Wednesday, June 24, 2015

OATP primary

OATP primary

Funding in Open Access publishing

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 10:14 AM PDT

"You want to publish your recently written article in an Open Access journal and you found out that the journal charges you Article Processing Charges, also well known as APC. What possibilities you have to pay for your APC since publishers do NOT want you to pay the APC out of your own pocket. There are sources of funding available that authors can use to cover APC...."

Open Science Developer : Cambridge, United Kingdom : Naturejobs

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 10:04 AM PDT

"We are looking to recruit an Open Science Developer to work on the THOR project. You will join the Literature Services team at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) located on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus near Cambridge in the UK...."  

The brave new worlds of crowdfunding science - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:23 AM PDT

"Citizen's interest in research is gaining momentum. In some cases, it translates as a direct involvement of citizens in research projects. In other cases, initiatives allowing citizens' participation in science policy through Science Shops—a concept originated in the Netherlands in the 1970s—has flourished more recently in Germany alongside other initiatives. Similar ones also exist in France. But taking part in research—which sometimes involves mundane tasks—or deciding where the research priorities lie do not satisfy everyone. Some people would rather fund research directly. As a result, crowfunding for research is maturing. No longer the domain of quirky promises—say, to make a potato salad—crowdfunding now specifically caters for science projects. Several websites are going from strength to strength, including Europe-wide Public Lab, Science Starter in Germany, Walacea in the UK and Experiment in the USA, to name only a few. A defining aspect of Science 2.0, crowdfunding is increasingly considered as an alternative funding source for research projects.1 But this raises the question of what traditional government-financed funders will do in response to the growth in crowdfunders. Will they soon be in competition for scientists' services? Or could each side's funding models evolve so that the two are complementary to each other, learning and adopting better practices for better science? ..."

Raising the bar for national language open access journals - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:21 AM PDT

"Open access is the dominant publishing model of scientific journals edited in Latin America1 (LA). Most of them typically publish national authors. As a result, the region has become the most dynamic region for open access journals publishing. In fact, while the United States and Eastern Europe publish less than 15% of their research via open access journals. By contrast, in Latin America, this figure is greater than 25%, as per data indexed by the Web of Sciences or Scopus bibliometric databases. The success of open access in the region is due to the support provided by the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) scholarly communication programme, in operation for the past 17 years. During that time, SciELO has progressively networked journal collections—typically operated at national level—from 11 LA countrie together with journal collections from Portugal, Spain (limited to health sciences journals) and South Africa. Altogether, the network represents about 1,000 journals and over 500 thousand articles. It is therefore one of the most important and comprehensive international cooperation initiative in open access. Considering that each participating country contributes with financial and infrastructure resources so all the research contents are freely available, SciELO contributes to a regional boon and the global common good ... To achieve this, it relies on a methodology, combined with technology , which enables the online indexing, preservation, publishing and interoperation of peer-reviewed journals. It follows basic and common principles such as open access, decentralised operation and funding, common standards to maximise interoperability, quality control, performance evaluation and the strengthening of the editorial independence and transparency. The selection of journals to be indexed in each collection is carried out under the supervision of a national advisory committee, following pre-established criteria.  The adoption of a SciELO-like integrated and networked approach to run not-for-profit and independent quality journals by other regions and countries—particularly in the developed ones—faces barriers mainly at the political level. Indeed, it requires research agencies' commitment and leadership to build authoritative, sustainable and transparent managerial and funding models ..."

Open Science helps researchers get the impact they deserve - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:18 AM PDT

" ... From my experience at Springer I know that most established journals have rejection rates well above 50%. This means that the majority of submitting researchers will be disappointed. This often happens before peer-review and for many not because their study was flawed: a rejection before peer-review simply indicates the researcher picked the wrong journal. It could be that the topic of the study is not something covered by the journal, or that the topic is right but the study may not have had the level of impact the journal was looking for. When looking for a journal to publish their work, researchers also need to take into account factors like publication licenses; they can choose between subscription, hybrid or full open access with several possible licenses. When an article fee is in place a researcher needs to investigate funding possibilities or institutional membership such as with Biomed Central. They also need to be aware of different peer-review models, be it open, single or double blind. In addition they need to take into account funder and institutional mandates for data preservation and manuscript deposition in institutional repositories. It is a lot of work. And the stakes are high. Not complying with funder rules means future funding can be jeopardised whereas publishing in high-impact journals is still needed to advance a research career. And there are more potential pitfalls: for example, not following rules for publishing- or medical ethics may lead to a retraction and bad press, as shown by the complexity of the case associated with the recent publication of an analysis of the HeLa cells genome without the Lack family's consent ..."

Jan Velterop interview: further opening science thanks to a cultural shift - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:15 AM PDT

"Jan Velterop is one of the small group of people who first defined 'open access' in the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which was published in early 2002. He has worked in science publishing since the mid-1970's. At the beginning of his career, he worked at Elsevier, in The Netherlands, and after a stint in the regional mainstream press moved to London to work subsequently at Academic Press and then Nature. Afterwards, he became involved in BioMed Central, the first commercial open access science publisher. Later, he joined Springer, as director of open access. He then left to help further develop approaches based on the semantic web as a means to accelerate scientific discovery. Since 2009, he is involved in the Concept Web Alliance, as one of the initiators. In this exclusive interview with EuroScientist, Jan Velterop gives his views on how scholarly publishing is going to play a role in the evolution of research towards more open science, and ultimately speed up the scientific process ..."

A new kind of science: research in the age of big data - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:13 AM PDT

" ... Call it what you like: Science 2.0, eScience or even the Fourth Paradigm. One thing is certain: research is changing profoundly.  Driven by the same revolution in information technology that is transforming almost every aspect of human life, tomorrow's science will be different from yesterday's. And the shift is arguably an epochal one. Though change in academia comes slowly, we are now firmly on the road to a new digital and much more open future for research.  To some observers of science this change ushers in a fourth great age of research fourth great age of research.  To review, the first, which started over two millennia ago in Greece, was based on observation of the natural world and the formulation of qualitative theories about how it works. The second, in the 17th century, arose from the quantitative, mathematical worldview of the Enlightenment. Then, during the second half of the 20th century, the third age was associated with electronic computers, which enabled new methods of investigation, especially sophisticated numerical simulations ... The scientific age we are now entering will be every bit as disruptive and empowering as the previous three. What is sometimes called the Fourth Paradigm is characterised by the use of ubiquitous networked computers, vast quantities of data and industrial-scale research programmes involving hundreds, or even thousands of scientists.  There are particularly prominent examples in astronomy (the Sloan Digital Sky Survey), particle physics (the Large Hadron Collider), molecular biology (the Human Proteome Project HapMap) and neuroscience (the Human Brain Project). Yet, every discipline is affected in one way or another ..."

Jean-Claude Burgelman: the new open science paradigm requires fine tuning - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:11 AM PDT

"Jean-Claude Burgelman is the head of the science policy and foresight unit at Directorate General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission. He has been heavily involved in the recent Science 2.0 consultation. As a result the Commission organised, on 22-23 June, a half-day discussion on open science, focusing on barrier and opportunities, infrastructure and open society, as part of an event entitled: A New Start for Europe: Opening Up to an ERA for Innovation. In this exclusive interview to EuroScientist, he shares some of the lessons learned from the exercise, following the publication of the consultation results in May 2015 ..."

The day when science is truly open - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:09 AM PDT

"Network peer-review via the web and enhanced data crunching power are two of the defining changes recently bestowed upon 21st century science. While the term Science 2.0, like Web 2.0, means different things to different people, many appeal to transparency as its defining characteristic. In fact, results of the European Commission's public consultation on Science 2.0 published in May 2015 reveal that stakeholders voted to replace Science 2.0 with open science in any further proceedings of the Commission. Yet, Science 2.0 holds in store many other new issues for researchers to confront, such as changes in the style and means of collaborating and obtaining funding. Sophisticated algorithms now allow scientists to produce and analyse data in new and faster ways. In addition, the web has opened up ways for citizens to interface with various stages of the scientific process–from funding to data production. But the overarching question of whether the web will accelerate research and innovation in the next 25 years still remains to be answered. Nonetheness, Science 2.0, in its many connotations, has great potential to establish a more reliable scientific process, with greater transparency and accountability. And that alone is an exciting prospect ..."

Thoughtful debate is losing ground over appearance - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:07 AM PDT

"Science may be opening up, but there are still areas that researchers would like to see remain private. Indeed, under the auspices of open science, scientists are increasingly expected to present a virtual projection of who they are. Appearance has gained an unprecedented level of importance1. Scientists who do not play along open themselves to being mistreated or misunderstood. Living in a world of social media network means that scientists' every utterance is recorded, dissected and analysed. Unfortunately, researchers have come to this game unprepared and without the type of training that politicians typically benefit from. Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt has had a bitter experience in this new era. His recent comments at a luncheon regarding women in his lab have brought the debate about how much appearance matters into another dimension.  He was quoted as saying 'you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.' Clearly researchers need to think ahead when speaking as scientists, even at informal events.  Regardless of how ill-advised his comments were, Hunt learned the hard way that comments reported on Twitter do not come with context. The resulting deluge of scorn provided under hashtag distractinglysexy is a case in point. There are no excuses for such words. But context helps understand how they came about. The words were uttered as part an impromptu and informal speech at the start of a luncheon themed 'women's science journalist dinner' at the 2015 World Science Journalists' Conference (WSJC) in Seoul, South Korea.  People who have known Hunt personally for years contacted by EuroScientist thought the accusation of misogyny were out of character. They also recognised a rather clumsy attempt at British humour. To say the least, these comments did not translate very well when they reached the cybersphere ..."

The Parachute: How to take peer review out of the clutches of publishers

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:37 AM PDT

"You may remember that some time ago I wrote about JONAS – Journals Of Nature And Science – the essence of which was to take peer review out of the clutches of publishers and make it a purely academic responsibility again, what it should be in reality anyway. The result will not only be a cheaper system (by an order of magnitude compared to the current one), but also likely a better, fairer, more expert and possibly faster one. And because publishers' main focus will necessarily be on the technical issues of producing correctly XML-coded, archivable, preservable, findable, machine-readable as well as human readable, text- and data-mineable articles in a variety of formats for different purposes (e.g. XML, HTML, PDF, ePub), the currently often sloppy production may be greatly improved (you'd be surprised at the number of errors in the material published by even the publishers priding themselves most on quality – mixing up β with ß or + with ±, for instance!). ScienceOpen has decided to follow up on the JONAS idea and recently announced that they will give authors the option of publisher-free peer review. Needless to say that I'm very pleased with that. Several scientists have remarked that 'this is an important experiment' and expressed their hope that it will take off. ScienceOpen will probably face some substantial hurdles, as is generally the case with new ideas in the area of scholarly publishing. I'm reminded of the early days of open access, in that regard. However, tenacity and persistence will do a lot to overcome those hurdles, as does help from those in the academic community who would like to progress peer review reform and open access. Such help doesn't have to be onerous. Simply talking to colleagues and peers about it, retweeting relevant tweets, mentioning it in blog posts, et cetera, will be of tremendous value. The fact is that ScienceOpen, as a small new outfit, doesn't have a big marketing budget, and therefore relies on word-of-mouth. Moreover, even if they had a larger budget, they would rather refrain from email spamming and the like. In my view, they should be rewarded for that attitude with whatever help those who are sympathetic to new approaches in scholarly publishing can offer. And, of course, if you could consider trying out this approach by publishing a paper with the Peer Review by Endorsement method, that would be super. Propagating this blog post would be highly appreciated, too, obviously. Many thanks in advance."

Fellows | Mozilla Science Lab -- Call for fellows open until August 14, 2015 at 11:59PM EDT

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:34 AM PDT

"The Mozilla Fellowships for Science present a unique opportunity for researchers who want to influence the future of open science and data sharing within their communities. Apply now to become an inaugural 2015 Mozilla Fellow for Science. The application call is now open. It will remain open until August 14, 2015 at 11:59PM EDT. More information on how to apply can be found below. We're looking for researchers with a passion for open source and data sharing, already working to shift research practice to be more collaborative, iterative and open. Fellows will spend 10 months as community catalysts at their institutions, mentoring the next generation of open data practitioners and researchers and building lasting change in the global open science community. Throughout their fellowship year, chosen fellows will receive training and support from Mozilla to hone their skills around open source and data sharing. They will also craft code, curriculum and other learning resources that help their local communities learn open data practices, and teach forward to their peers ..."

Open Science - EuroScientist Webzine

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:31 AM PDT

"Open Science: never have terms been interpreted in so many different ways by so many different people. The diversity of perspectives on this matter reflects the evolving nature of what research has become. These reflections led to the idea of this EuroScientist special issue together with early stage discussions with Stephane Berghmans, EuroScience governing board member and Elsevier vice-president of academic and research relations in the EU. They were further compounded by exchanges with experts such as Max Haring, executive editor at mega-journal SpringerPlus and Timo Hannay, managing director of Digital Science, which invests in innovative tech solutions for publishing and grew out of the Nature Publishing Group. An international perspective came from Brazil, with the view of Abel Packer, CEO of open access publisher SciELO. In this special issue, we wanted to give you food for thought before the summer break, as to what it means to be a scientist in 2015 and beyond. You will hear about transparency, accountability, crediting researchers for their work, as well as about the influence of technology in this paradigm shift. We have invited experts representing the fields of publishing, technology, EC institutions and academia to share their wisdom of how changes in the way we do science are going to affect the present and the future of thousands of scientists. So be prepared for this trip to the future, which has yet to unfold in your day-to-day life as a researcher, policy makers or science enthusiast. It is no longer a matter of whether science will be fully open, but rather of when. This may take longer than anticipated. But one thing is sure, one day, the term open science will become redundant as all science will be that way. And we all have a part to play in ensuring that this will happen. Find out how by reading this special issue of EuroScientist and sharing it as widely as possible in your circles."

RLUK Joins the Directory of Open Access Journals - Research Libraries UK

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:27 AM PDT

"RLUK is pleased to announce that it has become a consortial member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) on behalf of all RLUK members. The DOAJ gives details of over 10,000 open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and the humanities and allows article-level searching for almost 2 million open access articles. 'From its launch in 2003 the Directory of Open Access Journals quickly became a vital resource for researchers, librarians and publishers', said David Prosser, Executive Director of RLUK. 'It has charted the explosive growth in open access journals and helped to raise standards in open access publishing. RLUK is very pleased to help support the vital work that the DOAJ does and to ensure that this invaluable tool remains an open and freely accessible resource'. 'We are delighted to see RLUK joining DOAJ collectively', said Lars Bjørnshauge, Managing Director of the DOAJ. 'This is an important endorsement of the work we are doing, and will further our ability to develop the service and make DOAJ an even more important infrastructure service for open access' ..."

Publishing your Research: Open Access (OA online resources handout)

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:26 AM PDT

Use the link to access the guide.

Obtaining independent reviews for an open textbook: what criteria to use? | Tony Bates

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:23 AM PDT

"What is the issue? One of the questions I had to ask myself as a self-publishing author of Teaching in a Digital Age was whether I needed my book to be independently reviewed before publication. If so, would the same criteria need to be used as if I was publishing commercially? ... What did I do? Because the book was to be an open textbook, and I have a blog which is read within the community of practice in which I work, I was able to test early drafts of chapters and get some feedback on an ad hoc and voluntary basis. I also hired an instructional designer/editor to proof read and assess each draft chapter. I also sent drafts to other specialists in the field where I described in detail their work, asking for feedback and comments. I then published each chapter when I thought it was ready, and the Centre for Digital Education at Ryerson University also offered to provide systematic feedback as I published. As a result I got a lot of useful feedback and comments that influenced the final version of the book, but nevertheless I was a bit shaken when I received an e-mail from a student who wanted to quote me in her graduate thesis, but was advised not to by her supervisor because the examiners might not accept references to a book that had not been independently reviewed. As a result, after the book was published, and with no guarantee that it would be picked up and reviewed in an academic journal, I decided to obtain three independent reviews, and, as with the BCcampus textbooks, I would publish these reviews as received alongside the book ..."

Open Innovation, Open Science, Open to the World | PressReleasePoint

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:18 AM PDT

" ... On 25 April this year, an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 hit Nepal. To get real-time geographical information, the response teams used an online mapping tool called Open Street Map. Open Street Map has created an entire online map of the world using local knowledge, GPS tracks and donated sources, all provided on a voluntary basis. It is open license for any use. Open Street Map was created by a 24 year-old computer science student at University College London in 2004, has today 2 million users and has been used for many digital humanitarian and commercial purposes: From the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. This story is one of many that demonstrate that we are moving into a world of open innovation and user innovation. A world where the digital and physical are coming together. A world where new knowledge is created through global collaborations involving thousands of people from across the world and from all walks of life. Ladies and gentlemen, over the next two days I would like us to chart a new path for European research and innovation policy. A new strategy that is fit for purpose for a world that is open, digital and global. And I would like to set out at the start of this important conference my own ambitions for the coming years ... In June next year I will convene a meeting with all countries who have introduced national ERA action plans, to complete this first chapter.  At the same time, we must also open the next chapter. The first chapter was about the physical ERA and bringing together research and innovation. The next chapter must focus on opening up our research and innovation systems and bringing together the physical and digital.  Let me then turn to the challenges ahead ... I see three major challenges: [1] We are too rarely succeeding in getting research results to market. Technologies developed in Europe are most of the time commercialised elsewhere. [2] Although Europe generates more scientific output than any other region in the world, in some areas we fall behind on the very best science. At the same time, there is a revolution happening in the way science works. Every part of the scientific method is becoming an open, collaborative and participative process. [3] Europe punches below its weight in international science and science diplomacy. Our collective scientific importance should be matched by a more active voice in global debates ..."

Open Geographic Information | SmartData Collective

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:15 AM PDT

"Many government agencies use geographic information systems (GIS), software which allows them to collect, store, analyze and visualize geographic information. For example, cities deploy crime maps to improve public safety, states use land use data for planning, and the U.S. National Park Service conducts research and conservation efforts using GIS. The de facto standard GIS software for many agencies is ArcGIS, which, along with its predecessors, was for decades the preeminent enterprise-scale computer mapping solution. ArcGIS, the flagship product of mapping software firm Esri, stores data in proprietary file formats, meaning that users must have a copy of ArcGIS to use data produced by the program. ArcGIS competes with free, open-source alternatives, including QGIS, which have been embraced by the open data community. Government agencies that want to publish their data in a form usable on all systems have needed to convert from ArcGIS formats, sometimes in large volumes. However, this can be a labor-intensive process, and agencies may lack the resources or expertise to switch to alternative systems that can easily publish open data. Recently, however, Esri has announced changes to ArcGIS that will allow government users to easily organize, host, and release geographic data openly. Esri's new initiative, which will go live with a new version of ArcGIS slated for release in March 2014, enables any data in ArcGIS to be published openly ..."

Data not shown: time to distribute some common sense about impact factors | Reciprocal Space

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:11 AM PDT

" ... It's that time of year when all clear-thinking people die a little inside: the latest set of journal impact factors has just been released. Although there was an initial flurry of activity on Twitter last week when the 2015 Journal Citation Reports* were published by Thomson Reuters, it had died down by the weekend. You might be forgiven for thinking that the short-lived burst of interest means that the obsession with this damaging metric is on the wane. But this is just the calm before the storm. Soon enough there will be wave upon wave of adverts and emails from journals trumpeting their brand new impact factors all the way to the ridiculous third decimal place. So now is the time to act – and there is something very simple that we can all can do. For journals, promotion of the impact factor makes a kind of sense since the number – a statistically dubious calculation of the mean number of citations that their papers have accumulated in the previous two years – provides an indicator of the average performance of the journal. It's just good business: higher impact factors attract authors and readers. But the invidious effects of the impact factor on the business of science are well-known and widely acknowledged. Its problems have been recounted in detail on this blog and elsewhere. I can particularly recommend Steve Royle's recent dissection of the statistical deficiencies of this mis-measure of research. There is no shortage of critiques but the impact factor has burrowed deep into the soul of science and is proving hard to shift. That was a recurrent theme of the recent Royal Society meeting on the Future of Scholarly Scientific Communication which, over four days, repeatedly circled back to the mis-application of impact factors as the perverse incentive that is at the root of problems with the evaluation of science and scientists, with reproducibility, with scientific fraud, and with the speed and cost of publishing research results. I touched on some of these issues in a recent blogpost about the meeting; (you can listen to recordings of the sessions or read a summary). The Royal Society meeting might have considered the impact factor problem from all angles but  discovered once again – unfortunately – that there are no revolutionary solutions to be had. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Leiden Manifesto are commendable steps in the right direction. Both are critical of the mis-use of impact factors and foster the adoption of alternative processes for assessment. But they are just steps ..."

A Canadian author's perspective on "radical extremism" and copyright - Boing Boing

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:09 AM PDT

"As the Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore has declared war on copyright reformers who object to his plan to bring US-style 'digital locks' rules to Canada, I think it's worth spelling out what my objections, as a Canadian author, are to his plan (my books are distributed across Canada by the excellent HB Fenn; last year I won the Ontario White Pine Award for best book; as I write this, my novel For the Win is on the Canadian bestseller lists). Minister Moore has proposed a law that would give near-absolute protection to 'digital locks' that control use, access and copying of works stored on a computer, mobile device, set-top box, etc. This is nearly the same policy that the US has had since 1998, when it brought down the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (actually, the American version is slightly better, since they've built in a regular review of the policy). In the intervening 12 years, we've learned two things about digital locks: 1. They don't work. Even the most sophisticated digital locks are usually broken in a matter of hours or days. And where they're not broken, it's mainly because you can get the same works by another means -- rather than breaking the iTunes lock, you break the easier Zune lock (or vice-versa), because you can get the same songs either way. So digital locks don't stop piracy. All they do is weaken the case for buying music, movies and books instead of ripping them off -- after all, no one woke up this morning wishing there was a way to do less with her music. So how could adding a digital lock make a paid product more attractive than the free version? 2. They transfer power to technology firms at the expense of copyright holders. The proposed Canadian rules on digital locks mirror the US version in that they ban breaking a digital lock for virtually any reason. So even if you're trying to do something legal (say, ripping a CD to put it on your MP3 player), you're still on the wrong side of the law if you break a digital lock to do it. Here's what that means for creators: if Apple, or Microsoft, or Google, or TiVo, or any other tech company happens to sell my works with a digital lock, only they can give you permission to take the digital lock off. The person who created the work and the company that published it have no say in the matter ..."

The Winnower | DIY Scientific Publishing

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:05 AM PDT

"Digital object identifiers (DOIs) are much sought-after commodities in the world of academic publishing. If you've never seen one, a DOI is a unique string associated with a particular digital object (most commonly a publication of some kind) that lets the internet know where to find the stuff you've written. For example, say you want to know where you can get a hold of an article titled, oh, say, Designing next-generation platforms for evaluating scientific output: what scientists can learn from the social web. In the real world, you'd probably go to Google, type that title in, and within three or four clicks, you'd arrive at the document you're looking for. As it turns out, the world of formal resource location is fairly similar to the real world, except that instead of using Google, you go to a website called dx.DOI.org, and then you plug in the string '10.3389/fncom.2012.00072′, which is the DOI associated with the aforementioned article. And then, poof, you're automagically linked directly to the original document, upon which you can gaze in great awe for as long as you feel comfortable. Historically, DOIs have almost exclusively been issued by official-type publishers: Elsevier, Wiley, PLoS and such. Consequently, DOIs have had a reputation as a minor badge of distinction–probably because you'd traditionally only get one if your work was perceived to be important enough for publication in a journal that was (at least nominally) peer-reviewed. And perhaps because of this tendency to view the presence of a DOIs as something like an implicit seal of approval from the Great Sky Guild of Academic Publishing, many journals impose official or unofficial commandments to the effect that, when writing a paper, one shalt only citeth that which hath been DOI-ified. For example, here's a boilerplate Elsevier statement regarding references (in this case, taken from the Neuron author guidelines): References should include only articles that are published or in press. For references to in press articles, please confirm with the cited journal that the article is in fact accepted and in press and include a DOI number and online publication date. Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, abstracts, and personal communications should be cited within the text only. This seems reasonable enough until you realize that citations that occur 'within the text only' aren't very useful, because they're ignored by virtually all formal citation indices. You want to cite a blog post in your Neuron paper and make sure it counts? Well, you can't! Blog posts don't have DOIs! You want to cite a what? A tweet? That's just crazy talk! Tweets are 140 characters! You can't possibly cite a tweet; the citation would be longer than the tweet itself! The injunction against citing DOI-less documents is unfortunate, because people deserve to get credit for the interesting things they say–and it turns out that they have, on rare occasion, been known to say interesting things in formats other than the traditional peer-reviewed journal article. I'm pretty sure if Mark Twain were alive today, he'd write the best tweets EVER ... Why does Elsevier hate 21st-century Mark Twain, you ask? I don't know. But in general, I think there are two main reasons for the disdain many people seem to feel at the thought of allowing authors to freely cite DOI-less objects in academic papers. The first reason has to do with permanence—or lack thereof. The concern here is that if we allowed everyone to cite just any old web page, blog post, or tweet in academic articles, there would be no guarantee that those objects would still be around by the time the citing work was published, let alone several years hence ... The second reason has to do with quality. Here, the worry is that we can't just have authors citingany old opinion someone else published somewhere on the web, because, well, think of the children! ... To be fair, I think there's some merit to both of these concerns. Or at least, I think there used to be some merit to these concerns ... "

Open science for a knowledge and data-driven economy - European Commission

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 12:44 AM PDT

"What is open science about? Open Science describes the on-going transitions in the way research is performed, researchers collaborate, knowledge is shared, and science is organised. It represents a systemic change in the modus operandi of science and research. It affects the whole research cycle and its stakeholders, enhances science by facilitating more transparency, openness, networking, collaboration, and refocusses science from a 'publish or perish' perspective to a knowledge-sharing perspective. Open science is also about making sure that science serves innovation and growth. It guarantees open access to publicly-funded research results and the possibility of knowledge sharing by providing infrastructures. Facilitating access to those data will encourage re-use of research output. For example, companies, and particularly SMEs, can access and re-use data, infrastructures and tools easily and at a reasonable cost and can accelerate the implementation of ideas for innovative products and services. Under the EU research and innovation funding programme Horizon 2020, open access to publications is now mandatory and we launched a Pilot on Open Research Data. In the context of the Digital Single Market Strategy, we will soon be launching a European Open Science Cloud initiative which will combine existing and future data infrastructures, offering secure and seamless access to European researchers for storing, managing and processing data from different sources ..."

How MOOCs Could Reform Education Completely by Accident - The Atlantic

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 12:22 AM PDT

" ... Even so, it may not be time to write them off. An unexplained phenomenon in early MOOC data, now illuminated by another recent study (this one from Harvard and MIT), could help the courses live up to the education-reform hype after all—but with a somewhat ironic twist. Perhaps one of the overlooked values in MOOCs is not in sharing Ivy League wisdom with the masses, but in teaching educators—and, in turn, improving traditional K-12 schools.  From the outset, analyses of MOOC students showed that enrollees were already overwhelmingly educated. According to various MOOC enrollment data, including that contained in the UPenn study, a majority of those registering for the free classes (between 70 and 80 percent) already had college degrees. That's about double the rate of the U.S. population at large. And in other parts of the world—where free online college classes were envisioned as tools of social mobility—the portion of already-educated students was even more dramatic. Last year, a piece of commentary that ran in The Times cited a study showing that in countries such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa—where just 5 percent of residents have college degrees—more than 80 percent of MOOC students had one.  Although there wasn't a lot of hard research to support it, many analysts peggedthe high percentage of already-degreed students in MOOCs to an interest in freshening up job skills. Meanwhile, some MOOC backers attributed the lack of degree-seekers in the free courses to limited broadband access among lower-income populations.  Then, earlier this year, Harvard and MIT released what's ostensibly the largest study to date of MOOCs and their participants. The joint study examined 68 courses offered by the two institutions though the edX platform, covering 1.7 million participants and more than 1.1 billion 'events'—what the study defines as each participant 'click' recorded in the edX servers. The report not only confirmed that MOOC students tend to be college-educated, but it also demonstrated that a striking percentage of those students are educators themselves. 'What jumped out for me was that ... as many as 39 percent of our learners [in MOOCs overall] are teachers,' said Isaac Chuang, one of the study's lead researchers. In some of Harvard's MOOCs, half the students were teachers. And in 'Leaders of Learning'—a course out of its Graduate School of Education—a whopping two-thirds of participants identified as such ..."
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