Xenophobic scientific publishers: open access aids foreign enemies

Xenophobic scientific publishers: open access aids foreign enemies

Here are some thoughts by Michael Eisen on publishers.

But one part of the letter really caught my eye:
[FRPAA] would also compel American taxpayers to subsidize the acquisition of important research information by foreign governments and corporations that compete in global markets with the public and private scientific enterprises conducted in the United States.

COME ON! This one sentence exposes the publishers who wrote and signed the letter either as racist idiots who have no clue about how science works and what its goals are, or as craven liars willing to trot out xenophobic claptrap to promote their agenda.

A Look Inside the Boycott of Elsevier: A Q&A with Tim Gowers and Tyler Neylon

A Look Inside the Boycott of Elsevier: A Q&A with Tim Gowers and Tyler Neylon

Here a highlight from two separate interviews with Tim Gowers and Tyler Neylon. The article provides some background info on how the boycott came to life. 

Q: When did you become an advocate for a change in the journal publishing system, and for Open Access?  
Neylon: I have two major interests: math research and software. With both, you are aware of how easy it is to disseminate information on the Internet. Throughout my career I have been painfully aware of the inefficiency of scholarly publishing. If you know what technology can do, you are always seeing better ways of doing things. When I left NYU, it got harder for me to access research. I either had to sneak into, or pay $500 per year for access to an academic library. You shouldn’t have to pay if researchers don’t want you to pay.
Q: Who is responding to the boycott?
Neylon: The vast majority are professors at good universities. The most are in math, about 20 percent. 
Q: Why are most in math?
Neylon: People in math are particularly done with Elsevier. There were many resignations from their editorial boards. Mathematicians hate drama. To get a mathematician to resign, something must be seriously wrong. 

Open Science in Practice: Researcher Perspectives and Participation

Open Science in Practice: Researcher Perspectives and Participation

Here is a link to:

Whyte, A., Pryor, G. (2011). Open Science in Practice: Researcher Perspectives and Participation. The International Journal of Digital Curation, Vol. 6(1): 199–213.

From the abstract:

We report on an exploratory study consisting of brief case studies in selected disciplines, examining what motivates researchers to work (or want to work) in an open manner with regard to their data, results and protocols, and whether advantages are delivered by working in this way. We review the policy background to open science, and literature on the benefits attributed to open data, considering how these relate to curation and to questions of who participates in science. 

Five suggestions for Open Science evangelist: A historical IT perspective on how to put science raw-data acquisition on auto-pilot

Five suggestions for Open Science evangelist: A historical IT perspective on how to put science raw-data acquisition on auto-pilot

Here is a piece by Robert Reddick.

This week I attended the @boraz lecture at UNC-Charlotte, and the debate-topic of Open Science was in the air. After some thought, and an email composition to Bora, I decided I would add to the public debate. First off, while I’m hardly even a citizen-scientist – my goal here is to offer, as best I can, a software-industry perspective on the important mission of Open Science.

Why bother publishing in a journal?

Why bother publishing in a journal?

Here is a piece by Anthony Salvagno on publishing and the peer-review system. What’s probably more interesting is the debate in the comments.  From the comments:

Peer-review is intended to evaluate the validity of the scientific methods used and the conclusions made, while providing feed-back to improve the manuscript. While I agree that the current journal-based system is inadequate in today’s research and internet based environment, I do not believe that the system can, at this time, be forgone completely.

The case for open computer programs

The case for open computer programs

Ince, D.C., Hatton, L., Graham-Cumming, J. (2012). The case for open computer programs. Nature 482, 485–488.

Comprehensive nature article on open computer programs in science. From the abstract:

Scientific communication relies on evidence that cannot be entirely included in publications, but the rise of computational science has added a new layer of inaccessibility. Although it is now accepted that data should be made available on request, the current regulations regarding the availability of software are inconsistent. We argue that, with some exceptions, anything less than the release of source programs is intolerable for results that depend on computation. 

Webometrics and altmetrics: digital world measurements

Webometrics and altmetrics: digital world measurements

Here are some thoughts on altmetrics by Jenny Delasalle.

The problem with web stats and altmetrics is that there are potentially a lot of sources which will all measure the stats for different versions of the same item, or different elements of the same output, in different ways. This sort of thing is a driver for publication in an open access (OA) journal with one canonical copy of an article in just one place online: the so called “gold” route to OA.

It’s a valid argument. One of the main reasons why impact factors are so heavily relied upon is caused by the fact that it is easy to argue against alternatives. The question then is what does a download count say about a paper? Very little I guess. It just indicates how many people have looked at it—it does not say anything about the quality of the content. This assessment can hardly be automated; a crowdsourced solution is probably more feasible. 

Baseball Stats and Impact Factors

Baseball is a game of statistics. Ever detail of every game gets scored, every ball a player hits or misses gets noted and ends up in a database. Baseball fans love getting lost in cascades of numbers, love comparing players and teams. Every baseball fan knows that statistics are an essential element to what makes this game so exciting to follow.

There is an interesting link between baseball and science and that is that science is increasingly becoming a game of statistics, too. And by that I mean that impact factors in many cases have a higher priority than the actual content of the scientific work. In other words: many scientists would prefer a dull paper that hardly anyone is interested in but that is published in a highly ranked journal over a great paper that actually conveys important finding but that does not get published in a top tier journal. That is kind of odd.

Now, there is a noteworthy difference between baseball and science and that is that science is focused on a single measurand and that is the impact factor. In baseball there are dozens of measurands that provide insights into how a player performs in every aspect of the game. Yet, there is not an overall statistic that simply says who is the greatest player. There is no such statistic because it wouldn’t make sense. A great defensive player might not be as great offensively, a great pitcher might not have the stamina of a weaker pitcher … Statistics help fans to understand who is good and who is not, they point to the strengths and the weaknesses of players but they cannot decide who is the most valuable player. Annually, this decision gets made by humans, by the Baseball Writers Association of America, and they never decide unanimously.

In science however, people belief that a single measurand is enough to rank scientists. It is somewhat absurd that the same people whose job it is to create knowledge have created so little knowledge on how to comprehensively evaluate scientific works. Why don’t we have a database that shows how often a journal article gets downloaded, how often it gets mentioned outside the scientific community, how many word a scientist publishes a year, how often he/she helps other scientists, or how many other scientist find an article actually insightful?