Crowdfunding for better citizen science?
Nearly 13,000 people have backed the Planetary Resources' kickstarter pitch. The US company's plan is to build the 'first publicly accessible space telescope'.As with other Kickstarter campaigns, the rewards increase for higher amounts. People pledging $200 or more will be able to point the telescope at any celestial object – "other than the Sun" – and have a high-definition image sent to them. Those pledging $5,000 or more will be invited to launch events and have their names etched on the spacecraft.Read more here.
Data-sharing and transparency in clinical research
Richard E. Kuntz on the changing structure of industry-sponsored clinical research (read here).Open Science „Champions of Change“ Award from White House
13 scientists recognized as Open Science "Champions of Change" for their open sharing of scientific data (read more in Wall Street Journal).On Open Science And Scholarly Communication
From the LSE Impact of Social Science blog: Open Science: digging deeper into the assumptions that underpin openness and Web 2.0 (disclosure: the authors of the article are also among the editors of this website)New Mozilla Science Lab
Science still lives in a dark analogue world - Mozilla shows a way out.Biohackers and the Politics of Open Science
Michael Bauwens presents the book of the day: Biohackers and the Politics of Open Science, a book about Open Source in Genomics, not only the diybio movement but more in general how open science culture and practices interact with today’s innovation and market system. (Read here)Yay to open data!
Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), on open data:We are seeing a similar culture change in neuroimaging. The Human Connectome Project is scanning 1,200 healthy volunteers with state of the art technology to define variation in the brain’s wiring. The imaging data, cognitive data, and de-identified demographic data on each volunteer are available, along with a workbench of web-based analytical tools, so that qualified researchers can obtain access and interrogate one of the largest imaging data sets anywhere.Read more here.
You can overdo data-sharing
EU comissioner, Vivian Reding thinks US authorities should not have automatic access to EU citizens' data (read more here).The library-end of a data-sharing culture
Minglu Wang in a paper about new data services - an inside to the library-end of data sharing: From the Abstract:This paper describes the process of how we gained a better understanding of the variety of library users’ data needs, and how we gradually established some new data services based on our current capabilities.
Working paper on changing scientific policy advice
Gert G. Wagner and Heinrich Tiemann in a working paper on the new organization of scientific policy - some interesting ideas about data sharing. (In German only)OKFN: G8 Open Data charter highlights Open Data as a crucial for governance and growth
Today’s release of an Open Data Charter by the G8 is testimony to the growing importance of open data worldwide. The Charter recognizes the central role open data can play in improving government and governance and in stimulating growth through innovation in data-driven products and services.
Read more on that issue here.
New practices in scientific peer review
As a consequence and to respond to the scientists’ needs, some journals also involves themselves by providing new peer review models.
The bottom line is that journals cost money
Open access is a utopian pipe dream, says Richard Hoyle.TimesHigherEducation.
Open Access Subset
The PMC (PubMed Central) Open Access Subset is a relatively small part of the total collection of articles in PMC. Articles in the PMC Open Access Subset are still protected by copyright, but are made available under a Creative Commons or similar license that generally allows more liberal redistribution and reuse than a traditional copyrighted work. Please refer to the license statement in each article for specific terms of use. The license terms are not identical for all articles in this subset
Citizen Science as a Novel Scientific Instrument
In the way that smart phones have permeated our culture, citizen science seems equally ubiquitous, appearing at science conferences, museums, conservation organizations, government agencies, journal articles, web sites and yes, in blogs. Citizen science covers a diverse collection of activities in which groups undertake investigations alongside or under the supervision of scientists.PLOS
Mozilla Launches ScienceLab To Help Researchers Use The Open Web To Shape Science’s Future
“Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn’t transformed scientific practice to the same extent we’ve seen in other areas like media, education and business,” Mozilla’s Mark Surman argues.Techcrunch.
Peter Suber’s „Open Access“ book is now open access
Today MIT Press released four OA editions: The paperback edition is still available as well.From Nature’s Technology Feature: The big challenges of big data
Biological data are much more heterogeneous than those in physics. They stem from a wide range of experiments that spit out many types of information, such as genetic sequences, interactions of proteins or findings in medical records.
Data-sharing among scientists
Some innteresting insights about data-sharing in Sarah C. William's study.The Open Science Project: Poster
Dan Gezelter's poster about openscience.org. Comments are welcome.G8 science ministers endorse open access
Science ministers from the G8 group of the world’s richest countries have jointly endorsed the need to increase access to publicly-funded research.