John Naughton, The Observer, says that the Royal Society has overlooked the fact that for more open access, scientists should not only publish or make accessible data but also homemade software used by the scientists to get data needs to be published.
The Guardian / The Observer.
“Open Science - I welcome the Royal Society’s report” says Neelie Kroes, European Commission, responding to the (UK) Royal Society’s website about “Science as an Open Enterprise”.
Doing Science in the Open: Interview with Michael Nielsen given at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, published on youtube.com on June, 14th 2012.
BBC on Finch Report (see Finch Report post on June 19th 2012).
Follow discussion here.
Undertaken on the behalf of the Research Councils UK in partnership with JISC, the Royal Society and Sciencewise-ERC1, this public dialogue explored views on open data, data reuse and data management policies within research.
Key Findings are:
1. The principal arguments for open data – around catalysing innovation and building trust – were contested.
2. Open data was an abstract issue for participants to engage with.
3. Main concerns around open data relate to promoting the public interest and protecting personal data.
4. Current practices around open data seen as mixed and contingent on the interests of researchers.
5. The public identified 8 key principles that could be used to promote more effective open data policies. Defining the public interest was key in this context.
6. There was a series of social and ethical issues associated with rights and responsibilities of different stakeholders around open data. These were sometimes in conflict.
7. Different governance structures emerged around open data, which are contingent on how public interest is defined and protected.
8. There were two broad views on what constitutes the public interest around data reuse that emerged from the dialogue, which have distinct and potentially conflicting implications for data governance.
9. Opening data in the public interest can involve direct trade offs for the public – in terms of individual rights around consent and confidentiality and the greater good.
10. There are a number of implications emerging from the dialogue about who gets to define public interest.
11. There is an opportunity to directly build public principles around openness directly into the policies of research funders.
12. Different open data governance structures could be considered by the research councils.
13. Open data, though not unimportant, is unlikely to be a highly significant public issue around the governance of research.
Up to £1billion of income and thousands of jobs could be placed at risk as a result of a move by Downing Street to allow Google and other digital search engines ‘open access’ to the nation’s best academic and scientific research. A report commissioned by 10 Downing Street sociologist Dame Janet Finch will say that open access to public-funded research ‘offers significant social and economic benefits’.
Daily Mail.
Paul Jump thinks, moving to gold model could cost sector an extra £60m a year like Finch group says.
The group’s long-awaited report, released earlier this week, estimated that the transition to open access would cost UK higher education an extra £50-£60 million a year.
See also comment by Professor Adam Tickell, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Birmingham.
Download to the final report as pdf here.
Six key areas for action are highlighted in the report:
- Scientists need to be more open among themselves and with the public and media.
- Greater recognition needs to be given to the value of data gathering, analysis and communication.
- Common standards for sharing information are required to make it widely usable.
- Publishing data in a reusable form to support findings must be mandatory.
- More experts in managing and supporting the use of digital data are required.
- New software tools need to be developed to analyse the growing amount of data being gathered.
CKAN is a free, open-source data management system. It is used to get data out in the open by local andnational governments as well as international bodies, but it was originally designed for the more community-oriented use of which the DataHub is an excellent example. On the DataHub, anyone can create a dataset in a couple of minutes. Data can be uploaded or linked to elsewhere on the web. Different data ‘resources’ (such as files of any kind) can be collected together in a dataset, and annotated with information about their author(s), provenance, availablity for re-use, etc.
COAR is currently working on agreements and licences for open access publications by collecting different versions of already existing licences through an open call: participate by writing to Anna Luden (see email below).
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) has formed a Task Force for “Open Access Agreements and Licenses” with members representing both the repository community as well as the licensing community. (…) They are now collecting different versions of open access clauses (e.g. author rights, self-archiving, parallel publication, compensation for Open Access material etc.) from your existing licenses, and also samples of agreements with gold open access publishers. Please send your replies to anna.lunden@kb.se .
Rather gossip. Still, of interest is that open access is something one can be knighted for also.
UK: Further steps towards full open access environment.
The report of the Working Group chaired by Dame Janet Finch published on 18 June recommends a programme of action to enable more people to read and use the publications arising from research. Better, faster communication of research results will bring benefits for public services and for economic growth.
See also articles by The Guardian and Reuters and comments by Cameron Neylon and Stephen Curry.
Guest blogger Paul Wicks from PatientsLikeMe explores why Open Access is not just for scientists.
A number of arguments have been made as to why generating political attention for this issue is important for science, but it wasn’t until I read Tom Webb’s blog post onNature Networks entitled “Confessions of an Open Access Agnostic” that I realized we might be missing an important point that we at PatientsLikeMe have been observing recently: open access is most critical for patients.
With the growing interest in OA worldwide comes the increasing demand for training, knowledge development, and skills for the implementing of OA repositories and OA journals, the twin routes for making research results openly accessible.
Alma Swan is project coordinator.
Alma Swan, Director of European Advocacy, SPARC and Key Perspectives on the Budapest Open Access Initiative BOAI at its 10th anniversary - recommendations for the next ten years.
The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) invites early stage researchers to a colloquium in Berlin, 25./26. October 2012. Within transdisciplinary discussion forums, post-docs and Ph.D. candidates are offered the opportunity to discuss and further develop their research in the field of Internet and society with other experts. The focus of the Berlin Colloquium for Internet and Society 2012 are the following topics: Patterns of Participation, Global Rules and Regulation, Transformation of the Public Sphere, Open Science, Business Models and Internet-enabled Innovation.
The conference will include formal talks as well as an unconference to encourage free discussion. If you’d like to take part by talking about something or leading a session, please get in touch.
Slide presentation by Carl-Christian Buhr at the Conference “Structural Frameworks for Open, Digital Research”, Copenhagen, Denmark, 11 June 2012. Buhr is working with European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes at the EU Commission on the Digital Agenda for Europe.
Researchers will only have to pay a one time fee of $259 ($99 per year per submitted article) to gain lifetime publishing privileges in the journal, which will focus on biology research, life and medical science.
See also comment by Stephen Curry, professor of structural biology, Imperial College, London.
Michael Kretschmer and Dr. Günter Krings vote in “Diskussionspapier zum Urheberrecht in der digitalen Gesellschaft” pro open access and pro regulation/controlling of market dominating publishing houses by Federal Cartel Authority:
(only in German):
Die CDU/CSU-Bundestagfraktion unterstützt Open-Access Veröffentlichungen, die den digitalen Zugriff auf die wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen fördern. Da es Anzeichen für eine marktbeherrschende Stellung von wissenschaftlichen Großverlagen gibt, halten wir eine Überprüfung dieses Marktes durch das Bundeskartellamt für angezeigt. Zudem setzen wir uns für die Verankerung eines verbindlichen Zweitveröffentlichungsrechts in den Förderrichtlinien für Autoren wissenschaftlicher Beiträge im Internet ein. Ziel ist es, dass öffentlich geförderte Forschungsprojekte nicht ausschließlich in Verlagspublikationen veröffentlicht werden. Die Autoren sollen ihre Werke zeitnah auch durch Open Access der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich machen können. Für die Verwirklichung dieses Prinzips setzen wir uns auch auf europäischer Ebene ein.
Open Access Days in Vienna September, 26th/27th 2012.
Registration possible only online until September 19th 2012.
Neelie Kroes, European Commission, on the importance of sharing and open access in scientific research: and her plans to build in open access to EU research and innovation funding.
Originally given to the Open Science: Structural Frameworks for Open, Digital Research — Strategy, Policy & Infrastructure , Danish Royal Library, Copenhagen June 11-13, 2012.
Invitation to webcast: June, 19th 2012, 10am Eastern US Time. http://www.openaccessweek.org/
To accommodate interest in every time zone, this 1-hour event will be recorded and available on our website shortly afterwards.
The new patent by Joseph Henry Vogel, Professor of Economics, University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras, has been granted this week. The patent stands for a web-based system and method to capture and distribute royalties for access to copyrighted academic texts by preventing unauthorized access to discussion boards.
A system and method for preventing unauthorized access to copyrighted academic texts is provided in which trademark licenses, discussion boards, and grade content are integrated into a web-based system that aligns the interests of teaching professionals, students, and publishers while also enhancing the overarching academic mission to create and disseminate knowledge.