Connotea: Bookmarks matching tag oa.new (50 items) |
- HUBzero
- Are strict CC-BY publishers shooting themselves in the foot?
- PEER End of Project Conference -- presentation available
- The potential effect of making journals free after a 6 mont embargo: A report for the Association of Learned, Professional, and Society Publishers [ALPSP] and the Publishers Association
- BioMed Central Blog : Why "We the People" should support open access
- Junar · The Open Data Platform
- The weakening relationship between the Impact Factor and papers' citations in the digital age
- Scopus is useless
- RUK: The Maturing Threat of Open Access - TheStreet
- ACCG: Archaeological Institute of America under fire on Open Access - The Business Journals
- ACCG: Archaeological Institute of America under fire on Open Access - MarketWatch
- U.S. releases digital government action plan - Page 1 - Government
- Open Data, Open Standards, and Community Activism
- My submission for the SSP annual meeting’s panel discussion
- The debate around open-access publishing
- Noel Schutt › Open Access
- Publishers, Open Access, and the Cost of Knowledge
- The Fifth Belgrade International Open Access Conference | EIFL
- CRI relaunches Cancer Immunity journal
- Technical U of Munich math department cancels all its Elsevier journals
- Fostering a Critical Development Perspective on Open Government Data
- Publishing old guard not for changing
- Twenty Years After: Armenian Research Libraries Today
- Embrace the ‘Academic Spring’
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Obama petitioned on open access
- US CTO seeks to scale agile thinking and open data across federal government - O'Reilly Radar
- Springtime for Publishers?
- Regards Citoyens Publishes Legislative Open Data About l’Assemblée nationale Française: NosDéputés
- Academic Journals are too Expensive for Harvard, Elsevier is Mega Greedy, and Why this Stinks for Future Librarians
- EIFL OA Repositories workshop for ISTeMag project partners | EIFL
- EUROPA - Press Releases - Neelie Kroes Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda Making Open Access a reality for Science Publishing and the Ecology of European Research (PEER) Project Conference Brussels, 29 May 2012
- Institutional Repositories are great – but who came up with the name?
- What can research data repositories learn from open access? Part 2
- Scoping of an Open Access Repository Registry (OARR)
- World's largest release of comprehensive human cancer genome data helps researchers everywhere speed discoveries
- Comment Neelie on SPEECH/12/392
- Does open access publishing increase citation or download rates? - Research Trends
- Open Access Policy Mandates | Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS)
- London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) Research Online: How (and why) LSHTM Research Online works and why we need you!
- The Scandal of Closed Access to Taxpayer Funded Research
- Libre redistribution – a key facet of Open Access
- Assessing research impact at the article level
- del-fi • Making More Scientists
| Posted: 01 Jun 2012 06:30 AM PDT hubzero.org HUBzero is a platform used to create dynamic web sites for scientific research and educational activities. With HUBzero, you can easily publish your research software and related educational materials on the web. |
| Are strict CC-BY publishers shooting themselves in the foot? Posted: 31 May 2012 07:44 PM PDT poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca This posts asks if strict CC-BY publishers are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage - other publishers can use their work, but this doesn't work the other way around. Argues for a more flexible approach, both at the article and sub-article level. |
| PEER End of Project Conference -- presentation available Posted: 31 May 2012 10:01 AM PDT groups.google.com presentations available at http://www.peerproject.eu/peer-end-of-project-conference-29th-may-2012/ The PEER Project (www.peerproject.eu ), held its final event to present its results on 29 May in Brussels. More than 100 attendees from the research, university, and STM publishing communities, as well as policy makers attended the conference. Comments by Vice President Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda) from the European Commission opened the meeting... followed by an agenda reflecting the collaborative nature of the PEER project with results and perspectives from various stakeholders presented throughout the day. The presentations given at this event as well as the PEER Executive Partner statements resulting from this successful project can be found online at: http://www.peerproject.eu/peer-end-of-project-conference-29th-may-2012/. The PEER project, supported by the EC eContentplus programme, aimed to investigate the effects of the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors' final peer-reviewed manuscripts (so called Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, author visibility, and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research. For any enquiries relating to PEER, please contact Julia Wallace, Project Manager of PEER at wall...@stm-assoc.org” |
| Posted: 31 May 2012 09:59 AM PDT www.publishingresearch.net Use the link to access the full text report described as follows by the Publishing Research Consortium <http://www.publishingresearch.net/>: “ALPSP and the PA have just completed a study, which took the form of a very simple survey of librarians round the world, gaining over 200 responses. It asked one main question: 'If the (majority of) content of research journals was freely available within 6 months of publication, would you continue to subscribe?' - and asked them, if appropriate, to give separate answers for STM (Scientific, Technical and Medical) journals and for HASS (Humanities, Arts and Social Science) journals.” THe Executive Summary for the report reads as follows: “1. This report documents the results of a survey carried out to obtain a significant body of information on how the acquisitions policies of libraries might be affected by an across-the board mandate to make journals articles free of charge six months after publication. 2. A short question was e-mailed to approximately 950 libraries throughout the world. The aim was to obtain a set of representative responses from librarians at the different types of library served by academic publishers, while at the same time focusing particularly on obtaining replies from librarians at the world’s most prestigious academic libraries. Allowing for bouncebacks, etc., it is estimated that the question reached approximately 800 librarians. 3. The question was: If the (majority of) content of research journals was freely available within 6 months of publication, would you continue to subscribe? Please give a separate answer for a) Scientific, Technical and Medical journals and b) Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Journals if your library has holdings in both of these categories. 4. 210 replies were received, giving an approximate 26% response rate. 159 of the respondents were from HEI libraries worldwide; 15 were from corporate libraries; and the remaining 36 were from government, medical, specialist, college and school libraries. 44 of the HEI respondents’ institutions appear in the THE Top 100 list and 99 of them appear in either the THE or the ARWU Top 500 list. 5. Analysis of the results was carried out for the sample as a whole, and further broken down by type of library / region. They are summarised in the table below, which also appears in Section VI of this report... 10. The following conclusions have been drawn: that an across-the-board mandate would havea material effect on libraries’ subscriptions; and that the impact on all publishers’ revenues would be considerable. HEI libraries would be impacted by the collapse or scaling down ofacademic publishing houses. The world’s most distinguished research institutions would be impacted most, since published outputs are essential for the work carried out by their researchers. The results indicate that STM publishers would fare better than AHSS publishers. Overall, STM publishers could expect to retain full subscriptions from 56% of libraries; AHSS publishers could expect to retain full subscriptions from 35% of libraries. STM publishers could expect 10% of libraries to cancel subscriptions altogether, and AHSS publishers could expect 23% of libraries to cancel subscriptions altogether. STM publishers could expect reduced (or no) revenues from the remaining 34% of libraries; AHSS publishers could expect reduced (or no) revenues from the remaining 42% of libraries. Most publishers would be obliged to review their portfolios; and a substantial body of journals, especially in AHSS subjects, would cease or be financially imperiled. 11. It is strongly recommended that no mandate is issued on making all or most journal articles available free of charge after a six month embargo until both libraries and publishers have had time to understand the issues better and have together taken steps to explore alternatives to a fully open access publishing model which could be mutually attractive.” |
| BioMed Central Blog : Why "We the People" should support open access Posted: 31 May 2012 09:58 AM PDT blogs.openaccesscentral.com “I don’t suppose that readers of a BioMed Central website need a long introduction to open access, so I’ll get right to the point: there’s a “We The People” petition active until June 19th, petitioning the Obama administration to provide public access to publicly funded research... You should go sign it, and then get all your friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, enemies and random people on the street to sign it... Frequently asked questions ... For those who want a little more context, here are a few of the questions that have come up repeatedly during the week that the petition has been live... [Q] Do you have to be a US citizen to sign? [A] No, you don’t. You need only be 13 years of age and in possession of a valid email address... [Q] Does it stop gathering signatures at 25,000? [A] No – and the more signatures gathered, the better. [Q] Why now? What’s the impetus for this? [A] In a word, momentum. Or, if you prefer, realpolitik. These are exciting times for open access. Recently, mathematicians were joined by other scholars in the Cost of Knowledge boycott, which was coordinated in response to the Research Works Act(RWA). We have learned that not even Harvard can keep up with the rising costs of access to the subscription literature; other universities are pushing back against price increases and even cancelling subscriptions; editors are resigning from toll-access editorial boards, and there has been an unusual amount of mainstream mediacoverage of the debate. There could be another RWA in the future, supported by well-funded lobbyists. The open access lobby can’t outspend, but we can go one better: we can take it to the people. The time is clearly ripe to demonstrate to the Obama administration, as they sort through priorities in the run-up to an election, that open access matters to the public. This was the insight that led to the petition; there is some context from the petition founders here, and a personal comment from one of the founders, John Wilbanks. [Q] How does this work with military data and other information of national security importance? [A] The petition aims only at material that has already been published: information that anyone can have today. Decisions about whether or not to publish (e.g. because of national security concerns) are made before the policy contemplated by the petition ever takes effect... [Q] How does this work with patenting? [A] As with military information, the petition aims only at information that researchers elect to publish – it has no effect on how or why they make that choice, so no one is going to lose a commercial opportunity because of the public access policy. [Q] Wait, the NIH already has a public access policy, it says so right there in the petition– what research is this aimed at? [A] The US government funds a lot of research that isn’t covered by the NIH! ... [Q] I’m not a scientist – why do I care about this? [A] Firstly, because you want value for your money as a taxpayer. The costs of publishing are part of the costs of research, and the open access model has been shown to provide a better return on investment for funders of research than the subscription model. Taxpayers should be able to read research they paid for in the first place... Secondly, because you may not make a living out of science, that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t do science, or read up on science relevant to your interests. Citizen science is rapidly growing... Patients and patient advocates are increasingly seeking to be genuine partners with physicians in making healthcare decisions – for which they need access to information. It’s not hard to see why PatientsLikeMe and e-Patients.net have both thrown their weight behind the petition. [Q] This isn’t really open access, sensu Berlin/Bethesda/Budapest, is it? [A] No, it’s public access, which isn’t quite the same thing. It’s not free of ‘most...restrictions’, being particularly inadequate for reuse such as text or data mining. But public access is important, for all the reasons mentioned above. This petition aims to wind the policy ratchet one step further, making future advances more likely and making it more difficult for those with vested interests to roll back existing gains. It’s a good step towards real, full, 100% open access. |
| Junar · The Open Data Platform Posted: 31 May 2012 09:57 AM PDT www.junar.com “Junar, the Open Data platform leader for the Data Economy, today unveiled the Junar Open Data Platform, a next generation data management system. Its cloud-based platform enables businesses, governments, and other organizations to take the complexity and guesswork out of having to develop their own proprietary open data software and makes it easy to unlock the hidden value of Big Data. The company also announced over 200 organizations participated in its early access program and it has raised initial funding of $1.2 million. Delivered as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, the data management system enables organizations to easily organize and present data that they want to share. The Junar Open Data Platform is the one service that organizations need to collect, enhance, publish, socialize, and report on their Open Data. The platform provides a simple workflow that allows users to streamline entire Open Dataprojects. From extracting datasets to building graphical views to managing data publishing, Junar ensures that data assets are always fresh, relevant, and social. And while some datasets are best shared, Junar makes it easy to control which datasets are made available to the public and which datasets are assigned only for internal users. The Junar Open Data Platform only takes a few minutes to deploy, requires no complex software or costly servers, and empowers organizations to custom brand and integrate their data into their own Web sites or have it hosted. ‘Open Data is fast becoming the next defining theme for business and government because information drives innovation and collaboration,’ said Diego May, CEO and co-founder of Junar. ‘And Junar is already the engine for hundreds of organizations who are opening data and for millions of end users who use that information today. As we rapidly move to a society dominated by information and services, Junar is busy powering that transformation and the Data Economy.’” |
| The weakening relationship between the Impact Factor and papers' citations in the digital age Posted: 31 May 2012 09:55 AM PDT Use the link to access the full text article from arXiv. The abstract reads as follows: “Historically, papers have been physically bound to the journal in which they were published but in the electronic age papers are available individually, no longer tied to their respective journals. Hence, papers now can be read and cited based on their own merits, independently of the journal's physical availability, reputation, or Impact Factor. We compare the strength of the relationship between journals' Impact Factors and the actual citations received by their respective papers from 1902 to 2009. Throughout most of the 20th century, papers' citation rates were increasingly linked to their respective journals' Impact Factors. However, since 1990, the advent of the digital age, the strength of the relation between Impact Factors and paper citations has been decreasing. This decrease began sooner in physics, a field that was quicker to make the transition into the electronic domain. Furthermore, since 1990, the proportion of highly cited papers coming from highly cited journals has been decreasing, and accordingly, the proportion of highly cited papers not coming from highly cited journals has also been increasing. Should this pattern continue, it might bring an end to the use of the Impact Factor as a way to evaluate the quality of journals, papers and researchers.” |
| Posted: 31 May 2012 09:53 AM PDT Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week #AcademicSpring, (29 May 2012) [Use the link to access the screenshots accompanying the blog post] “Scopus bills itself as ‘the largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources covering nearly 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers.’ Sounds useful. But it’s useless. Literally. Because it’s a subscription-only resource ... Now I am an associate researcher at the University of Bristol. UoB is part of the UK Access Management Federation, so I select that in the Shibboleth authentication page... But the list of member universities doesn’t include Bristol, instead skipping straight from ‘University of Birmingham’ to the intriguingly named ‘University of Bolton – Do Not Use...‘ I can’t use it. So it’s useless to me. Literally. This is why it’s frustrating to me when I read statements like this from Elsevier’s Alicia Wise: ‘Commercial publishers are especially able to command resources to … develop new technologies and platforms to access journal content and improve researcher productivity (e.g., ScienceDirect, Scopus, Scirus, CrossRef, CrossCheck. Article of the future, text-mining tools, measurement tools).’ I’m sure those things are all very nice (though I doubt they are better than what other people might build given access to the data). But it makes no difference how nice they are if I can’t access them. Other people who also presumably can’t access Scopus include: Mike Benton, my head of department at Bristol; Greg Paul, who’s not affiliated with a university; Jere Lipps, whorecently retired from his post at UCMP; and, as it turns out, Heather Piwowar, data-miner at the University of British Columbia... Benton is probably the UK’s most prolific palaeontologist, Paul is the most influential living palaeoartist, Lipps has had a hugely distinguished career, and Piwowar is in the vanguard of the current efforts to mainstream the text-mining techniques that we can all see are the future. For all these people, Scopus might just as well not exist. If we’re working with collaborators who do have access, they can’t send us URLs that point into Scopus, so it can’t be a shared resource within such collaborative projects. Google Scholar is better option for Benton, Paul, Lipps, Piwowar and me: it’s free to use and has a pretty good ‘cited by’ feature. But it’s not flawless... And Google Scholar is rather opaque: there’s no published list of what journals its database includes, or how often it’s updated. The obvious solutzion is for someone to build an open competitor. But for them to do that, they need access to the papers that are to be crawled, analysed and indexed. And of course, they don’t have that access in general, because (all together for the chorus!) publishers put most papers behind paywalls. If we want something better than Google Scholar, something more available than Scopus, something made by people who care deeply about citation graphs and who want to open them up as objects of research in their own right, then we need entrepreneurial programmers to have access to papers, so they can crawl them and access the references lists. If you want this to happen, there is something you can do right now that will accelerate it:go and sign the White House’s public access petition. Make a difference to opening up the world of research.” |
| RUK: The Maturing Threat of Open Access - TheStreet Posted: 31 May 2012 09:52 AM PDT www.thestreet.com “‘We all face the same paradox. We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free ... and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices.’ That sentiment, expressed in April by Robert Darnton, the director of the Harvard library, is the reason why the rich profit margins enjoyed for so long by publishers like Reed Elsevier will prove unsustainable in the face of technological change. Reed Elsevier (RUK) is the world's largest publisher of academic journals, with more than 1200 scholarly titles. The publishing division operates at a 36% profit margin - an outstanding margin for any business - but the basis for that profitability looks increasingly vulnerable as the open access movement matures and academics become increasingly aware of viable alternatives. Because profits from the Elsevier publishing division accounted for nearly half of the company's adjusted operating profit in 2011, downside risks to margins could have a significant impact on the overall profitability of the company. The analysis of changes in the open access movement, below, explains why the stock can be expected to underperform its peers. In the following section, we explain why RUK is so dependent on revenues from the core Elsevier division and the obstacles to any future margin expansion. Then, we review the ‘old’ open access movement, the recent move to boycott Elsevier journals, and the new threat posed by competing open access publishers...” |
| ACCG: Archaeological Institute of America under fire on Open Access - The Business Journals Posted: 31 May 2012 09:51 AM PDT www.bizjournals.com “On the point of open access, some archaeologists and independent scholars—including private collectors of ancient coins through the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild—have found common ground. All are calling for the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) to retract its stated position and join them in supporting Open Access. In November of 2011, the AIA sent a letter to the White House opposing free access to government-funded research that is paid for by US taxpayers. In the current issue of Archaeology magazine, AIA president Elizabeth Bartman takes aim at the proposed Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012. ‘We at the Archaeological Institute of America, along with our colleagues at the American Anthropological Association and other learned societies, have taken a stand against open access…’ said Bartman. The bill aims to assure open access to research conducted with taxpayer funding. For details, see the Harvard Open Access Project online. In November of 2011, the AIA sent a letter to the White House opposing free access to government-funded research that is paid for by US taxpayers. In the current issue of Archaeology magazine, AIA president Elizabeth Bartman takes aim at the proposed Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012. "We at the Archaeological Institute of America, along with our colleagues at the American Anthropological Association and other learned societies, have taken a stand against open access…" said Bartman. The bill aims to assure open access to research conducted with taxpayer funding. For details, see the Harvard Open Access Project online. The AIA position caused a stir within its own community with vocal criticism from archaeologists. In response to the AIA's public stand, the Open Access Archaeology website reported that they will be removing all links to AIA materials and will cease actively promoting AIA resources. An Open Letterfrom the Open Archaeology Working Group appeals to the AIA leadership to retract their opposition to Open Access. The Ancient World Online blog (AWOL) illustrates that the AIA is in fact engaged in many cases of open access—which raises questions about its opposition to the legislation at hand. All this led Bartman to review her Archaeology magazine statement, however the AIA has not retracted their letter to the White House opposing free access to research paid for by taxpayers. Private researchers and collectors complain about the lack of access to archaeological research materials that are typically elusive to the public. Collectors feel that barriers to public access are regressive and serve to repress public knowledge—not unlike the cloistered academia of the Middle Ages. They are quick to point out that the vast majority of published material about ancient coins is due to the work of private collectors, independent scholars, coin dealers, and auction houses. An online petition appeals to the White House for free public access to taxpayer-funded research.” |
| ACCG: Archaeological Institute of America under fire on Open Access - MarketWatch Posted: 31 May 2012 09:50 AM PDT www.marketwatch.com “On the point of open access, some archaeologists and independent scholars--including private collectors of ancient coins through the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild--have found common ground. All are calling for the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) to retract its stated position and join them in supporting Open Access. In November of 2011, the AIA sent a letter to the White House opposing free access to government-funded research that is paid for by US taxpayers. In the current issue of Archaeology magazine, AIA president Elizabeth Bartman takes aim at the proposed Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012. ‘We at the Archaeological Institute of America, along with our colleagues at the American Anthropological Association and other learned societies, have taken a stand against open access...’ said Bartman. The bill aims to assure open access to research conducted with taxpayer funding. For details, see the Harvard Open Access Project online. The AIA position caused a stir within its own community with vocal criticism from archaeologists. In response to the AIA's public stand, the Open Access Archaeology website reported that they will be removing all links to AIA materials and will cease actively promoting AIA resources. An Open Letter from the Open Archaeology Working Group appeals to the AIA leadership to retract their opposition to Open Access. The Ancient World Online blog (AWOL) illustrates that the AIA is in fact engaged in many cases of open access--which raises questions about its opposition to the legislation at hand. All this led Bartman to review her Archaeology magazine statement, however the AIA has not retracted their letter to the White House opposing free access to research paid for by taxpayers. Private researchers and collectors complain about the lack of access to archaeological research materials that are typically elusive to the public. Collectors feel that barriers to public access are regressive and serve to repress public knowledge--not unlike the cloistered academia of the Middle Ages. They are quick to point out that the vast majority of published material about ancient coins is due to the work of private collectors, independent scholars, coin dealers, and auction houses. An online petition appeals to the White House for free public access to taxpayer-funded research.” |
| U.S. releases digital government action plan - Page 1 - Government Posted: 31 May 2012 09:49 AM PDT www.itworldcanada.com “The U.S. government has released a Digital Government Strategy
that urges agencies to convert their troves of data into accessible formats for the public. It also calls for a remaking of the central online hub for government information, Data.gov, into a data and API catalog that pulls data from agency sites. ‘By synching individual government sites with the central federal repository, that effort will aim to ensure that there is ‘no wrong door for accessing government data,’ federal CIO Steven VanRoekel wrote in a blog post announcing the new initiative. The initiative follows the release last month of Ottawa's federal digital action plan. In his blog, VanRoekel said the Obama administration's strategy ‘takes a co-ordinated, information- and customer-centric approach to changing how the government works and delivers services to the American people ... Designing for openness from the start -- making open data the default for government IT systems and embracing the use of web APIs -- enables us to more easily deliver information and services through multiple channels, including mobile, and engage the public and America's entrepreneurs as partners in building a better government.’ Additionally, the Digital Government Strategy directs federal agency CIOs to optimize their public-facing data for a new crop of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. That includes setting a new default standard of open data and Web APIs for government information. The blueprint also calls for the formation of a new centralized advisory group to eliminate information silos between agencies and preside over the ‘shift to a shared-platform culture.’ A recent report on the use of Web technology across the federal government found 150 distinct implementations of 42 separate systems to create and publish Web content, distributed through the use of some 250 hosting providers. ‘We will do all of this while reworking the federal government's own use of mobile -- saving taxpayer dollars and providing better service by bringing consistency to the way we buy and build for an increasingly mobile workforce,’ VanRoekel said. Tony DeLaGrange, senior security consultant with Secure Ideas,said he was encouraged that the new plan acknowledges the unique security risks that come with an increasingly mobile workforce, which include threat vectors related to both the applications and data stored on the devices, as well as vulnerabilities in their connections -- both cellular and Wi-Fi networks -- and, of course, the wildcard challenges associated with end users.” |
| Open Data, Open Standards, and Community Activism Posted: 31 May 2012 09:48 AM PDT “Over at the United State Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) blog there was a great piece posted a few days ago, ‘Using the Toxic Release Inventory to Build Power in Communities.’ The piece, written by Clean Air Coalition Executive Director Erin Heaney, is a great mini case-study. For the Clean Air Coalition, the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) — a database published by the EPA that tracks pollution from facilities across the United States that are required to report by law to report emissions — serves as an organizing point around creating broader campaigns and mobilizing community members. In the case of the Clean Air Coalition, they build their event and training around the data set. ‘We have built power by developing grassroots leaders who run campaigns that advance environmental justice in Western New York. For example, in March we trained our membership on how to use the TRI. We spent the first half of the training learning about history of TRI and about how it was through communities standing up and saying that they needed more information about the environmental conditions in their communities that led to the creation of the TRI. Our members learned who reports to TRI, as well as when and how the data is verified. Afterward, we headed over to the computer lab to learn how to use the EPA TRI tool myrtk.epa.gov. Our members dug into the data for their neighborhoods and learned which companies were polluting, what they were emitting and what the health effects of those emissions were.’ Such organizing would have been hard to do 10 years ago, and will get easier as the costs of computer access continues to decline, and, hopefully, more government data is made available. Heck, we need to corner Heaney and get her to share her syllabus and other materials she used to create and run this event so that more organizations like hers can replicate it. My own sense is that activists and non-profits have not even begun to tap the power of open data... It is still relatively rare to invite participants right into the process of playing with it, and analyzing it, directly. Over time, I suspect that methodologies to do just this are going to become more commonplace as not only more government data becomes public, but as cost of collecting data for the purpose of activism drops. For example, the ‘Air Quality Egg’ Kickstarter project — which distributes air quality measuring devices — received orders for over 1,110 devices and raised $144,592, a full $105,000 more than it set out to collect. there is also a deeper lesson in this. Specifically, it is about making data easier to use... Buried beneath it all is a story of standardization. The fact that there are standard ways of representing geographic data (in this case, the location of pollution sources) means there are lots of easy and intuitive ways to show this data to people. For example, in Canada, a software development team I worked with was able to take a similar database and map it so that people could identify major polluters near them. This is why data standards and schemas matter. They reduce the barrier to entry around data by making it easier to build tools and other ways to interface with information. They make analysis, training, engagement and all the other things citizens might want to do cheaper and scalable. In short, common schemas further democratize data — they make it accessible to a broader group of people. This story is a great example of why activists and non profits should not only care about data, but advocate for common data schemas for pollution data, real estate values, crime data, fisheries stocks or a number of other datasets locked away within government. Once standardized it is more likely there will be tools that will enable citizens to understand and access the information about policies that impact them...” |
| My submission for the SSP annual meeting’s panel discussion Posted: 31 May 2012 09:47 AM PDT Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week #AcademicSpring, (30 May 2012) “The annual meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing is happening right now — May 30th till June 1, in Arlington, Virginia. Back on 15th May, on the Scholarly Kitchen blog that the SSP hosts, David Smith posted a brief article soliciting questions for the annual meeting’s panel discussion... ‘We have about 90 minutes, so hopefully we’ll be able to get through a broad spectrum of debating points on the value of publishing organisations as part of the scholarly ecosystem and hopefully some of broader points about an industry in flux from the impact of the digital age.’ The panelists are Scholarly Kitchen regular David Crotty, altmetrics guru Jason Priem and Elsevier vice-president Tom Reller, so I thought it would be good to get a question before such an interesting group. So I submitted the following question a week ago today... ‘When funding bodies impose funding mandates such as those of the NIH and the Wellcome Trust, they are conditions of a contract between funder and researcher. Yet we read statements like this one by Graham Taylor of the Publishers Association: ‘What publishers would not accept, Mr Taylor made clear, was Research Councils UK’s suggestion, in its draft new open-access policy, that authors could choose instead to deposit their papers in open-access repositories within an ‘overly short’ embargo period of six months after publication’ What makes publishers think they have a say in what contract funders and researchers make between themselves? If publishers are to have a say on how grant money is spent, shouldn’t laboratory equipment manufacturers have a say, too?’ For anyone who’s been following my contributions to the ongoing scholarly publishing discussion, this won’t be a new question: I posed it in rather more confrontational terms on this very blog, in See, this is why publishers irritate me so much, and then included it in a milder form in my most recent Guardian article. But to the best of my knowledge, no-one in publishing has offered an explanation yet. So that’s why I was keen to get it in front of the panel. I really hope they don’t dodge the question. Here’s a screenshot of my submission — a sort of receipt for sending the question, if you like” |
| The debate around open-access publishing Posted: 31 May 2012 09:46 AM PDT JRSM 105 (5), (01 May 2012) “What is the greatest benefit of open access publishing? ... open access publishing is ... a revolutionary business model that attempts to suck every shilling from the lazy grasp of publishers and liberate scientists. Articles are not only freely available but copyright is also retained by authors, and articles can be republished without permission or royalty; power to the people and death to traditional publishing? Publishers have responded with an author-pays model that, as its name implies, asks authors to cover production and publication fees, whilst conforming to the requirements of open-access publishing in terms of availability and re-use of articles. Open-access medical journals are being announced with abandon, their uptake encouraged and enforced by research funding bodies like the Wellcome Trust. RSM Press has launched two open-access journals of its own in the past 2 years. JRSM Short Reports is a sister journal to JRSM ... JRSM Cardiovascular Disease is a new online journal, launched last month, to encompass all disciplines in this important specialty from basic science to policymaking... RSM Press also publishes Acta Radiologica Short Reports on behalf of the Scandinavian Societies of Radiology... JRSM itself is not an open access journal, but all research articles are free to read from the date of publication... From this account you'd be forgiven for thinking that the greatest benefit of open access publishing is for publishers to recoup losses from the decline of journal subscriptions. That might be a cynic's retort, and publishers will argue that the financial returns from open-access publishing are small, but an editor's perspective is different still. The greatest benefit of open access publishing is widening the debate on scientific research; what's free to read and republish is also free to discuss, dispute, and learn from. Does this mean the end of journals as we know them or does it offer a further justification for their existence? Those journals that are about relevant debate and discourse—whether open access or not—will have an opportunity to flourish, readers will be challenged and provoked, and bold authors will seek out their pages to publish in. This is the unpredictable terrain that the JRSM inhabits. Where else, for example, would you find Margaret McCartney and Michael Dixon, a sceptic and an enthusiast for the current NHS reforms, at home between the same covers?” |
| Posted: 31 May 2012 09:45 AM PDT schutt.org “I frequently need to read journal articles, both for my research in the lab, my own research, and for general interest. The internet is a great help, allowing me to easily find what I need. In fact, allowing scientists to easily share information is why the World Wide Web was created.This makes pay-walls more frustrating. In the course of my reading, I keep running into a serious problem: not all journals are open access. Some, like Nature and Science, are big enough that they can pretty much do whatever they want, because people will still read them. They charge enough for institutional subscriptions that university libraries can’t always pay for the necessary archive access. This forces professors and students to buy their own individual account. Others, such as ingentaconnect try to charge as much as $213 for a single article! That’s more than a grad student subscription to Nature or Science. This is a problem. Especially since most useful research is funded by the public... The real solution is to require all studies that receive public funding to publish in open access journals. Not having open access to journal articles is a major failure in the purpose of the internet, and specifically the world wide web... Papers behind a pay-wall may as well not exist.” |
| Publishers, Open Access, and the Cost of Knowledge Posted: 31 May 2012 09:44 AM PDT www.slideshare.net University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand on May 20, 2012. |
| The Fifth Belgrade International Open Access Conference | EIFL Posted: 31 May 2012 09:43 AM PDT www.eifl.net [Use the link to access the complete blog post, including a list of “successful open access publishing projects presented” at the conference.] “Centre for Evaluation in Education and Science(CEON/CEES) in partnership with the National Library of Serbia hosted the Fifth Belgrade International Open Access Conference on May 18-19, 2012 in Belgrade, Serbia. Over 90 people from 19 countries attended the event. The conference focused on local and regional journals striving for international excellence and recognition and on open access advocacy in the region. EIFL presented a paper ‘Libraries advocating for open access: Best practices and lessons learnt’ based on 11 case studies showcasing successful national and institutional open access advocacy campaigns in Eastern Europe and Africa (in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine, Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Sudan and Zimbabwe) funded by EIFL in 2011. Additionally, read about the the project results from Lithuania and Serbia, who also received EIFL OA grants in 2011, reported by Eleonora Dagiene, Chair of the Council at The Association of Lithuanian Serials, and Pero Šipka, CEON/CEES here.” |
| CRI relaunches Cancer Immunity journal Posted: 31 May 2012 09:42 AM PDT www.news-medical.net “The Cancer Research Institute, Inc. (CRI), a U.S. nonprofit organization established in 1953 to advance the discovery and development of safe and effective immunotherapies for cancer, today announced the relaunch of the open access, online journal Cancer Immunity, the official journal of the Cancer Research Institute. Cancer Immunity, first established in 2001, is the only journal in the field of cancer immunology and immunotherapy dedicated to open acesss, as well as to providing a broad set of resources and opportunities for interaction and exchange that go beyond the traditional scientific journal model to openly and comprehensively facilitate knowledge sharing and accelerate research... The relaunch of Cancer Immunity encompasses the implementation of a new journal management system to facilitate submission and review of manuscripts, redesign of the journal's website, and reorganization and expansion of the Cancer ImmunityEditorial Board... ‘Instead of using our journal to support our mission by generating revenues—either through subscription fees, which limit public access, or author fees, which put an unnecessary burden on researchers—Cancer Immunity furthers CRI's mission by giving our scientists and the field as a whole a vehicle to publish their results openly, as well as to access the results of others immediately and freely," says Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, Ph.D., CRI's chief executive officer and director of scientific affairs. ‘This represents a completely new step in CRI's programmatic history, enabling us better to facilitate scientific exchange, accelerate research, and, ultimately, further the development of new immunotherapies for cancer patients.’” |
| Technical U of Munich math department cancels all its Elsevier journals Posted: 31 May 2012 09:41 AM PDT plus.google.com “From the Technische Universität München, a simple message in German and English: "Aufgrund unzumutbarer Kosten und Bezugsbedingungen hat das Direktorium des Zentrums Mathematik beschlossen, alle abonnierten Elsevier-Zeitschriften ab 2013 abzubestellen. "Because of unsustainable subscription prices and conditions, the board of directors of the mathematics department has voted to cancel all of its subscriptions to Elsevier journals by 2013." Zeit Online article about it (May 25, 2012 -- in German, <http://goo.gl/mYSW4> -- in Google's English, <http://goo.gl/RerSU>” |
| Fostering a Critical Development Perspective on Open Government Data Posted: 31 May 2012 09:40 AM PDT public.webfoundation.org Use the link to access the full text of the workshop report. The meeting took place in Brazil on April 16th 2012. Sponsors for the meeting included the World Wide Web Foundation, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the International Development Research Center. The report summary reads as follows: “In recent years, a diverse coalition of actors has pushed the creation and diffusion of open data programmes around the world. Governments, international organizations, businesses, academics, media, civil society organizations, and web developers have embraced and sponsored open data programs creating large expectations a suitable remedy for challenges of good governance, economic growth, social inclusion, innovation, and participation. Though in many cases this may be true, there is a need for a critical perspective on whether the outcomes indeed occur and under what circumstances. There is a widespread lack of empirical evidence underlying the implementation of Open Data initiative and that can guide better practice and policy formulation, particularly as it spreads to developing countries. Thus, this initial consultation explored substantive and procedural options for the implementation of a research agenda aimed at better understanding the impact of open data. This meeting brought together 20 renowned policy-oriented academics coming from diverse geographical areas and backgrounds in order to discuss an interdisciplinary research agenda on the impact of Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives under political, economic and social dimensions. The meeting included a debate on potential research questions and approaches that could inform an international research network on the impact of Open Government Data (OGD) in developing countries. The participants also expressed the commitment to the further development of the research agenda and demonstrated their interest in participate in a research network in different forms. They added a number of considerations and contributions for the development of a research network that would address these challenges.” |
| Publishing old guard not for changing Posted: 31 May 2012 09:38 AM PDT blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au “The Ancien Regime in academic publishing ain’t going anywhere. At least not without a blue it obviously assumes open access advocates aren’t organised enough to fight. Somebody carelessly left correspondence between and notes on discussion between scholarly agencies and individuals representing academic publishers in the Common Room the other day. And what dismal reading they make, reflecting the publisher’s strategy to concede nothing in a way that would strike Klemens von Metternich as unyielding. The talks followed the NH&MRC decision that journal articles resulting from research it funds should be open for all to read after 12 months Seems straightforward; for-profit publishers get first crack at a quid out of the copy but after a year everybody who does not have access to expensive academic journals can read the results of research the public paid for. But (and I know you are going to be surprised to read this) it’s not. For a start one publisher, Wiley-Blackwell, says authors can use its Online Open program. But this is not quite the access issue sorted. ‘With OnlineOpen the author, the author’s funding agency, or the author’s institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication,’ the wiley Blackwells write. Not to worry, they also offer Wiley Open Access , which publishes peer-reviewed journals available to everybody to read. So for publicly funded researchers working in one of the fields covered everything is ok. ‘Fraid not. Articles that make the academic grade also require cash to appear. This does not strike the Common Room as quite what the open access movement has in mind, with publishers still making a margin on papers they get free. Heaven forfend journal publishers should drop the digital drawbridge – they are at the heart of academic research, scholarship would not survive without the vast collection of journals they produce and they are entitled to make money, But their business model dates from another age, when publishing required enormous resources to fund paper and presses, to pay for post and packing, to secure subscriptions. And while digital archiving and indexing require continuing investment the Common Room would take some convincing that production cost aren’t lower than they used to be. Sure publishers have every right to charge what the market will bear, but this only works when readers and researchers have no alternative. And the market now has options that did not exist a generation back, and as open access advocates make clear, researchers are less inclined to provide work for free and pay for the privilege of publishing in journals published at the pleasure of owners not authors. The fate of the metternichs of the music industry demonstrates what happens to old regimes which think the unchanging natural order is what suits them.” |
| Twenty Years After: Armenian Research Libraries Today Posted: 31 May 2012 09:36 AM PDT LIBER Quarterly 22 (1) Use the link to access the full text article published in the current issue of Liber Quarterly. The abstract reads as follows: “Since achieving statehood in 1991, Armenia has faced major economic and political obstacles which have significantly affected the nation’s research libraries. This research paper will quantitatively and qualitatively examine the challenges facing Armenian research libraries just over twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, the authors analyze their interviews with five library administrators[1] at five major institutions, respectively. These include Yerevan State University Library, the National Library of Armenia, the Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, the Republican Scientific-Medical Library of Armenia, and the Papazian Library of the American University of Armenia. The instrument for the interviews consists of 73 questions based on the 2004 Association of College and Research Libraries Standards for Libraries in Higher Education[2] and evaluates the following factors: [a] The library’s mission, goals and objectives [b] Public or user services [c] Instruction activities at the library [d] Resources (print, media, or electronic) and collection development [e] Access to the library’s resources [f] Outcome assessment, or evaluation of the library [g] Staffing issues [h] Facility maintenance and plans for library development [i] Communication and cooperation both within the library and with the user community [j] Administration [k] Budget ... In addition, we will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of these libraries and investigate the growing open access movement in Armenia. Based on our findings, the authors wish to facilitate dialogue and consider possible approaches to help these libraries meet Armenia’s pressing information needs.” |
| Posted: 31 May 2012 09:34 AM PDT www.bangkokpost.com “Inspired by the world-renowned winner of the Fields Medal _ the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics _ more than 9,500 researchers worldwide have signed online petitions since January refusing to publish their works in, edit papers for or even refer to any article published in Elsevier or journals belonging to Elsevier Co. As the number of academics participating in this boycott increases rapidly, the world may be looking at the onset of an ‘Academic Spring’. Dr Gowers cites three major reasons for his opposition to the publishing giant. First, Elsevier's journal registration fee is too high, especially as the company reported a profit margin of 36% on revenues of US$3.2 billion (101 billion baht) in 2010. Elsevier's practice of ‘bundling’ is Dr Gower's second reason for the boycott, with libraries compelled to subscribe to journals they have no need for as part of package deals to get the few journals they actually want. Third, Elsevier supports legislation such as the Research Works Act, a bill that would forbid the US government from requiring that free access be allowed for the results of taxpayer-funded research. Elsevier defends its high prices, saying it is necessary to control the quality of the papers published in their journals. The price takes into account the costs of peer review, editing and publication. Elsevier says their price-setting methods are no different from those of other average-sized publishing companies. They say their high profits arise from cost savings due to efficiency in organisational operations. The conflict between academics and the publishing house is an old one. The academic culture of free flow of information in universities _ with the costs and benefits of research and editing provided free of charge _ clashes with the ethos of publishing companies looking to make hefty profits off their work by charging journal membership fees and controlling many well-known academic journals. Online academic publishing has become a new battleground in this war. A suggested solution for this problem is that state agencies and foundations support research grants specifying conditions of free access to journal's publishing work produced with the help of these grants. In Thailand, where the minimum wage has risen and competition is intense, research and innovation are needed to propel the country forward economically. However, Thailand's national academic and research movement is unable to bring hope to the country. Its progress is obstructed not by the private sector's thirst for profits, but because of the research access restrictions of state agencies. Private sector access to state agency generated research is limited by benefit sharing and the high price set on accessing this research. Commercial purchase from state agencies is not worthwhile, which leaves much research languishing without being developed and used commercially. The operations of state bureaucracy and the investigation of state budget usage may also make cooperation difficult between state agencies and the private sector. Investment in research might also be seen in the benefit it produces in terms of finances, rather than present and future economic and social benefit. It is time for Thailand's government, state agencies and academics to stand up and reform research management, whereby national innovation will make research the answer for the future of the country.” |
| Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Obama petitioned on open access Posted: 31 May 2012 09:31 AM PDT en.wikipedia.org “On May 25, the Wikimedia Foundation moved to endorse a petition to the White House calling for public access to journal articles resulting from research funded by US public sources. The campaign has already commanded close to 20,000 signatures. The petition was initiated by the group Access2Research, whose members include the executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), Heather Joseph, law professor Michael W. Carroll, and Dr John Wilbanks of the Consent to Research project, a major medical data-sharing endeavour. In backing the petition, the WMF has joined a wide range of educational and research institutions and communities, like the Association of Research Libraries, Creative Commons, Harvard's Open Access Project, and digital communities such as Academia.edu. Kat Walsh is a prominent Wikimedian who has signed the petition. She is a co-author of the foundation’s endorsement announcement, along with senior research analyst Dario Taraborelli and general counsel Geoff Brigham. Kat told the Signpost that ‘we spend public money on research because it's important to everyone—why isn't it beyond question that the public should have access to it?" The WMF announcement points out that Wikipedia as well as the other projects hosted by the foundation are heavily dependent on verifiable, reliable sources, and that its volunteers should be "empowered to read it, report on it, and cite it.’ The key case study deployed by Access2Research in the petition is thePublic Access Policy of the US National Institutes of Health, one of the world’s major funding agencies. Heather Joseph told the Signpost that the current White House has had open access on its radar from its first month in office and has engaged with issues that research and open-access communities care about (see WMF response). She is confident that the administration will take action in response to a successful petition, either by means of executive action or by a positive response to legislative proposals by Congress. Joseph pointed out that the petition shows not only major public support, which is likely to lead to improvements in open-access policy and, critically, will exert a positive influence on consideration of the proposed Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), previously put to Congress in 2006, 2010, and again this year. The FRPAA would require that 11 US federal science agencies deposit articles on research they have funded into publicly accessible archives; the articles must be maintained and preserved by that agency or another repository that permits public access. Articles must be made available ‘’gratis’’ to users within six months. The legislation commands bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, and would complement executive actions with a legislative framework that could not be easily rolled back by a later administration... Heather pointed out that the foundation’s endorsement is important not just because the foundation is a major player, but because elected representatives remember the Wikipedia community’s action in response to the proposed SOPA (Signpost coverage) and the public attention carried by Jimmy’s status as public figure.To have an impact, the petition needs at least 25,000 signatures by June 19. Anyone who is at least 13 years old, US citizen or not, can sign it.” |
| US CTO seeks to scale agile thinking and open data across federal government - O'Reilly Radar Posted: 30 May 2012 12:04 PM PDT radar.oreilly.com Use the link to access the full text of blog post and embedded videos providing more information about the programs mentioned in the following introduction: “In the 21st century, federal government must go mobile, putting government services and information at the fingertips of citizens, said United States Chief Technology Officer Todd Park in a recent wide-ranging interview. ‘That's the first digital government result, outcome, and objective that's desired.’ To achieve that vision, Park and U.S. chief information officer Steven VanRoekel are working together to improve how government shares data, architects new digital services and collaborates across agencies to reduce costs and increase productivity through smarter use of information technology. Park, who was chosen by President Obama to be the second CTO of the United States in March, has been (relatively) quiet over the course of his first two months on the job. Last Wednesday, that changed. Park launched a new Presidential innovation Fellows program, in concert with VanRoekel's new digital government strategy, at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in New York City. This was followed by another event for a government audience at the Interior Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. Last Friday, he presented his team's agenda to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. ‘The way I think about the strategy is that you're really talking about three elements,’ said Park, in our interview. ‘First, it's going mobile, putting government services at the literal fingertips of the people in the same way that basically every other industry and sector has done. Second, it's being smarter about how we procure technology as we move government in this direction. Finally, it's liberating data. In the end, it's the idea of government as a platform.' In the context of the nation's new digital government strategy, Park announced the launch of five projects that this new class of Innovation Fellows will be entrusted with implementing: a broad Open Data Initiative, Blue Button for America, RFP-EZ, The 20% Campaign, and MyGov. The idea of the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program, said Park, is to bring in people from outside government to work with innovators inside the government. These agile teams will work together within a six-month time frame to deliver results. The fellowships are basically scaling up the idea of ‘entrepreneurs in residence,’ said Park. ‘It's a portfolio of five projects that, on top of the digital government strategy, will advance the implementation of it in a variety of ways.’ The biggest challenge to bringing the five programs that the US CTO has proposed to successful completion is getting 15 talented men and women to join his team and implement them. There's reason for optimism. Park shared vie email that: ‘... within 24 hours of TechCrunch Disrupt, 600 people had already registered via Whitehouse.gov to apply to be a Presidential Innovation Fellow, and another several hundred people had expressed interest in following and engaging in the five projects in some other capacity...’ There appears to be considerable appetite for a different kind of public service that applies technology and data for the public good...” |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 12:03 PM PDT www.slideshare.net Use the link to access the slideshare posted by Richard Akerman, Innovation Officer at NRC-CISTI, Canada's National Science Library, Government of Canada. for a presentations at the Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ) on May 28, 2012 |
| Regards Citoyens Publishes Legislative Open Data About l’Assemblée nationale Française: NosDéputés Posted: 30 May 2012 12:02 PM PDT Legal Informatics Blog, (28 May 2012) Regards Citoyens, the French citizen engagement and open data organization, has posted Embarquons NosDéputés pour les législatives 2012!, at the Regards Citoyens Blog. In this post, the members describe new data that has been added to NosDéputés.fr, an open legislative data site respecting the activities of l’Assemblée nationale Française, the French national Parliament. According to the post, NosDéputés.fr now includes data respecting representatives’ activities during the entire 13th legislature (beginning in 2007), as well as during the past 12 months. Benjamin Ooghe-Tabanou of Regards Citoyens discussed the new data last week on the Ecrans.fr podcast/Webcast. Regards Citoyens is co-sponsoring a conference on open legislative data: Open Legislative Data in Paris: A Conference of the Third Kind with Hacktivists and Academics, to be held 6-7 July 2012, in Paris, France. For more information, please see the complete post or the podcast/Webcast.” |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 12:01 PM PDT infospace.ischool.syr.edu “Harvard announced it will be unable to afford its academic journal subscriptions in a recent memo ... Harvard then encouraged its researchers and academic community to seek publishing in open access... ‘Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access’ and to get their associations involved in such conversations about open access” Harvard Library director, Robert Darnton wants other universities to follow suit because ‘We all face the same paradox. We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free … and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices.’ As an aspiring academic librarian, entering into this situation scares me. If Harvard, one of the richest and most prestigious universities in the United States, cannot afford scientific journal subscriptions and the situation is dire enough to outweigh the shame in publicly announcing this, how will the academic library I eventually work for be able to manage? ... I worry when quality academic information is now so expensive, even the wealthy are no longer ashamed to admit they cannot afford it. I do not relish being a librarian helpless to the whims of publishers that are so big, they have lost sight that while money needs to be made to support the system, the ultimate purpose of scholarly research is to further human knowledge and progress, and not to bolster the bottom line. When publishers would rather risk the integrity of the scientific community and limit access, in order to squeeze as much money as possible out of the researchers and the institutions, it demonstrates a dire, unsustainable and cold environment that aspiring academic librarians, such as myself, will enter into... The publisher Elsevier, in particular, has come under fire for making record profits by charging high prices for access to scholarly research, most of which is publicly funded. Recently Winston Hide, resigned as associate editor of the prestigious Elsevier journal Genomics because the journal was so expensive, scientists in developing third world countries, especially in Africa, could not afford access to potentially lifesaving research. Cambridge mathematician, Tim Gowers, was so fed up with Elsevier’s practices that he wrote a a blog post summarizing criticism of the company, publicly announced he would no longer publish in their journals and asked other mathematicians to follow his example. As a result, the Cost of Knowledge, was launched and more than 10,000 academics have pledged to boycott Elsevier. Where I live in Salt Lake City, Utah academics accused publishers like Elsevier of holding a monopoly over the scholarly research... Rick Anderson, acting dean of the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, stated The bottom line is that when you have monopoly control of a high-demand commodity, you can charge whatever you want for it — so they do,’ While I could argue that librarians and scientists need to come together cut out middle man publishers, the reality is academics and librarians are not united enough to do something so bold. Furthermore, the infrastructure of open access is not developed enough to be able to compete with the prestige of most scientific journals... Gradually, I hope both librarians and academics focus on building open access infrastructure and creating an academic atmosphere in which a scholar can be successful in his or her career without publishing in a journal. Perhaps through both boycotting and supporting alternative routes, like open access, academic librarians can be in a better position to negotiate a hard bargain with publishers for affordable access to knowledge.” |
| EIFL OA Repositories workshop for ISTeMag project partners | EIFL Posted: 30 May 2012 12:00 PM PDT www.eifl.net “On May 14-15 EIFL conducted L'atelier sur les archives ouvertes (Open Access Repositories workshop) in Monastir, Tunisia, as part of a three-year TEMPUS funded project “Optimizing access to scientific and technical information at Maghreb universities” (ISTeMag). This was a regional workshop for the project partners from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia hosted by Université de Monastir. Economic, social and educational benefits to making research outputs available without financial, legal and technical barriers to access were presented at the workshop and strategies for collective advocacy of open access to research results in Maghreb universities were discussed. Practical sessions included the case studies on successful management of open repositories, training on how to start, and the best approaches to collaborative management of open access repositories... Thought-provoking presentations, how-to recommendations and live discussions resulted into a strategy to promote open access in the region that includes setting up open access repositories, drafting open access policies (with a prior focus on open access to theses and dissertations), signing The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, collaboratively designing open access advocacy materials (promotional materials and short videos), documenting and sharing experiences (case studies and online webinars), and celebrating Open Access Week.” |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 11:59 AM PDT europa.eu “For me, science is all about challenging accepted wisdom, testing out multiple new scenarios to get a sound evidence base, and collaborating with others to do so. Whether it's scientists from different disciplines working together in a team, or peer reviewers objectively adding value to others' work: working together is key. With the PEER project, you've shown that such practices don't have to just be done by scientists – they can also be done FOR science. Because you have looked at and tested different aspects of open access. And you have worked together to do so: publishers, researchers, libraries and universities all getting together. Challenging, testing, and pulling down barriers – all in the cause of better, faster scientific practice. These days, more than ever, efficient access to scientific information is a must, for all kinds of research and innovation. In particular, researchers, engineers, and small businesses need to access scientific results quickly and easily. If they can't, it's bad for business: for small businesses, for example, it can mean two years' extra delay before getting new products to market. So if we want to complete globally, that kind of access cannot be a luxury for Europe — it's a must-have. That means we need more timely access to scientific articles in Europe. We need Open Access to scientific information. And indeed that is exactly what, last December, the Commission set out in its comprehensive Open Data Strategy. Reinforcing earlier statements in the EU's flagship policies, the Digital Agenda and the Innovation Union. Publishing 1.5 million articles per year doesn't happen for free. Nor does organising peer review, a process which remains - and needs to remain - the hallmark of quality science. As everywhere, service providers in this space, whether private or public, can only keep on providing services if their business models are sustainable. We can expect investments only where returns are likely: that is normal. But that doesn't mean doing things as they've always been done. Where the Internet enables us to do things better, we should take advantage. Many scientific publishers have already endorsed Open Access. Most now offer some sort of open access option; while some are working closely with funders, universities and governments to make it easier. Meanwhile, Open Access is growing: today representing well over 7 500 Journals, and 20% of scientific articles. But that is slow growth. It is not enough. We can’t accept that, by and large, the results of publicly supported research are not yet available to the public. Why are we still at 20% instead of 100%? Because even though scientists accept the principle of free online access, there are barriers to putting it into practice. Still today many public funding bodies and research institutes do not do enough to ensure open access to their results. Still today, some publishers continue to impose restrictive conditions on researchers. Still today, only 60% of publishers allow for self-archiving. And still, today, only a fraction of researchers put their research papers in an open repository — unless asked by their funders or employers to do so. And I fear that this won’t change much if we don’t act – despite increased activity and advocacy in the scientific community, despite the ‘academic spring’. So I am happy to see the PEER project conclude. For, I'm convinced, its results will be an important ingredient in tackling all of these challenges. But we should not limit ourselves to journal articles and the like. Open access to research data, too, would open a new field of opportunity. Meaning you can re-analyse experiments; boost the impact of research; and provide a precious fuel for new collaborations and new knowledge-based industries. Those open data benefits, direct and indirect, can't be ignored. Open scientific data of course raises a whole other set of challenges. Not just because of costs and technical complexity. But also because of the diversity of formats and types for data, and the diversity of people and communities who generate it. Interoperability is the key. It's the key to global, multi-disciplinary science, supported by reliable and high-performance data infrastructure. I want us in the Commission to support all these measures. We are doing that in three key ways. First, when research is funded by the EU, we will require open access to the results. Whether by ‘green’ or ‘gold’ routes. And we're working to enlarge those measures to include scientific data as well. Second, we will shortly present a Recommendation to Member States. A joint initiative of my colleague Máire Geoghegan-Quinn and myself, this will spell out what is needed to improve access, management and preservation of scientific publications and data. And third, we are currently negotiating the next research and innovation framework programme, Horizon 2020. Our proposed €80 billion would be a wake-up call for European innovation, making it easier to seek funding — and easier to invest in our future.” |
| Institutional Repositories are great – but who came up with the name? Posted: 30 May 2012 11:58 AM PDT MmITS Blog, (28 May 2012) “I love Institutional Repositories and I’m a big Open Access supporter. I used to work as part of an Institutional Repository team and really appreciate the vital role they play in increasing access to academic publications for all. But, my husband recently pointed out that ‘Institutional Repository’ is an awful name and the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that he is right. It’s not exactly catchy is it? In-sti-tu-tion-al re-po-si-to-ry. That’s ten whole syllables! Ten! Quite a mouthful. Some people shorten it to ‘IR’ but unfortunately that’s already a fairly overused acronym. And ‘Institutional Repository’ would have to take its place in the queue behind a number of more established claimants. On Wikipedia, 46 possible meanings for ‘IR’ are given and in the Computing section alone ‘Information Retrieval’ definitely takes precedence over ‘Institutional Repository’. To me, this sterile term doesn’t really capture the essence of these vast vaults of scholarly knowledge either. It doesn’t provide any description of the types of publications contained or its vital role in the promotion of Open Access. Possibly as a result of this tongue-tangling and uninteresting term, a number of alternative terms have come into use. In Scotland alone, University ‘Institutional Repositories’ are currently also described as ‘Digital Repositories’, ‘Research Archives’, ‘Open Access Repositories’ and even ‘Open Access Institutional Repositories’ (covering all the bases there). Many individual institutions have also successfully branded their own repositories with catchy and inspiring names like Enlighten(University of Glasgow), AURA (University of Aberdeen). This clever marketing has worked well in increasing awareness of Institutional Repositories amongst academic staff in their home institutions and has helped to drive deposit policies. But (outside of the Open Access community) I would doubt that recognition of these individual names would extend far beyond the institutions in question. So I wonder whether one unified, recognisable and catchy term would be better. Personally, I like Open Access Repository. It only saves one syllable in the pronunciation stakes but it more effectively conveys the essence of repositories. And the acronym forms an actual word, ‘OAR’. Bonus. Maybe it’s not too late to rebrand. Open Access is still an evolving discipline. Could the Open Access community get together and agree on a better name? Finally put the dull term ‘Institutional Repository’ to rest? Just a thought… What does everyone else think? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please comment!” |
| What can research data repositories learn from open access? Part 2 Posted: 30 May 2012 11:57 AM PDT JISC DataPool Project, (28 May 2012) “Open access is finally attracting high-level attention from national governments, but full open access has been a long time arriving... As much of that effort switches towards the implementation of repositories to store, share and publish the research data that informs publications, we are considering what lessons might be learned from open access repositories, so that the path to effective data repositories might be shorter and less fraught. In part 1 the factors considered included policy, infrastructure, workflow and curation. Here in part 2 we look at rights and user interfaces... Since open access is indelibly associated with publication, one of the primary impediments to providing open access is transfer of rights to publishers, a practice that has failed to adapt to the digital switch. Research data is not so encumbered now, and with care data creators can deploy rights more effectively because they begin in the digital era. It has often been argued that open access repositories failed to adopt or compete with Web 2.0 services... Open access repositories do not seek to eliminate the journals, but to supplement the access they provide. There is thus another party with a vested interest in ownership of this content. This is why open access can get mired in discussions about rights. Creative Commons (CC) licences were designed for content to be shared on the Web and communicate how creators are prepared to share their rights with users to open and extend use of their content... Broadly, research data are not yet subject to publication rights. Publications are a highly processed form of research data, in the form of tables and graphs, for example. Typically the data targeted by data repositories precedes the refined and summarised publication versions, and is therefore not covered by the same rights transfer. That could change if expanded publications requiring data deposit or third-party service providers seek to obtain rights in return for these services. Strictly, while institutions where research has been performed inherently own the rights to that work, they have been reluctant to exercise those rights in ways that would restrict a researcher’s choice of publication, or to require or even advise authors on some retention of rights or amendments to rights agreements. Unlike with peer reviewed papers, where precedent is more strongly established, it is possible that institutions will seek to impose more control of rights where research data is concerned. Recently reported cases show how a university’s allocation of control of rights within research teams, the special case at Purdue University notwithstanding, can have consequences for publication... The lesson of open access is that rights matter, that the traditional all-rights transfer for academic publication is no longer appropriate for or conducive to fully exploiting new forms of digital dissemination, but also that established practices can be slow to change. Institutions and authors should be careful not to let rights to research data slip away as they did for publications in another era, but equally they must be careful to work together to use those rights in ways that maximise the benefits and impact for them and for research... Within this analysis (including part 1) it has been suggested that OA repositories may have overlooked workflow, and Web 2.0 developments with regard to content growth, services and engagement with users. In fact, some helpful developments can be found buried deep within repository software, but to see where these might impact users more directly we have to look away from the familiar repository interfaces. This critical development is called SWORD (Simple Web service Offering Repository Deposit), and it will impact on data repositories as well, in ways that we have not yet seen implemented on a large scale, even for OA repositories. As the name indicates, SWORD is focussed on one of the actions that a repository supports, deposit, that is, getting new content into a repository or updating content, this updating feature recently becoming available with SWORD version 2. SWORD frees the user deposit interface from the repository software and the specific instance of a repository...” |
| Scoping of an Open Access Repository Registry (OARR) Posted: 30 May 2012 11:56 AM PDT Use the link to access complete information about the JISC proposal introduces as follows: “Work undertaken last year explored the divergences and convergences between OpenDOAR and ROAR, two open access repository registries that are hosted respectively at the University of Nottingham and University of Southampton. The findings were that whilst there were areas of common working and development that could be pursued, these were best carried out in a loosely coupled way. This poses potential problems for users looking to gain authoritative data on open access repositories in the UK and elsewhere, so JISC, in consultation with a panel of community experts, concluded that the most cost effective way forward was to establish from scratch what the best way of supporting the open access community through a repository registry is. This piece of work will build on existing OARRs in a variety of ways to support the broader remit of a repository and curation shared infrastructure.” |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 11:52 AM PDT www.sciencedaily.com “To speed progress against cancer and other diseases, the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital -- Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has announced the largest-ever release of comprehensive human cancer genome data for free access by the global scientific community. The amount of information released more than doubles the volume of high-coverage, whole genome data currently available from all human genome sources combined. This information is valuable not just to cancer researchers, but also to scientists studying almost any disease. The release of this data was announced as a part of a perspective published in Nature Genetics online May 29. The 520 genome sequences just released are matched sets of normal and tumor tissue samples from 260 pediatric cancer patients. The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project is expected to sequence more than 1,200 genomes by year's end.. Each sample is sequenced at a quality control level known as 30-fold coverage, ensuring maximum accuracy. St. Jude researchers are analyzing the genomic sequences to determine the differences between each child's normal and cancerous cells to pinpoint the causes of more than a half-dozen of the most deadly childhood cancers, an effort which has already produced a number of key discoveries reported in top scientific journals.... James Downing, M.D., St. Jude scientific director who leads the project at St. Jude... [said,] "We want to make this information available to the broader scientific community so that, collectively, we can explore new treatment options for these children. By sharing the information even before we analyze it ourselves, we're hoping that other researchers can use this rich resource for insights into many other types of diseases in children and adults." Launched in early 2010, the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project is the world's largest effort and investment to date to understand the genetic origins of childhood cancers. The three-year project will cost an estimated $65 million... This is the first major privately funded human genome sequencing project to share its data as soon as it becomes available. To date, this type of open access has largely been restricted to government-funded efforts. Non-government efforts are typically treated as proprietary... Researchers worldwide will be able to access the sequence data via the Web-based European Genome-Phenome Archive, which provides large datasets for free access by researchers on request... Richard K. Wilson, Ph.D., director of The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis... [said,] ‘We have identified unusual, 'cryptic' changes in many patients' cancer cells that we would not have found using other methods. We are pleased to be able to share this data with the research community in hopes that others can build upon our initial discoveries.’ The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has already yielded significant insights into aggressive childhood cancers of the retina, brainstem and blood published in leading international scientific journals... Efforts to understand the genetic changes underlying a brainstem tumor called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) found that a startling 78 percent of the tumors carried changes in two genes not previously tied to cancer. Most recently, project researchers identified a gene mutation associated with a chronic and often fatal form of neuroblastoma-a discovery that provides the first clue about the genetic basis of the long-recognized but poorly understood link between treatment outcome and age at diagnosis. ‘These findings would not have been possible without the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project,’ said Downing...” |
| Comment Neelie on SPEECH/12/392 Posted: 30 May 2012 11:50 AM PDT commentneelie.eu Use the link to access the speech made by Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda. The speech was made on May 29, 2012 to the Publishing and Ecology of European Research (PEER) Project Conference in Brussels. The website, “Comment Neelie: Making Speeches Talk,” allows anyone to provide comments and feedback, sentence by sentence. In addition to the speech made yesterday, the website provides access to a list of statements made by Neelie Kroes. “Politicians' speeches are important for shaping the policy debate, but they are too often designed as one-way messages. We want to open up conversations around them, by making speeches commentable phrase by phrase. Where best to start than from the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes? So just select a speech below and click on the phrases that you want to comment.” |
| Does open access publishing increase citation or download rates? - Research Trends Posted: 29 May 2012 09:12 AM PDT www.researchtrends.com Use the link to access the full text article opening as follows: “The effect of "Open Access" (OA) on the visibility or impact of scientific publications is one of the most important issues in the fields of bibliometrics and information science. During the past 10 years numerous empirical studies have been published that examine this issue using various methodologies and viewpoints. Comprehensive reviews and bibliographies are given amongst others by OPCIT (1), Davis and Walters (2) and Craig et al. (3). The aim of this article is not to replicate nor update these thorough reviews. Rather, it aims to presents the two main methodologies that were applied in these OA-related studies and discusses their potentialities and limitations. The first method is based on citation analyses; the second on usage analyses...” |
| Open Access Policy Mandates | Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS) Posted: 29 May 2012 09:11 AM PDT Use the link to access the complete list described in the following blog post: “Institutional Open Access policy mandates are created and adopted by research organisations, funders or governments. These policies guide affiliated researchers to make their peer-reviewed scholarly publications accessible by depositing them in the organization’s institutional repository. Institutional policies can either be voluntary or mandatory. Mandatory policies have proven to be effective in increasing deposits to an organisation’s institutional repository. In the agricultural domain, the CIARD [Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development] movement established that ‘the lack of institutional, national, and international policies regarding access to information limits the effectiveness of agricultural research and innovation’. The Resources page in the Open Access section on this website provides toolkits and necessary resources for organisations to craft policies. This page presents a compilation of institutions working in the field of agriculture and related sciences that adopted open access mandates - derived from the mandates published on the Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies (ROARMAP). There are five groups of mandates: institutional, sub-institutional, multi-institutional, funder and thesis mandates.” |
| Posted: 29 May 2012 09:10 AM PDT lshtmresearchonline.blogspot.com “LSHTM Research Online automatically imports records for all current LSHTM staff research which is published. We harvest these from PubMed, Web of Science and the Schools existing Publications Database run by Andy Reid. If an article is from an open access journal or you have paid for it to be open access we should have automatically pulled in the publisher’s full text PDF of the article. Where we and the School vitally needs your input is filling the gaps where your articles are not available as free full text because you have published in a traditional-model academic journal. Although we cannot use the publisher’s PDF in these cases, we can make much of your research freely available without breaking copyright. Open access policies differ for each publisher, and sometimes each journal. That is why we ask you to contact our team who are experienced in navigating open access publisher policies and will check all rights on your behalf and advise you as to what we can make freely available. We recently had a public launch for the site where staff involved in trialling updating their full text explained their experiences and the reasons they felt it important to become actively involved. Aside from assuring people about the knowledge and support repository staff can offer Diana Elbourne, Professor of Healthcare Evaluation, declared “If I can do it - anyone can!” |
| The Scandal of Closed Access to Taxpayer Funded Research Posted: 29 May 2012 09:09 AM PDT Samir Chopra, (22 May 2012) “On January 21, Timothy Gowers of Cambridge announced he would no longer publish papers in Elsevier’s journals or serve as a referee or editor for them. This boycott has now been joined by thousands of other researchers. (I don’t referee any more for Elsevier, though I have in the past, and I certainly won’t be sending any papers there.) Thanks to the furore created by three Fields Medal winners–Timothy Gowers, Terence Tao, Wendelin Werner–participating in the boycott, many now know what academics have known for a very long time: academic publishing is a scandal. Indeed, it is more than a scandal; it is a racket which is nothing short of criminal. Before we go any further, here is a number to chew on: in 2010, ‘Elsevier reported a 36 percent profit on revenues of $3.2 billion.’ How does this system work? ... So, this material is not open-access any more; it is closed behind a ‘pay-wall.’ If you don’t have a paid subscription, you don’t get to view the published research. If your library, at say, a public university like the City University of New York, is experiencing budget problems, and library funding suffers cutbacks, well, tough tits. You don’t get to view the published research. If you, as a professor, or graduate student, decided to freely distribute the papers, you may be embroiled in copyright infringement disputes. If you are a taxpayer that funded this research, but cannot afford the journal subscription, well, tough tits again. Go rustle up the bucks. Knowledge should be open and available to all, you say? Talk to my accountant; because the face, it ain’t listening. This is a gigantic rip-off, a racket, a robbery. It is exploitation–primarily of the academic promotion and tenure process and taxpayer money–on a scale that beggars belief. The stench from this should make every thinking person hold his or her nose. And act to make sure this cannot persist. Right now, the US House and Senate are considering the Federal Research Public Access Act; this will bring about ‘pervasive open access,’ especially to articles reporting on research paid for by taxpayers. For your own sake and for the sake of researchers, students, teachers, doctors, and the like everywhere, please support it. A ‘We the People’ petition is up and available for signing at whitehouse.gov. Please sign, spread the word, and end this racket.” |
| Libre redistribution – a key facet of Open Access Posted: 29 May 2012 09:08 AM PDT Palaeophylophenomics, (28 May 2012) “I have previously commented elsewhere on other blogs, that uniquely, with BOAI-compliant Open Access literature, one is able to re-distribute research however one wishes (provided proper attribution is given). I believe this to be hugely beneficial and perhaps a rather under-appreciated facet of the plurality of benefits offered by Open Access publishing. Below is an expanded version of the comment I made on Cameron Neylon’s excellent blog Science in the Open on this very theme (and please do read Cameron’s post too for greater context): Decentralized journal/article distribution is already happening... “I have 20,000+ PLoS articles on my computer right now. You can get them too – via BioTorrents. When compressed (as initially provided there) it’s less than 16GB’s of files – a trivial amount for anyone with a broadband connection. I can now (and do!) take PLoS on a USB stick with me wherever I go, allowing me to do research on trains, planes, and remote locations completely hassle free without even an internet connection. It was easy to download (pretty much 1-click) too via my high-speed institutional connection – and didn’t overload PLoS’s servers because I didn’t *get* the articles from their servers. With peer-2-peer file sharing the load is balanced between seeders (and in turn, I’m now seeding this torrent too, to help share the load). If all institutions/libraries agreed to help seed the world’s research literature, without copyright restriction on electronic redistribution (which we could do tomorrow if it weren’t for the legal copyright barriers imposed by most traditional subscription-access publishers) doing literature research would be pretty much frictionless! We could even get papers & data on campus much quicker over campus LAN rather than the internet. Institutions already agree to help distribute code e.g. R and it’s multitude of packages – this is hugely beneficial, and helps share the costs associated with bandwidth — why not for research publications? ... It’s a window on the world that *could* be possible if we just changed our attitude WRT to copyright and research publishing. That PLoS, BMC and other Open Access publishers use the Creative Commons Attribution Licence makes this all possible. I predict that the rights to electronically redistribute, and machine-read research will be vital for 21st century research – yet currently we academics often wittingly or otherwise relinquish these rights to publishers. This has got to stop. The world is networked, thus scholarly literature should move with the times and be openly networked too. In short, I think research would be a whole lot easier to do, and ultimately (all things considered) be more cost-effective, if all future publicly-funded research could be made BOAI-compliant Open Access. This is just my opinion – you are welcome to disagree in the comments section below, I sincerely hope I don’t sound like an Open Access ‘zealot‘ for this is certainly not my intention.” |
| Assessing research impact at the article level Posted: 29 May 2012 09:07 AM PDT BioMed Central, (25 May 2012) “The impact of academic research has long been measured using citations, often with the Journal Impact Factor being used to assess individual publications within it. However, the Impact Factor is a journal level - not an article level - metric and, as academic publishing and the surrounding discussion moves increasingly onto the web, novel opportunities to track and assess the impact of individual scientific publications have emerged. These web-based approaches are starting to offer an article-level perspective of the way research is disseminated, discussed and integrated across the web. The hope is that a broader set of metrics to complement citations will eventually give a more comprehensive view of article impact, and help to make the most relevant and important publications discoverable to individuals, based on their interests. Altmetric.com is one of a growing number of web-based tools taking a novel approach to the assessment of scholarly impact – it aggregates the mentions on twitter and social media sites, and coverage in online reference managers, mainstream news sources and blogs to present an overview of the interest a published article is receiving online. BioMed Central has today added the Altmetic.com 'donut' to the about page of published articles – the donut will display for articles receiving coverage which has been tracked by Altmetric.com, along with an article score (more information is available here). The donut visualization shown on the 'about this article' page aims convey information about the type of attention the article has received - the colours surrounding it reflect the mix of sources (blue for twitter, yellow for blogs etc.). The link takes you to a summary of the activity surrounding the article, including a geographical breakdown of coverage on twitter (Altmetric.com summary for this article is available here). This summary supplements our existing article-level measures of impact – article accesses and citations are displayed on all 'about this article' pages, and links to Faculty of 1000 appear when articles are reviewed. Articles that have been especially highly accessed, relative to their age and the journal in which they were published, are awarded the highly accessed tag. As more indicators of article performance, visibility and impact emerge, the hope is that authors, readers and funding institutions will be able to assess research impact in a way which is more informed than relying on Impact Factors alone... We plan to keep adding to this range of metrics and indicators, as they continue to expose a fuller image of research impact.” |
| del-fi • Making More Scientists Posted: 29 May 2012 09:06 AM PDT del-fi.org “I’ve been working up to a rant on twitter lately about Open Access, as the Access2Research petition’s first week drew to a close (sign it). The usual suspects are making the usual arguments - OA will dictate where scientists have to publish, OA will kill peer review, and most offensively to me, science is too complex for us unwashed liberal arts heathens to possibly understand, so no good will come of access. But science is a place where we keep out the unwashed masses. We no longer credential computer scientists (well, universities churn them out, but your credentials on github matter a lot more to savvy programmers than a CS degree from a state university - you’d be better served majoring in something fun and checking in code to open source projects... Has innovation in computer science been a problem? ... Basically every knowledge based discipline that runs on digital content has been transformed. Software. Journalism. Music. Video. And you can track the innovation patterns of each one based on the level of control that institutions maintain. Note: not all innovation is useful - most of it is shit - so part of my argument is that radically increasing the rate of *all* innovation is the best mathematically certain way to increase the rate of *useful* innovation. It’s like art. Most art sucks. But if enough people make art, then even if the rate of awesome artists doesn’t improve, making more people overall be artists means more awesome art. That’s what’s happened in software. More people make it. That means more shit software. We just don’t use it (ever browse the Android app store’s dregs? Sheesh). It’s happening in journalism, whose business model turned out to be based on classified advertising and got eaten by Craigslist, the ugliest website on earth. It’s happening in music, where Apple ate the music industry’s lunch, where artists can raise a million dollars on Kickstarter just as their old labels go bankrupt. But science isn’t like that. Science is a lot more like the cable industry. Comcast and a few behemoths control the last mile of the internet to most houses, and so we don’t even realize the world we live in is radically limited. Internet in the US is so bad compared to so much of the world and we don’t even see it. Toll access publishers of science are just like Comcast. They want to control the last mile. And scientists who buy into the argument that those of us in our houses, lacking credentials to understand their science, are perpetuating a knowledge lockup. They’re on the wrong side of history. You see, it does not matter if 999 of the 1000 people who read an open access article, who might not otherwise have been allowed to read it without paying $50, fail to understand it, believe they have disproved the second law of thermodynamics, etc. It matters that the one person does read and understand is provided access. Because then, in that moment, we’ve created a scientist - or at least the makings of one. And the only people that threatens are those counting on their credentials to keep them competitive, or profitable, or employed. Since I’m none of those three it’s pretty easy to support open access.” |
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