How open should your data be?

Robin Rice on the Edinburgh Research Data Blog:
The RECODE project is looking at open data policy for EU-funded research. I attended a workshop in Sheffield yesterday for a diverse stakeholder group of researchers, funders and data providers. Along with a nice lunch, they delivered their first draft report, in which they synthesised current literature on open research data and presented five case studies of research practice in different disciplines. The format was very interactive with several break-out groups and discussions.

We need MOOTs, not MOOCs!

Just read this and I think it is a highly interesting texts. MOOCs are currently a big topic at many universities, yet dropout rates are as high as 97%. Here is a text by Harvard's Ned Hall that takes the entire concept into question and provides a couple of good points on why he does so.
MOOCs and MOOTs are different things, and we should be working a lot more on the latter than the former. A MOOT is a Massive Open Online Text, a flexible on-line teaching tool that combines searchable, comment-on-able text, multimedia, tools for peer-to-peer collaboration and feedback, and who knows what other goodies we haven't thought of yet.
 

Where to find funds for publishing in Gold Open Access?

Numerous research institutions and universities worldwide offer special funds for publishing in OA, and governments and international organizations follow the suit, by introducing mandatory policies for publishing in this model. To cut a long story short: money has finally  appeared in the system. The funds are scarce but they are there. It is worth to look for funds. Just where to find them?

Springer charge academics for using CC-NC “Open Access” in lectures

Springer (commendably) publishes most of its APC-paid Open Access under CC-BY licences and allows free re-use for any purpose. However some “Open Access” (e.g. Drugs in R&D) is licensed under CC-BY-NC (non-commercial). This excludes, for example, re-use as teaching materials. Anyone wishing to re-use material in lectures will have to pay Springer, even though the author probably wanted it to be freely used. Here is the evidence; I strongly urge Springer to drop all NC licences, as otherwise it harms academics and many other sectors.


petermr's blog.

Librarians and curators are key partners in enabling innovative approaches to digital scholarship.

From the LSE "Impact of Social Sciences" blog:
Below is the text from a short talk given by James Baker, Digital Curator at the British Library about helping librarians and curators at the British Library acclimatise to the idea that the Library is becoming a place full of data as much as it is a place full of physical stuff, and that there is a growing community of users who see it that way. It is, in short, about helping those who are not digital scholars engage with digital scholarship.

Frontiers launches a new open-access journal in Energy Research

One of the largest and fastest-growing open-access scholarly publishers, now part of the Nature Publishing Group family, launched its Frontiers in Energy Research journal yesterday.
Frontiers in Energy Research will provide an open-science and interactive web platform for the research community to publish high-quality and rigorously peer-reviewed articles. Frontiers' real-time and interactive peer review enables fast, transparent and constructive review of a range of article types.

A coordinated approach is key for open access

Even the most optimistic advocates of open access to academic publications must admit that we are years — and perhaps decades — away from full conversion to such a system. It is easy to call for open access, but more difficult to make it happen. More science funders must put their money where their mouths are, and back their positive words with action. It will not be cheap, but the longer we wait, the more expensive it will be.


Nature News.

Data Sharing Goes Linux

The Linux Foundation, champion of all things open-source, has just announced a new collaboration with OpenBEL, an open-source platform for sharing scientific data.
The marriage should provide a boost to OpenBEL, which is already used by many in industry and academia to enable better collaboration on big data projects, such as drug development. The hope is that the nonprofit can do for OpenBEL what it is doing for Linux, which has become lingua franca among collaborative software developers and hackers alike.

Alexander Grossmann on the state of Open Access: Where are we, what still needs to be done?

Here is an intervie with Alexander Grossmann.
A: The present business models of subscription based publishing forces librarians to spend most of their budget or all of their budget on package deals with the major publishers. Just to illustrate the situation: For some libraries, in particular smaller libraries which cannot afford all the journals they need, publishers offer to take their whole budget to get access to the complete list of that publisher. As a result, no money is left to buy the publications of other publishing houses, or other content resources. However, those libraries accept that situation as the lesser evil.