Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Call for Assistant Editors, Open Access Books in Food Science, Employment | IFT


 

Posted: 26 Jan 2015 09:05 AM PST
"Are you an ambitious student or recent graduate who wants to build up your experience? Are you looking for a challenge in an international working environment? Are you passionate about the internet and all things on-line? I would kindly like to invite you to consider the role of Assistant Editor in the pioneer Open Access academic book publishing program in Food Science (nutrition, food engineering, technology, safety, etc.), launched by De Gruyter Open (www.degruyteropen.com)...."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 09:04 AM PST
"EFSA [European Food Safety Authority] says the reolocation of open plenaries is part of its move towards an open science organization...."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:58 AM PST
"We're pleased to start 2015 with an announcement that we're now using Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0 as default. This will apply to all of the 18 fully open access journals Nature Publishing Group owns, and will also apply to any future titles we launch. Two society- owned titles have introduced CC BY as default today and we expect to expand this in the coming months.   This follows a transformative 2014 for open access and open research at Nature Publishing Group ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:46 AM PST
"Earlier this month I read an article by Julia Belluz that ripped into the scientific publishing system. The saddest, and truest, sentiment of the article can be summed up in the following quotation: 'Taxpayers fund a lot of the science that gets done, academics peer review it for free, and then journals charge users ludicrous sums of money to view the finished product.' This is certainly not the first attack against the publishing process nor the first to encourage open-access publishing. In the remainder of her article, Ms. Belluz focuses on the role that governments can play in getting more scientific research freely and instantly available. In sum, she suggests that government funding agencies (e.g. the United States National Institutes of Health or the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) could refuse to give grants to those scientists who did not publish in open-access journals. This is a laudable, and indeed it is the approach being taken bit by bit by funding agencies – the Wellcome Trust in the U.K. for example has a very robust open access policy that includes providing grant funding for the open-access charges. While this will certainly get more research out sooner and without charge, I believe it misses out on an important aspect of the power dynamic that plagues the scientific publishing process. The fact is that journals with high impact factors wield enormous power because they hold the key to scientists' careers – the field has become so obsessed with metrics that it is insufficient to be a good scientist with good ideas and the ability to perform good research. As things stand now, if you want research grants (and in most cases, this means if you want a job), then you need to publish a paper (or several!) with a big-name journal ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:43 AM PST
"The University of Oxford has just signed up for a Wiley Open Access Account, which will be used to pay Article Processing Charges for RCUK-funded articles published in Wiley journals (both hybrid and fully open access). During the Wiley submission/acceptance process there is an approval step where Wiley ask the institution if the APC should be paid from their account. When an author selects University of Oxford (RCUK-funded only) from the Funder/Institution list they will be contacted by the Bodleian Libraries APC team and asked to complete our RCUK application form – once this is received by apc@bodleian.ox.ac.uk , the Wiley OA request will be approved online. If you have any questions, please email the Open Access team at open-access-enquiries@bodleian.ox.ac.uk."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:33 AM PST
"In an article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Professor Jon Crowcroft argues that by parcelling and spreading data across multiple sites, and weaving it together like a tapestry, not only would our information be safer, it would be quicker to access, and could potentially be stored at lower overall cost. The internet is a vast, decentralised communications system, with minimal administrative or governmental oversight. However, we increasingly access our information through cloud-based services, such as Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox, which are very large centralised storage and processing systems. Cloud-based services offer convenience to the user, as their data can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, but their centralised nature can make them vulnerable to attack, such as when personal photos of mostly young and female celebrities were leaked last summer after their iCloud accounts were hacked. Storing information on the cloud makes it easily accessible to users, while removing the burden of managing it; and the cloud's highly centralised nature keeps costs low for the companies providing the storage. However, centralised systems can lack resilience, meaning that service can be lost when any one part of the network access path fails. Centralised systems also give a specific point to attack for those who may want to access them illegally. Even if data is copied many times, if all the copies have the same flaw, they are all vulnerable. Just as a small gene pool places a population at risk from a change in the environment, such as a disease, the lack of variety in centralised storage systems places information at greater risk of theft. The alternative is a decentralised system, also known as a peer-to-peer system, where resources from many potential locations in the network are mixed, rather than putting all one's eggs in one basket ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:30 AM PST
"Yesterday, the University of California Press announced two new open access (OA) publishing initiatives. One (Luminos) will publish scholarly monographs; the other (Collabra) is a mega journal created along lines somewhat similar to those of PLOS ONE, with a couple of important differences—notably, a business model that relies partly on library memberships and that provides payment to peer reviewers and editors, payment which they may opt to accept or to pass along, either to their local institutions' OA subvention funds or back to Collabra to support its own APC waiver fund. UC Press director Alison Mudditt graciously agreed to answer some questions about these new initiatives ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:23 AM PST
"The generic item that was being talked about widely at DBW this year is the collection of end-user data. For the trade publishers that make up the bulk of DBW's audience, end-user data is almost like a piece of moon rock:  foreign, unexpected, unintelligible. This is because trade publishers historically have sold books indirectly through such channels as bookstores and wholesalers, and thus have had little or no knowledge of how their books are actually used. College publishers–almost all book publishers–have had the same problem. In the journals world the situation is a bit different. Professional societies have always had some idea of end-user activity because of the subscriptions sold to members and a few other interested parties, but in institutional markets, end-user data was always harder to come by, as librarians are pretty much united behind the idea that the collection of any data is a woeful violation of privacy. And maybe it is. Enter digital media, and everything is different. At this point we all know about the revelations of Edward Snowden. We know that Google and Facebook are capturing our every keystroke. We know that in the world of the Internet, someone might feel lonely, but no one is ever alone. I am as creeped out about this as anybody who is not employed by the CIA or the NSA, but I do wonder if some data collection may be benign, that some of the surveillance economy may in fact be in my interest and in the interests of others, that it might indeed have a progressive component. Orwell gave us the fearsome Big Brother; Cory Doctorow gave us the chilling Little Brother; but now we may have the prospect of a Big Sister, a benign force that should not be tossed out as we attempt to flee from the depredations of government spying and commercial invasiveness. By the way, in case you are not familiar with it, the 1984 of our time is The Circle by Dave Eggers, (discussed here) which is at times as disturbing as Orwell's original. Eggers's target is not a Stalinesque totalitarian society but the groupthink of social media. This book should be taught in high schools ... End-user information for publishers comes in two varieties: information about individuals (Joe stopped reading Thinking Fast and Slow after he was 35% of the way through the book; Joe has purchased all of the books on this year's Booker Prize shortlist) and aggregate data (50% of all readers stopped reading when they were 40% of the way through The Goldfinch; people who purchased The Second Machine Age also purchased Race Against the Machine and The Lights in the Tunnel–examples culled from Amazon). Publishers can use the aggregate data for planning, for forging marketing campaigns, and for wheedling authors to focus on some things instead of others. The application for trade authors, fiction writers in particular, is obvious, but it also has extensions into textbooks (no one can figure out the examples in that textbook) and journals publishing (readers are more likely to read an entire article if the abstract includes quantitative information–a made-up example). My anecdotal observation is that few people are terribly concerned about the collection of anonymized aggregate data. Publishers are thus likely to collect and mine this data intensively in the years ahead. Publishers that don't do this, or that are too small to do this meaningfully, will be at a disadvantage. Big Sister will lead to more efficient product development, better curation of texts, more productive discovery services, and a lower cost basis for the enterprise.  Collection of data on individuals is another matter. Few of us like this; some of us oppose it very strongly. But even here there is a benign dimension. One mail-order company has figured out that I am tall and sends me catalogues with extra tall sizes. Do I feel violated by that or do I welcome the opportunity to shop from home instead of making my way to the nearest Rochester men's store? A book publisher or online retailer notes my propensity for reading science fiction and sends me offers for more: Where is the Satan in this? ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:18 AM PST
"Last week, I attended my first Academic Publishing in Europe (APE) meeting. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the meeting is held each year in Berlin. Its attendance is capped at 200. It was a very useful meeting to attend for a number of reasons. The attendees came from across Europe primarily, with many from the Dutch and German publishing houses, providing a mix that we rarely see in the US or even in the UK. The meeting itself struck me as more willing to court controversy, which was helpful because this generated insights and better discussions during breaks and social events. There was a lot to talk about also because European policymakers are much more adamant about open access (OA), which is speeding up its implementation and revealing interesting stresses and contradictions. Because of this, I found myself having thoughts I haven't had before, at least not so clearly ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:15 AM PST
Use the link to access the full text article from the journal Information Research.  "Introduction. The National Institutes of Health public access policy requires the principal investigators of any Institutes-funded research to submit their manuscript to PubMed Central, and the open access publisher Public Library of Science submits all articles to PubMed Central, irrespective of funder. Whether the investigators, who made the decision to publish in one of the seven Public Library of Science journals were motivated by the National Institutes' public access policy or by the journals' quality standards is unknown. Method. Forty-two Institutes-funded investigators who had published in one of the seven journals between 2005 and 2009 were interviewed, using a semi-structured, open-ended interview schedule. Analysis. Qualitative analysis was conducted, dividing the participants into those who published in the journals before the mandatory policy (pre-mandate) and those who published after the policy (post-mandate). Results. The Institutes-funded investigators submitted to the Public Library of Science journals because they favour the high impact factor, fast publication speed, fair peer-review system and the articles/ immediate open access availability. Conclusions. The requirements of the National Institutes' public access policy do not influence the investigators' decision to submit to one of the Public Library of Science journals and do not increase their familiarity with open access publishing options."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:03 AM PST
"All 18 open access journals owned by Nature Publishing Group (NPG), and two society titles published by NPG, will use the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0 as default from today. All future open access journals will also use CC BY 4.0 as default. Carrie Calder, Director of Strategy for Open Research at Nature Publishing Group/Palgrave Macmillan said: "We're committed to driving forward open access, and the CC BY license is widely considered to be the gold standard as it allows maximum reuse and discovery. All of the open access journals we own continue to be fully compliant with all existing funder mandates ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 07:27 AM PST
"A new open-access journal called Collabra plans to pay reviewers, and that's a twist in the world of scientific publishing. The reviewers get to exercise some options. They can keep the cash (generally a modest sum) or give it back to the research world by donating the money to a waiver fund, for poor scientists who cannot pay the $875 publication fee. The third option is to contribute it to their own institution's open-access activities ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 07:09 AM PST
"We caught up with Julia Mortimer, member of ALPSP's Professional Development Committee and co-organiser of the The Scholarly Book of the Future seminar next month, to ask her what she thinks the scholarly book of the future will look like ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 06:54 AM PST
"The Monographs and Open Access Project considers the place of monographs in the arts, humanities and social science disciplines, and how they fit into the developing world of open access to research. It concludes that open access for monographs has a great deal to contribute to scholarly communication, but that the challenges of introducing it will be real and policy should take account of the various issues identified in the report.  The Monographs and Open Access Project was led by Geoffrey Crossick, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London [Note 1]. It was commissioned by HEFCE in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).   Important messages in the report are that: [1] Monographs are a vitally important and distinctive vehicle for research communication, and must be sustained in any moves to open access. The availability of printed books alongside the open-access versions will be essential. [2] Contrary to many perceptions, it would not be appropriate to talk of a crisis of the monograph; this does not mean that monographs are not facing challenges, but the arguments for open access would appear to be for broader and more positive reasons than solving some supposed crisis. [3] Open access offers both short- and long-term advantages for monograph publication and use; many of these are bound up with a transition to digital publishing that has not been at the same speed as that for journals. [4] There is no single dominant emerging business model for supporting open-access publishing of monographs; a range of approaches will coexist for some time and it is unlikely that any single model will emerge as dominant. Policies will therefore need to be flexible.  Evidence to support the project was gathered through an extensive programme of consultations, surveys, data-gathering and focused research activities. The research was supported and shaped by an Expert Reference Group of publishers, academics, librarians, funders, open access experts with the additional help of distinguished representatives from overseas ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 06:49 AM PST
"INASP is driven by the idea that social and economic development must be guided by research. But a lot of research is invisible or hard to get published. And some researchers in low income countries still lack knowledge of current academic debates because they lack access to the latest journals. Therefore, INASP has negotiated with large academic publishers so that universities in low income countries, often with scarce resources, can afford to offer access to high quality research to their students. At the beginning they got 95 percent off, but nowadays the number is around 80 percent. But access to knowledge is not enough. There is also a need for educated librarians and working systems for e-resources. Furthermore, the researchers need to learn how journal articles should be structured, and other ways of improving the likelihood of publication. INASP therefore arranges a range of courses in low income countries, with the ambition that they are eventually driven locally. And there is nothing wrong with the enthusiasm ... INASP has also developed their own publication tool, Open Journals System, with over 19.4 million article downloads. They have founded a range of regional organizations, with the aim that they be driven locally. One spin-out is African Journals Online (AJOL) ... For research results to reach the public, someone needs to present complex issues in brief and simple texts. The news site Scidev.net is world leading in development research journalism. Every year, 1.5 million people take part in their news and opinion texts. The head Nick Perkins is not surprised by the interest. According to him, technology and research will keep playing an important role in our societies for a long time. ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 06:23 AM PST
"Loop, a new social network for scientists, aims to transform how they promote their work by dragging research into the era of clicks and likes. But some scientists aren't so sure that Loop will be a valuable tool for researchers—instead, they're worried that it will exploit them for profit. Loo​p allows researchers to create profiles, network with colleagues, and post their published articles to a Facebook-style news feed, with the end goal of increasing the reach of their work, also known as 'impact' in publishing jargon. Loop also gives researchers an in-depth look at who is viewing their articles—broken down by gender, specialty, and degree, for example—and across social media, blogs, and websites using the A​ltmetric analytics platform. Non-scientists can join, too, potentially making it a way more interesting alternative to Facebook, if you're interested in reading research papers ... Loop is backed by Frontiers Media and its parent company Nat​ure Publishing Group, one of the largest research publishers in the world. By integrating Loop profiles with articles posted on Frontiers and various Nature journals, the site will provide increased visibility for researchers across multiple platforms as well as give itself a built-in advantage over competing networks like Res​earchGate—which boastsmillion​s of users—and Mend​eley, both of which aren't tied to any journals ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 06:16 AM PST
"2014 was the year of groundbreaking conversions to open access. The most publicized-one was the transition of Nature Communications, which revealed that open access is attractive even for the most reputable journals worldwide. The conversion of 8 Central European Journals was also accomplished this year by De Gruyter Open, and was a significant change for researchers in the region, and hopefully it will prove to be important for global community. Due to this recent development I was quite surprised when I came back to the paper by Bo-Christer Bjork and Mikael Laakso 'A longitudinal comparison of citation rates and growth among open access journals', which has been already discussed on this blog. The thing which surprised me is the graph attached to the text, representing the number of journals that converted to open access each year. The graph is based on data from SCOPUS and DOAJ. According to this data the number of journal conversions had been growing gradually year by year from 1995 to 2000, but then it started to decline, which is hard to explain. Eventually, in 2012, it reached a lower value than in 1997. At the very same time the global number of open access journals was growing continuously, which means that launching new journals has become a more popular strategy than converting more established ones. What does this mean? Have publishers already converted all the journals they consider suitable for open access? Are all the remaining conventional journals profitable enough to remain on the market with their current model? There is a large number of regional journals that have very small circulations. For them open access is a chance to reach a broader audience. What happened to their publishers that they do not want to make them open? Are conditions different than 10 years ago?"
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 06:07 AM PST
"Citizen Science: Theory and Practice is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by Ubiquity Press on behalf of the Citizen Science Association. It focuses on advancing the field of citizen science by providing a venue for citizen science researchers and practitioners - scientists, information technologists, conservation biologists, community health organizers, educators, evaluators, urban planners, and more - to share best practices in conceiving, developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining projects that facilitate public participation in scientific endeavors in any discipline."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 06:03 AM PST
"Science communication and citizen science have a lot in common – namely, the desire to engage with people both inside and outside of the traditional science community. But where science communication is often seeking only to educate or to get folks interested in science, citizen science is always trying to get people actively involved in the scientific process. But citizen science can take many forms – from "games with a purpose," such as Phylo, to projects that have people collecting ants from their neighborhoods. And while citizen science efforts can focus on exploring scientific questions in a wide variety of fields, there are certain questions and challenges that are specific to citizen science itself. In other words, researchers engaged in citizen science can learn a lot from each other – regardless of whether they work in the same discipline. Now there's a journal devoted specifically to citizen science. The open-access journal, Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, was launched in December 2014. According to its website, the journal 'focuses on advancing the field of citizen science by providing a venue for citizen science researchers and practitioners - scientists, information technologists, conservation biologists, community health organizers, educators, evaluators, urban planners, and more - to share best practices in conceiving, developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining projects that facilitate public participation in scientific endeavors in any discipline.' To learn more, I talked to Caren Cooper, one of the journal's co-editors-in-chief. (And, yes, the journal is already accepting submissions.) ..."
Posted: 26 Jan 2015 04:59 AM PST
"Forum Herbulot [FH] is a research initiative, founded in the year of 2000, with approx. 150 members from 42 countries.... FH supports the Bouchout Declaration (http://bouchoutdeclaration.org/) for open access to biodiversity data and thus strongly encourages opening for free use the online access to key biodiversity data including sequences (along with access numbers on BOLD and GenBank / EMBL / DDBJ published in the original descriptions), taxonomic names, descriptions, occurrence data, images, ecological dates, habitats, biological traits and data...."
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