Tuesday, April 28, 2015

OATP primary

OATP primary

Disrupting the subscription journals’ business model for the necessary large-scale transformation to open access

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 03:47 AM PDT

Abstract:  This paper makes the strong, fact-based case for a large-scale transformation of the current corpus of scientific subscription journals to an open access business model. The existing journals, with their well-tested functionalities, should be retained and developed to meet the demands of 21st century research, while the underlying payment streams undergo a major restructuring. There is sufficient momentum for this decisive push towards open access publishing. The diverse existing initiatives must be coordinated so as to converge on this clear goal. The international nature of research implies that this transformation will be achieved on a truly global scale only through a consensus of the world's most eminent research organizations. All the indications are that the money already invested in the research publishing system is sufficient to enable a transformation that will be sustainable for the future. There needs to be a shared understanding that the money currently locked in the journal subscription system must be withdrawn and re-purposed for open access publishing services. The current library acquisition budgets are the ultimate reservoir for enabling the transformation without financial or other risks. The goal is to preserve the established service levels provided by publishers that are still requested by researchers, while redefining and reorganizing the necessary payment streams. By disrupting the underlying business model, the viability of journal publishing can be preserved and put on a solid footing for the scholarly developments of the future.

The new Max Planck Gesellschaft report on the large-scale transition to OA

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 03:42 AM PDT

"I'm glad to see this new Max Planck Gesellschaft report on the large-scale transition to OA, and I'm adding it to the list of works to cover in the new Harvard literature review <osc.hul.harvard.edu/journal-flipping> on converting non-OA journals to OA.
But I'm sorry to see that the announcement of the report uses its short space to broadcast two false assumptions -- first, that all or most OA journals charge publication fees (also known as article processing charges or APCs), and second that all or most of the fees at fee-based OA journals are paid by authors. I haven't read the report itself yet, but I hope it shows better understanding than the announcement."

Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: Publisher MDPI

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 03:07 AM PDT

"Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, or more usually MDPI, is an open access publisher that has had a challenging few years. It has been charged with excessively spamming researchers in order to maximise APC revenue, it has been accused of publishing pseudoscience, and it has been criticised for publishing papers of very poor quality. This has occasionally led to editorial board resignations e.g. here and here. The criticism came to a head in February last year, when University of Colorado (Denver) librarian Jeffrey Beall added MDPI to his controversial list of "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers". Today I am publishing a Q&A with MDPI. First however, in the way of background, I want to rehearse some key events (in date order). Please scroll down if you want to go direct to the interview ..."

Open Knowledge: Press release: Open Trials: Open Knowledge announces plans for open, online database of clinical trials

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 03:02 AM PDT

"Open Knowledge today announced plans to develop Open Trials, an open, online database of information about the world's clinical research trials funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The project, which is designed to increase transparency and improve access to research, will be directed by Ben Goldacre, an internationally known leader on clinical transparency. Open Trials will aggregate information from a wide variety of existing sources in order to provide a comprehensive picture of the data and documents related to all trials of medicines and other treatments around the world. Conducted in partnership with the Center for Open Science and supported by the Center's Open Science Framework, the project will also track whether essential information about clinical trials is transparent and publicly accessible so as to improve understanding of whether specific treatments are effective and safe ..."

OER strategies and best practices as success factors in Open Access initiatives in higher education

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 02:51 AM PDT

Use the link to access the full tet article from the institutional repository of the University of Mexico.  "The open access movement encourages for the free dissemination of scientific production, that is, content that derives from the research process. These initiatives expanded into educational material, under new pedagogical approaches that promote that both teachers and students share, use and reuse educational resources with other groups and communities. Deriving from the open access initiatives, the OER movement involves the promotion of technology as a means to develop improvements in learning, under the principle that states that 'existing knowledge in the world is a public good' (Rios, 2011), and that technologies such as WWW provide a valuable resource for sharing, using and reusing that knowledge. This 'democratic distribution of knowledge' represents a valuable opportunity for developing countries to have access to materials, courses, repositories, strategies and actions to expand educational coverage, in the spirit of moving towards the creation and global integration of the knowledge society. The open access (OA) and open educational resources (OER) movements are intimately linked with sharing, which is the essence of education. Particularly, OER strategies rely on principles for enabling sharing of knowledge in an ethical, efficient and sustainable way; and urge teachers to be initiated in publishing academic products, in similar ways as of their research colleagues. In this presentation I will show the results of a study where higher education institutions, interested in national and international competitiveness, were analyzed to assess the value it brings to their open access strategy to have clear definitions and established policies and programs around open educational resources (OER). I will also characterize some of their best practices involving open access and OER initiatives. As a result of this study, I revised an intervention strategy under execution for UNAM to achieve an institutional position on OER and thus add value to its open access initiative." 

The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 02:41 AM PDT

"Executive summary ... Scholarly communication and STM publishing  ... 1. STM publishing takes place within the broader system of scholarly communication, which includes both formal and informal elements. Scholarly communication plays different roles at different stages of the research cycle, and (like publishing) is undergoing technology-driven change. Categorising the modes of communication into one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many, and then into oral and written, provides a helpful framework for analysing the potential impacts of technology on scholarly communication (see page 12). 2. Journals form a core part of the process of scholarly communication and are an integral part of scientific research itself. Journals do not just disseminate information, they also provide a mechanism for the registration of the author's precedence; maintain quality through peer review and provide a fixed archival version for future reference. They also provide an important way for scientists to navigate the ever-increasing volume of published material (page 16) ..."

The Great Wide Open Data - Social Media Club Eindhoven

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 02:35 AM PDT

[From Google's English] "Data. Big data, open data, data in the cloud, data from the government, Data from surveys, data from the culture, data from registers, Data ... We live in an information society. Is this available data, transparent and available to everyone :? What is what, what can you do, what we can with it and especially what good is it? Our speakers will take you into the world of open data. By combining opened data (from the government) and what we publish itself via eg a mobile or web application, it can be used by anyone. In this way, open data value back to society. An example is an application that makes it possible to compare income and expenditure of several municipalities together. Useful as a management tool. But also museums that high resolutions wallpapers of collections available. This app developers can take a virtual tour of a nuseum or you create your own beautiful photo wall with your favorite artwork ..."

chem-bla-ics: "Open Data in Science"

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 02:30 AM PDT

"Recently, I got invited to a meeting of Eindhoven's Social Media Club, which has interesting meetings in the knowledge city capital of The Netherlands [ref]. This months topic was Open Data and I was asked to present Open Data in research, which I eagerly accepted. The quite liked the title too: The great wide Open Data. I very much enjoyed the other presentation too, mostly by Allard Couwenberg, whom gave an excellent introduction into Open Data, which simplified my presentation, allowing me to focus on the role of Open Data in research and possible at universities. For example, I discussed that I think we can improve the quality of our education of we improve the access to knowledge for our students. I got great questions from the audience, mostly consisting of people outside the scholarly community, and including a few people working with Open Data a lot. A full storify is available. I have uploaded my slides to SpeakerDeck ..."

20-24/7/2015- Open GIS Symposium and Summer School 2015 (Χανιά, Κρήτη) | Γραφείο Διασύνδεσης Δ.Π.Θ.

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 02:22 AM PDT

"Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are becoming a standard tool for any application dealing with spatial data, whether used for planning purposes by administrations or the private sector, or for research purposes. In particular, GIS support a large range of environmental applications, involving vegetation, soil and water. This summer school offers an introduction to the concepts behind GIS, the types of data used, the manner in which they are structured and analysed, projection and geographic coordinate systems and data representation, as well as basic data analysis. These theoretical concepts are followed by specific applications focusing on topics such as agriculture, forestry, water and coastal zone management. In addition to the theoretical background, the course focuses strongly on hands-on practical applications, employing open source software. We start this initiative focusing on the advantages of using Free and Open Source Software for GIS. The Summer School is opening with one day symposium on Open Source software (Monday, July 20, 2015), Open Data and coastal environment-driven Open innovation research. Key issues will be discussed on Open research-data-software applications to ecosystems resilience in relation to water resources, climate change, management and protection of coastal zones. Significant key – note speakers are expected in the oral presentation session and 'OPENGIS' participants are encouraged to contribute in the special organized for them poster session and in the abstract proceedings e-book of the symposium. A number of participants will receive full scholarship by UNESCO for attending the program. For more info please contact at (opengis2015@aegean.gr (link sends e-mail))"

Commons Transition: Policy Proposals for an Open Knowledge - Knowledge commons

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 01:51 AM PDT

Use the link to access the full text book.

COMPUTER SUPPORTED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN A GRID - PDF Drive

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 01:47 AM PDT

Use the link to acces the full text article from PDF Drive.  

Springer caught red-handed selling access to an Open Access article - Ross Mounce

Posted: 28 Apr 2015 01:39 AM PDT

" ... Frankly, I'm getting tired of writing these blog posts, but it needs to be done to record what happened, because it keeps on happening. I really think we need to setup a PaywallWatch.com c.f. RetractionWatch.com to monitor and report on these types of incidents. It's clear the publishers don't care about this issue themselves – they get extra money from readers by making these 'mistakes' and no financial penalty if anyone does spot these mistakes. Calculated indifference. Are these known incidences just the tip of the iceberg? How do we know this isn't happening at a greater scale, unobserved? There are more than 50 million research articles on sale at the moment. Perhaps in small part this explains the obscene profits of the legacy publishers? It's yet another nail in the coffin for hybrid OA – we simply can't trust these publishers to keep this content open and paywall-free. A recap of recent incidents of selling open access articles, without the publisher acknowledging to the reader/buyer that it is an open access article ..."
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