IT WAS A VERY BIG YEAR, I THINK, FOR OPEN ACCESS
Stephen Curry, professor for biophysics at Imperial College, London and open access advocate, in an interview with Katherine Powell, currently studying an MSc in Science Communication and one of the editors of Refractive Index, a bog on science communication, Imperial College London.Amendment to copyright in Germany: First draft of the Federal Ministry of Justice
See also the draft (in German).Publishers Flip Out, Call Bill To Provide Open Access To Federally Funded Works A ‚Boondoggle‘
Last week, a new version of Doyle’s bill was introduced and it’s been improved. First off, it’s got some nice bipartisan backing in both parts of Congress. On the Senate side, it was co-sponsored by Senators Cornyn and Wyden, while on the House side we’ve got Doyle along with Reps. Yoder and Lofgren. Also, it reduces the time to open publishing from one year down to six months (like a NY bill that came out last year). It doesn’t spread the policy to all federal agencies, but the vast majority of federally funded resarch would qualify (all agencies that spend over $100 million on research are covered).TechDirt.
ACM: tear down this paywall.
We, the undersigned researchers, technologists and citizens, demand that the Association for Computing Machinery make the complete contents of the Digital Library available to everybody.The ACM Digital Library is published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
THE OPEN DATA CENSUS – TRACKING THE STATE OF OPEN DATA AROUND THE WORLD
Recent years have seen a huge expansion in open data activity around the world. This is very welcome, but at the same time it is now increasingly difficult to assess if, and where, progress is being made
An Argument Against Science 2.0
Quite a number of extremely intelligent, insightful, and innovative scientists have been discussing the idea of open science and/or “Science 2.0″, generally meaning a more social approach to the practice of science. This has been going on for a number of years now.
Not FASTR Enough
While the publishing industry continues to explore numerous avenues for providing full Open Access to the stewarded versions-of-record of the scientific literature, SPARC once again offers up the hope that the US Congress will save us from the evil paywalls. Is this really the best they can do?T. Scott Blog
The Open Humanities Awards
Are you working with open data, open source or open content in the humanities?
Join the Open Humanities Award competition.
Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain
The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.The New York Times
Human Genome Project perspectives in 2013: webinar series
“Society needs a principle of genetic equity in some way or another. Genetic information should not be used–must not be used–to limit the equality between human beings….There are practical measures you can do. This equity is not just a philosophical term. It actually means statutory provisions so that people cannot be disadvantaged.”
The bug-hunters discovering new species in their spare time
Everyone knows there are lots of species yet to be discovered in rainforests and remote parts of the world. But hundreds are being discovered every year in Europe too - most of them by amateurs.BBC News.
Crowd sourcing knowledge on plants
This platform wants to create a community sharing information on how to grow plants and own food, open access and CC-lincensed.A new science radio station: “Science Studio”
A new science radio station called “Science Studio” got crowdfunded via Kickstarter. This station airs already published audios on science according to the practices introduced by “Best Online Science Writing” (formerly OpenLab).We’re looking for the best radio, podcasts, one-off recordings and anything else that talks about science. You can send us your favorite pieces, by you or by someone else. They should be no more than 20 minutes (excerpts from longer pieces are allowed), and should have been published in 2012. The nomination form is here.
FASTR – Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act
This bill will give the American people greater access to the important scientific research results they’ve paid for,” Congressman Doyle said today.”Supporting greater collaboration among researchers in the sciences will accelerate scientific innovation and discovery, while giving the public a greater return on their scientific investment.See also this article on FASTR by Robin Lloyd, responsible for editing and assigning stories and managing the twitter feeds for Scientificamerican.com or this article by John Morgan, deputy news editor of TimesHigherEducation.co.uk Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project, collects major information material on FASTR here. Berkman Center provides further detailed information here.
Fools‘ gold?
Open-access publishing, once a niche preoccupation, is now a hot-button issue. But concern is growing that unintended consequences of new publication mandates will cost individual scholars and the UK sector dear. Paul Jump reportsTimes Higher Education.
Open Science versus Ash Dieback (and the Tweenome revisited)
Bluebell woods, the dense carpets of violet–blue flowers found in ancient woodland are a spectacular and famous springtime sight in Britain, but this picture postcard scene is threatened as never before.
PeerJ
PeerJ makes access to research free to alland affordable to publish for academic authors & their institutions.Have a look.
Crowd sourcing for biology
BBSRC is offering up to £2M to support crowd sourcing projects for biological sciences. The funding will develop and deploy crowd sourcing approaches to complex, large-scale scientific problems within the remit of BBSRC.
Kenya’s top university opens up its research
By placing all scholarly articles in an online ’digital repository’, the university aims to increase the visibility of its research output and enhancecollaboration with researchers in other parts of the world.