Hiding your research behind a paywall is immoral
As a scientist your job is to bring new knowledge into the world. Hiding it behind a journal’s paywall is unacceptableThe Guardian. Notes and Theories.
Elsevier In Advanced Talks To Buy Mendeley For Around $100M To Beef Up In Social, Open Source Education Content
The world of ed-tech is ramping up another notch, and getting a lot more open in the process: educational publishing giant Elsevieris in advanced talks to buy Mendeley, a London/New York-based provider of a platform for academics to share research and collaborate with each other via a social network. TechCrunch understands from sources close to the companies that the deal is underway and should close this quarter, possibly by the end of February — all things being equal — and will be in the region of $100 million.techcrunch.
Tips For Starting A ScienceOnline Satellite: If You Build It, Will They Come?
Here are some tips for those of you who want to start a ScienceOnline satellite, as well as how to participate in San Diego.
Challenge #2: Find a Way to Build Cheap Hail Pads
DISCOVER Magazine is partnering with Instructables and SciStarter, an online citizen science community, to solve real problems facing researchers. The Citizen Science Contest is your opportunity to help millions of regular people contribute to scientific discovery. Prizes include a Celestron telescope, DISCOVER subscriptions, and time-lapse cameras! But hurry, the deadline is January 21, 2013.
Open Science and Science 2.0
In our talk we tried to outline what’s wrong with the academic system of doing science and discuss various initiatives which try to improve the situation. We focused on how to make the publishing system more open and transparent (Open Science) and create completely new ways of collaborating and sharing scientific knowledge (so called “Science 2.0”).Michał Kotowski and Piotr Migdał.
In German.
Free DOI registration for academic institutions
A new service offered by German DataCite members includes free DOI registration for academic institutions.KNAW open access dialog ‚Publish open access or perish?‘
February, 6th 2013. KNAW, Kloveniersburgwal 29, 1011 JV Amsterdam. 1pm-5pm.After an introduction by Cameron Neylon (PLoS) and Martin Rasmussen (Copernicus Publications), participants will discuss several statements relating to open access of publications, in both small groups and in a plenary session. The aim of this KNAW open access dialog is to raise awareness of open access by discussing controversial statements. In this way, advantages and disadvantages of the various publication models as well as do’s and don’ts will be considered.Register here.
To Make Open Access Work, We Need to Do More Than Liberate Journal Articles
We need to prod scholars to be more receptive to scholarship that takes place outside of the traditional closed publishing system. One major rub with open systems of scholarly communication is that peer review essentially comes after the act of publication, which strikes many traditional academics as odd.Wired. Opinion.
RIP Aaron Swartz
Internet activist killed himself a month before going on trial for what family calls ‘an alleged crime that had no victims’.
The Guardian. See also Cory Doctorow’s post on BoingBoig.
Hot off the press: Cost-effectiveness of open access publications
Open access publishing has been proposed as one possible solution to the serials crisis | the rapidly growing subscription prices in scholarly journal publishing. However, open access publishing can present economic pitfalls as well, such as excessive publication charges. We discuss the decision that an author faces when choosing to submit to an open access journal. We develop an interactive tool to help authors compare among alternative open access venues and thereby get the most for their publication fees.
Lords science committee launch open access inquiry with evidence session with Dame Janet Finch
The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee will next week hold its first evidence session in a new short inquiry into the Government’s open access policy and its implementation by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) (the partnership of the UK’s seven research councils).
Open Science in action
Jon Tennant, PhD student at Imperial College London posted his study plan online in the spirit of open science. Have a read.4 Ideas for Defending the Open Data Commons
Idea #1: defend a real choice in terms of open data licences (“pro-choice” approach) Ideal #2: the General Interest Data, G.I.D. Idea #3: Contribution peering: I contribute/I receive Idea #4: Contributive pricing on use (GET>POST)
OKF Blog.
Journal archive JSTOR opens up (some)
The Register & Read program was designed to make access to JSTOR’s treasure trove of journal articles at least a little more open. While access to JSTOR’s full content is reserved for those with ties to libraries that purchase subscriptions, the Register & Read program lets anyone, university-affiliated or not, read — but not download or copy — up to three articles every two weeks, for free.
Open Science Lab at the German National Library of Science and Technology, Germany
Check the open science lab, working since the beginning of this year, and its programme.
First talk “Cyberscience 2.0” will be held on January, 29th, 2013.
White House to mandate machine-readable open data
The new data release policy is part of the deliverables detailed in the Digital Management Strategy, which the Office of Management and Budget released in May. It calls for a new policy for open data, content and web API standards within six months. The policy is now two months late.Federal News Radio.
Leading history journal editors take on the Research Councils UK
What is really needed, though, is a thorough analysis of optimum embargo periods by discipline and/or a plan for monitoring the effectiveness of different embargo periods in different disciplines.Historians revolt against RCUK’s embargo periods and the CC-BY licences which would not fit to their way research is done, they say.
Journals4free.com
More than 10000 free journals available. Journals for Free has a broad definition for what open access journals are:
- journals that provide free documents immediately upon publication, with no delay;
- journals with free information after a delay (embargo period);
- journals with free information for a certain period in the past.
Free for all: Australian Research Council (ARC)-funded research now open to the public
The ARC’s new policy will free up a lot of basic research. But far from all of it. There are loopholes, there is wiggle room, and there are ways for researchers and universities to drag their feet.
See ARC’s policy here. See also the blog by Alex Holcombe, Associate Professor, University of Sidney, which gives room to discussion here.
Open access and editorial quality – National Union of Journalists (NUJ) event
An invitation to an open panel discussion organised by the National Union of Journalists and hosted by The Wellcome Trust.The event will take place on Wednesday 6 February at 7pm in London.The venue is The Wellcome Trust, 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE
Announced speakers are amongst others Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, Nature and Professor Stephen Curry, Imperial College and open access blogger.
Mendeley, Open Access, and the Altmetrics Revolution: Implications for Japanese Research
Keita Bando, Mendeley Advisor, Digital Repository Librarian Coordinator for Scholarly Communication, My Open Archive on open access, Mendeley and Altmetrics.“With Japanese researchers, there’s a kind of resistance or barrier to using a creative commons license; particularly, people tend to have the attitude that the rights to a paper are the publisher’s concern, so they don’t think to actively go for a creative commons license themselves,” Mr. Bando states.