The United Kingdom’s research-funding agencies will together spend more than £100 million (US$159 million) over the next five years to help pay for taxpayer-funded research papers to be free to read
Nature Newsblog.
EyeWire is a Citizen Science project aimed at mapping the neural connections of the retina. All you have to do is play a relaxing and absorbing game of coloring brain images!
SciStarter.
Check out what has been going on at the SpotOn event in London (11th November 2012).
Over 30 per cent of Wiley authors have published at least one open-access paper, and 79 per cent see open access as more prevalent in their discipline than it was three years ago.
Research Information.
Ferran Adria: Bullipedia takes chef from bites to bytes
We are taking fundamental aspects of digital technology such as algorithms and data and applying it to food. We are putting the combined knowledge of El Bulli online where people can adapt and modify it, and draw inspiration from some of the most innovative recipes ever created.
BBC News.
Ben Goldcare elucidates what’s wrong in the pharma industry.
The fixes are fairly simple, really. We need to make sure that all results from all clinical trials are always published, with no exceptions. What’s more, we need to go and dig up all the results from trials that were run in the past, because those are the trials that were done on the drugs that we are currently using.
The Economist (The Q&A).
Higher education institutions need to recognise the changing world of publishing, says Rupert Gatti – it’s time for academics to take matters into their own hands
The Guardian.
“There’s all kinds of hidden value in our systems which you can’t even understand until you open them up to see what people do with them,” Mr. Shirky said. “The thing that drives me craziest in conversations with large institutions about large data sets is they want to know in advance what will happen. Why should we open up our data? To which the answer is, you open up your data to see where the value is. It’s the value you can’t even predict until you try it that you get back.”
The Chronicle.
The commitee for Education, Research and Technology Assesment (Ausschuss für Bildung, Forschung und Technikfolgenabschätzung) of the German Budestag has discussed the recommendations of the Enquete-Projectgroup regarding open access.
In German.
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) today introduces the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license on its 19 NPG-owned academic journals. From December 2012, the CC BY license will be available to authors choosing open access publication options in these journals, in addition to the two non-commercial Creative Commons (CC) licenses currently on offer.
See also Ulrich Herb’s commentry in Telepolis (in German): Geschäftemachen à la Nature.
Today November 7th and tomorrow November 8th the open access conference Berlin 10 South Africa will take place.
See also blogposts.
Chris Bird and David Carr, both currently working for the Wellcome Trust, on open access for scientific research. They call for active input by scientific institutes and politicians to change opinions towards open access.
In German.
by David Kelk, David Devine. Abstract:
arXiv is an e-print repository of papers in physics, computer science, and biology, amongst others. viXra is a newer repository of e-prints on similar topics. Scienceography is the study of the writing of science. In this work we perform a scienceographic comparison of a selection of papers from the physics section of each archive. We provide the first study of the viXra archive and describe key differences on how science is written by these communities.
A colour guide by Bill Hubbard project manager of the SHERPA Repositories Support Project, University of Nottingham, UK.
See also the agenda (in German) of the Leibniz-Forschungsverbund Science 2.0.
The way we fund and publish science encourages fraud. A forum about academic misconduct aims to find practical solutions
The Guardian (Notes&Theories).
More than 20% of physical sciences journals offer a form of open access. New rules in Europe may increase that number.
Physicstoday.
So you’ve deposited your research paper in your institution’s online repository, now what? Just because it’s online, doesn’t automatically mean it’ll get lots of interest, you can harness the power of the social web to promote your papers and engage with your peers.
Brian Kelly tells you how.
JISC.
Interesting broadcast about open access.
In German.
Deutschlandfunk.
Scientific data can be quite abstract, but for those who aren’t so good at abstract thinking and who learn by doing or touching, sculpture offers a way to make weather data tactile.
PLOS Blogs.
Altmetrics is the study and use of non-traditional scholarly impact measures that are based on activity in web-based environments. As scholarship increasingly moves online, these metrics track associated interactions and activity to generate fine-grained data, allowing researchers and policy makers to create a higher resolution picture of the reach and impact of academic research.
Check out the PLOS Altmetrics Collection.
PLOS.
For ten years, the University of Southampton has been at the forefront of open access development. Researchers, academics, service providers and senior management have worked together in partnership to develop a successful open access strategy.
JISC.
Since repository interoperability is paramount in order to achieve the goals of Open Access, it is a focal point for the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR). This project is one of several tactics designed to promote the repository community’s understanding of the interoperability landscape, share current best practices, and provide knowledge and information necessary to chart and implement institutional strategies for interoperability that profit from the services made available through interoperability initiatives. This report is designed to be the first stage of a multi-phase process aiming to establish the COAR Roadmap for Interoperability.
