agreements for nothing. Platforms like Academia.edu or ResearchGate pose a real threats to their "business models". And once it is accepted policy that every researcher posts her materials on such a platform no one would see a reason to buy a paper anymore. That would be great in a sense of access, but then again access really isn't the publishers' main concern.
  2. They sell you open access: If all articles would be available online people would stop to pay publishers for there ridiculously overpriced open access options.
  3. This will very likely continue: As said before there are a few platforms out there making research articles available to the community. My personal guess is that we will hear from ResearchGate next.
  4. You live freely if you haven't a reputation to lose: Elsevier really has nothing to lose. They already established themselves as the researchers' ultimate antagonist. Meanwhile, in many fields they still own leading journals that researchers simply won't stop publishing in. So in this position what would they gain from playing nice?
SF