The New York State Senate and Assembly are considering the Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act (S4050 / A180). This bill—which would give the public access to the results of tens from millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded research—is a crucial step in the fight for open access.
"open data means better science".Cameron Neylon is member of the Fellowship's advisory board. He says:
‘Panton Fellowships will allow those who are still deeply involved in research to think closely about the policy and technical issues surrounding open data.’Read here how to apply. The website gives also information about the previous Panton Fellows.
Negative results very commonly go unpublished, and this happens at every possible level. It’s a fascinating research issue, from the field of “research about research”. Various studies have shown that basic science research often doesn’t get published if it produces negative results.F1000Research.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot on the notion of “web-native” scholarship and its various permutations.
The very fundamental difference from socialism is that with open access doesn’t ask anyone to make do with less. Because it deals with access to digital, rather than physical, goods, infinite perfect copies are free.
My first pleasant surprise was how quickly information traveled. I had just made my first posting when I refreshed the page a few minutes later and saw that it already had views. “That can’t be right”, I thought.
In the last two weeks I've noticed a lot of discussion on twitter about the failings of the private and anonymous peer review system as administered by traditional scientific journals.
Most social network founders want to make money. Ijad Madisch, the scientist-CEO behind ResearchGate, has a higher goal: He wants to win a Nobel Prize for the network. Five years after its founding, Madisch's plan doesn’t seem so far-fetched. ResearchGate, which has been described as “LinkedIn for scientists,” has 2.9 million users — about half of the international scientific community. Madisch has built a list of success stories in which scientists used ResearchGate to speed up their work. And as of now, he’s got a formidable supporter you may have heard of: Bill Gates. readwrite.
CHORUS (for ClearingHouse for the Open Research of the United Status) is clearly an effort on the part of publishers to minimize the savings that will ultimately accrue to the federal government, other funders and universities from public access policies. If CHORUS is adopted, publishers will without a doubt try to fold the costs of creating and maintaining the system into their subscription/site license charges – the routinely ask libraries to pay for all of their “value added” services. Thus not only would potential savings never materialize, the government would end up paying the costs of CHORUS indirectly.Michael Eisen. Blog. See also this skeptical post and this list of assembled links.
'The Incomplete Map of the Cosmic Genome' shows off the friendly, enthusiastic faces of science in a new iPad app
I've got a riddle for you: when is a documentary not a documentary? When it's an iPad app called The Incomplete Map of the Cosmic Genome by Robin Ince. It's funny because it's true.
The Guardian, Occams's Corner.
Nine years ago today the Open Knowledge Foundation was born. We’ve come a long way from our humble beginnings in Cambridge in 2004. From government to science to culture, open knowledge is now on its way to being established as an essential part of our information environment.See also the Global Open Knowledge Foundation MeetUp, wich will take place in the Public Library of Science, San Francisco, CA, this thursday, June 6th, 2013.
If one isn’t very familiar with OA journals, then one needs to be cautious about selecting one. For authors in the biomedical area, it’s preferable that the journal be indexed in PubMed, the widely-used bibliographic database. A convenient way to check this is to enter the full name of the journal into the PubMed Single Citation Matcher.
endorsed during the 2nd Annual Global Meeting, 27 – 29 May 2013, Berlin / Germany. The proposed activities aim at raising awareness for open access, at promoting and supporting open access, and at assessing the implementation of the actions suggested. The action plan is designed to take into account that participants in the GRC come from various backgrounds, have various degrees of expertise in dealing with open access, and have different remits. Thus, funding agencies need to consider which of the proposed activities are appropriate to be taken up by (possibly consortia of) participants in the GRC.
Interesting enough, research shows that there is a weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers’ citations in the digital age. And that can have consequences, according to the authors: ”If this pattern should continue, it might bring an end to the use of impact factor as a way to evaluate the quality of journals, papers and researcher”.
Fifty-eight faculty members have called for Harvard University to create a new faculty committee to consider ethical issues related to edX, the entity created by the university and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to provide massive open online courses.
Science is undoubtedly humanity’s greatest achievement, says AC Grayling, Master of the New College of the Humanities. People have to wake up to the fact that they have to be part of the story in thinking about science, and thinking about the meaning of science as it applies to our world.
Projects is a safe, simple and structured way for scientific researchers to organise their research outputs. It helps to keep track of experiments, save time and get ahead with research.Digital Science.
Back in February we reported on a worrying attempt by the European Commission to reframe the discussion about modernizing copyright in Europe purely in terms of licensing, reflected in the name of the initiative, “Licences for Europe”. …techdirt.
The Wellcome Trust has announced plans to extend its open access policy to include scholarly monographs and book chapters
A variety of schemes would allow the academy to reclaim control of its knowledge and labour, says Steffen BöhmTimes Higher Education.
May 2013 interview with Urs Gasser, executive director of Harvard’s Berkman Center on Internet & Society. Among the topics discussed are youth and privacy, bullying, online education, international social networking trends and the news media.Journalist’s Resource.
Alice Bell: Science funding bodies should be opened up to the public, not just industryThe Guardian Blog.