What does it cost to publish a Gold Open Access article?

What does it cost to publish a Gold Open Access article?

An emerging preference for Gold Open Access publishing has been stirring emotions. Mike Taylor highlights where the Finch Report goes wrong on cost and argues that academics should redirect their anger at publishers taking $1973 from academia in return for each paper they receive.

Current Controlled Trials and DOIs

Current Controlled Trials and DOIs

A blog entry on the DOI’s potential and Threaded Publications. BioMed Central Bolg.

DOIs are strongly associated with enabling digital scholarly content to be formally cited in journal article reference lists, and therefore for academics to gain credit for the work assigned a DOI. Not all scientists need understand DOIs, but all scientists understand citation. The growing practice of assigning DOIs to scientific datasets and other non-paper-based scholarly outputs is partly driven by the need to incentivize more scientists, through the potential for more citations, to publish their work.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease can become a global public good only if the data are made public

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease can become a global public good only if the data are made public

As most of the global health community may be aware, today the long-awaited findings of the Global Burden of Disease 2010 (GBD2010) project were launched, to much fanfare and excitement, at a public event at the Royal Society, London. The launch coincides with the publication in the Lancet of seven original research articles describing the findings, along with additional commentary. Needless to say, the articles have been generously made free-access by the Lancet (but which is not the same as true open-access, under generally accepted definitions).

PLOS Blogs. 

Higher education: our MP3 is the mooc

Higher education: our MP3 is the mooc

It’s been interesting watching this unfold in music, books, newspapers, TV, but nothing has ever been as interesting to me as watching it happen in my own back yard. Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course (or mooc), and our Napster is Udacity, the education startup.

We have several advantages over the recording industry, of course. We are decentralised and mostly non-profit. We employ lots of smart people. We have previous examples to learn from, and our core competence is learning from the past. And armed with these advantages, we’re probably going to screw this up as badly as the music people did.

Clay Shirky. The Guardian. 

Small Wonders: Science Meets Art Under The Lens

Small Wonders: Science Meets Art Under The Lens

A stained-glass spiral of cells from an aloe plant, an old-growth forest of neural cells in the retina of a mouse, a starry sea of leaf hairs on a garden shrub—organisms have a way of reinventing themselves rather spectacularly under the microscope, giving observers a new appreciation for what Charles Darwin termed nature’s “endless forms most beautiful.”

Scientific American.

How Do You Play with Your Dog?

How Do You Play with Your Dog?

Millions of people around the world come home to four legs and a wagging tail, and many spend some of their time together playing. While dog-dog play has been studied extensively, dog-person play, which takes on a different form and appears to have different rules, has not attracted nearly as much scholarly attention. At the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab in NYC, we are investigating the different ways people and dogs play together and the behaviors they use. And, we need your help (well, you and your dog’s help).

Scientific American Guest Blog. 

Citizen Science in the Library

Citizen Science in the Library

Citizen science is a method of conducting scientific research that uses people withoutformal scientific education or training to gather the data needed for the experiment. In some cases, the data has already been collected and volunteers help mark up it up to make it usable by scientists. This technique helps gather and/or process large amounts of data that would be impossible for one scientist, or even a team of scientists, to gather and process on their own. This is important because large data sets reveal trends that would be impossible to see on a smaller scale. Many citizen science projects focus on some type of environmental monitoring, however subjects can range greatly.

by Allison Scripa.


Can citizen science monitor whale-shark aggregations? Investigating bias in mark–recapture modelling using identification photographs sourced from the public

Can citizen science monitor whale-shark aggregations? Investigating bias in mark–recapture modelling using identification photographs sourced from the public

The conservation status of the whale shark, Rhincodon typus, remains uncertain. Throughout their range, whale sharks are a focus for wildlife tourism and many identification photographs taken by tourists have become available online, presenting a potentially valuable source of data for monitoring populations using mark–recapture techniques. However, the suitability of these photographs for mark–recapture models has yet to be investigated.

What would happen if I placed my manuscripts in the Public Domain?

What would happen if I placed my manuscripts in the Public Domain?

Mike Taylor, Computer programmer with Index Data, palaeontologist with the University of Bristol, and advocate for open access, open data and open source on the Copyright status of work by the U.S. government and its possible influence on scientific publishing towards open access:

So journals and publishers are already set up to deal with public domain works that have no copyright. And that made me wonder why this option should be restricted to U.S. Federal employees.

Narrating impacts in the Arts & Humanities

Narrating impacts in the Arts & Humanities

Uncertainty remains over the importance of reach and significance and their relationship with dissemination.  So, whilst dissemination is an increasingly important component of funded research, it is by itself insufficient to demonstrate reach (the extent and diversity or communities, environments, individuals or organisations that have benefitted or been affected by research outcomes) or significance (relates to demonstrable effect and ‘change’).