Tag Archives: Open Access

Open Researcher and Contributor ID will be launched in October 2012

Open Researcher and Contributor ID will be launched in October 2012

At launch, the ORCID Registry and system will include the following features:

  • Usability: Individuals may claim and create their own record and manage their record and account, including assigning proxy access.
  • Fields & Objects: The ORCID record will include mandatory fields for Name, email, and Organization, and additional fields to capture information about Publications, Grants, Patents and Education History.
  • Privacy Management: Individuals (or proxies) may manage field-level privacy settings for the information stored in their record: Private (share with no one), Limited Access (share only with those specified), and Public (share with everyone).
  • Member Read/Write Access Interface: Authorized ORCID Members may add information to an individual’s ORCID record using an OAuth API. ORCID Members may read public, and if authorized, limited access data from the ORCID registry via the OAuth API.
  • Public Data Read Access Interface: Members and non-members may use a public API and interface to read public data from the ORCID registry.
  • Widgets & Member Site Integration: Widgets, badges, instructions, and descriptions of ORCID will be available to support integration between sites.
  • Logging & Tracking: The ORCID system will log key information on system performance and record changes.  

European Commission: „Towards better access to scientific information: Boosting the benefits of public investments in research“

European Commission: "Towards better access to scientific information: Boosting the benefits of public investments in research"

The EU wants to open and make freely accessible academic research.

Further drafts on science in society here, see also comment by German Spiegel Online Magazin here.

RCUK announces new Open Access policy

RCUK announces new Open Access policy

Research Councils UK (RCUK) has today, 16th July 2012, unveiled its new Open Access policy. Informed by the work of the National Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, chaired by Professor Dame Janet Finch, the policy at once harmonises and makes significant changes to existing Research Councils’ Open Access policies.

See also blogpost on nature.com.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access

Dramatic Growth of Open Access

Graphics on the growth of open access repositories, based on OA data by The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE), operated by Bielefeld University Library.

The Directory of Open Access Journals is getting close to 8 thousand titles, and adding titles at a rate of over 3 per day. The Internet Archive provides access to 670,000 movies, 100,000 concerts, 1.3 million audio recordings, and 3.5 million texts.

Publisher Wiley Extends Open Access Option to Over 80% of Journals

Publisher Wiley Extends Open Access Option to Over 80% of Journals

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., announced today that its open access option for individual journal articles, OnlineOpen, will be available to authors in 81% of the journals it publishes. OnlineOpen gives authors the option to publish an open access paper in their journal of choice where it will benefit from maximum impact.

Press release by John Whiley & Sons.

Wellcome Trust will penalise scientists who don’t embrace open access

Wellcome Trust will penalise scientists who don't embrace open access

The U.K. Wellcome Trust enters a decisive strategy to promote and sustain their open access policies.

The Wellcome Trust plans to withhold a portion of grant money from scientists who do not make the results of their work freely available to the public, in a move that will embolden supporters of the growing open access movement in science. In addition, any research papers that are not freely available will not be counted as part of a scientist’s track record when Wellcome assesses any future applications for research funding.

The Guaridan.


Researchers of Tomorrow: Findings show that open access can be confusing to young researchers

Researchers of Tomorrow: Findings show that open access can be confusing to young researchers

U.K.: The JISC ( ‘Joint Information Systems Committee’) publishes the report Researchers of Tomorrow about the research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students.

“Researchers of Tomorrow” is the UK’s largest study to date on the research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students (born between 1982 and 1994). JISC and the British Library jointly commissioned the three year study in 2009, which involved 17,000 doctoral students from 70 universities at various stages in the project.

Representatives Urge White House to Support Public Access to Federally Funded Research

Representatives Urge White House to Support Public Access to Federally Funded Research

U.S. Congressman Mike Doyle (Democrat) writes an open letter to U.S. government urging the White House to support open access to federally funded research. He names successful strategies outside the U.S. and relates to the petition “Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research”.

While we believe a continued commitment to research and development is an important component of investment in U.S. economic competitiveness, the added value of making research publicly available is that it can exponentially increase collaboration and intelligent knowledge sourcing among researchers.  Public access policies can help to boost the value of academic works by exposing them to larger audiences and increasing the potential for citations.