Friday, July 10, 2015

OATP primary

OATP primary

UKB tekent The Hague Declaration over open science

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 09:14 AM PDT

[From Google's English] "UKB , the consortium of thirteen university libraries and the National Library, the objectives of The Hague Declaration endorsed by signing the joint declaration. All signatories state that there are no copyright restrictions are scientific results and research data. Everyone should be able to freely analyze facts and data.Licensing and copyright rules may not raise barriers before. The knowledge economy has an interest in global open access or open science. According to the statement must be contained in the European copyright rules that authors the right to (re) use of data and texts not lose by signing a contract with a publisher ..."

The Affirmability of the Sensible -or- On Leading the Academic Cavalry to Water…

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 03:58 AM PDT

In an entertaining posting, "The Deniability of the Blog," David Worlock (amongst other things) chides me for failed predictions, hoping that I (and Derk Haank) stick around long enough to keep providing entertainment. Stay tuned. Dunno about Derk but I'm still around for the long haul. But I do want to point out that I haven't the slightest interest in journal publisher revenues (though they will of course plummet sooner or later), never had. There are two problems for journal article users: their unaffordability and their inaccessibility. And I'm interested solely in the latter. OA is the solution to that; the former problem will then take care of itself. Yes, eventually peer review will die, journals will die, research will die and the universe will devolve into heat death. But OA will come before all that. If David wanted to pillory me with having been taken by surprise by events, he could easily have found many genuine examples of my stupidity: Yes, I had sincerely believed that within a year or two of my 1994 Subversive Proposal, all researchers would be self-archiving. I never dreamt they would keep — so to speak — sitting on their fingers. Nor did I imagine that if they got free software in 2000 to create interoperable institutional repositories, their posteriors would stay put, their digits still immobile. Taken by surprise again that once their institutions and funders began in 2003 to mandate their fingers into action where the sun does shine, all of them — the researchers, their institutions and their funders — would instead be blinded (and blindsided), beginning about 2006, by gold-dust, tempted to heed instead the siren call of journal publishers to "leave the keystroking to us — for a fee." What I did anticipate all along, however, was that publishers would and could make their offer look like an un-refusable one, by trying to gild the lily: embargoing the green option of authors flexing their own fingers. But now there's still the Button to buttress the mandates and save the day, with immediate Almost-OA, immune to publisher blackmail. Moral: One cannot second-guess human nature; only what is feasible, sensible and optimal. The rest is in the hands of the gods. But do stay tuned…

Open Minds Workshop: Open Access for Research

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:54 AM PDT

"How can we use open access, open resources, journals, databases, platforms and tools for collaboration and communication in academic work and research?"

Report on Open Access Publishing at the College of Education, Health, and Human Development, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:53 AM PDT

" ... The seminar was organised on 4th of June, 2015, Thursday. Four speakers were identified. They were: Peter Lund and Anton Angelo from the University of Canterbury Central Library and Researcn Unit, Peter Binfield from PeerJ, and Viriginia Barbour from Australian Open Access Support Group. The topics of the seminar included a brief introduction to open access publishing and the state of the scenario in NZ and Australia and exploration of the issues around green and gold open access, and future directions as to what can be done to increase participation in open access. The seminar was also designed to be an open to all, and free flowing discussion ..."

EC highlights new trends in Open Science // ERA

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:50 AM PDT

" ... The Competitiveness Council in May 2015 agreed on the development of a European Open Science Agenda under the European Research Area. In its conclusions, the Council called for open, data-intensive and networked research and emphasised the importance of developing e-infrastructures. At the ERA Conference in June 2015, Commissioner Moedas outlined the Commission's plans for 'Open Innovation, Open Science, Open to the World'. Together with Commissioner Oettinger, Mr. Moedas also published a joint blog post exploring open science, its role in boosting innovation & growth in Europe and the position of the EU, announcing the European Open Science Cloud initiative and the strategy on open data in research. A year before, the Commission had already held a public consultation on Science 2.0 / open science, between July and September 2014 and published a final report ..."

Open access and data management which strategic agenda for the european research ? | Foster

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:49 AM PDT

Use the link to access the presentation.  

It’s time to redraw the world’s very unequal knowledge map - disinformation

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:48 AM PDT

"If the world were mapped according to how many scientific research papers each country produced, it would take on a rather bizarre, uneven appearance. The Northern hemisphere would balloon beyond recognition. The global south, including Africa, would effectively melt off the map. This image makes a dramatic point about the complexities of global inequalities in knowledge production and exchange. So what is driving this inequality and how can it be corrected? ... Money and technology are needed to produce research. The average research and development intensity – that is, as a percentage of GDP – was 2.4% for OECD countries in 2009. But few developing countries had reached 1%. Without sufficient national funds, researchers must spend a great deal of time fundraising and dealing with grant organisations outside their universities. This means less time for actually undertaking and producing research ..."

 

We are all in a tizzy about Open Access. Or, at least, I am | University Affairs

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:43 AM PDT

"There is a move afoot to make publicly funded monographs and journals Open Access (OA) – free – through the Internet. This is a revolutionary move that could lead to the vast dissemination of knowledge, a renaissance in scholarship, and help level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots. I'm for it! But in the rush to Open Access there is a push to produce online materials without the expertise of academic publishers. Will these books have the same value as the scholarly monograph that has been selected by experts, peer reviewed, and approved by an academic editorial board? Or will they languish like the thousands of self-published books that appear every week online, lacking editorial input and suffering from bad design? Will they, too, be ignored by book review editors and prize committees because they do not have the imprimatur of a publishing house and all the professionalism that goes with it? And would our most learned citizens be even less able to compete in the marketplace of ideas because of diminished distribution and publicity efforts? If that's the case, then I'm against it!  ... This spring, U of Regina Press released Free Knowledge: Confronting the Commodification of Human Discovery on our website for free. The first printing of 700 copies has already sold out in the paperback edition for $27.95. With activist and scholarly dimensions, Free Knowledge is on the front lines of debate about creating and protecting our Knowledge Commons. It also contains a warning from Gregory Younging about the ongoing expropriation of Indigenous knowledge – a reminder that this remains a complex issue. More exciting for the OA movement is James Daschuk's challenge to his colleagues. Within weeks, he will release on uofrpress.ca the 20 years of research that went into writing Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, a national bestseller. He hopes new ideas flow from his research, with scholars, students, and writers using it to deepen our understanding of Canada's relationship with the First Nations. This revolutionary move represents a leap forward for OA. Will others in the academy follow his lead? ..."

How can next REF more strongly emphasise the unimportance of Impact Factor? | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:39 AM PDT

"I spent much of yesterday morning at the launch meeting of HEFCE's new report on the use of metrics, The Metric Tide: Report of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. (Actually, thanks to the combination of a tube strike and a train strike, I spent most of the day stationary in traffic jams, but that's not important right now.) There's a lot to like about the report, which is a fantastically detailed piece of work. (It weighs in at 178 pages for the main report, plus 200 pages for Supplement I and another 85 for Supplement II. I suspect that most people, including me, will content themselves with the Executive Summary, which is itself no lightweight at 12 pages.) Much has been written about it elsewhere — see the LSE's link farm — but I want to focus on one issue that came up in the discussion. As we've noted here a couple of times before, the REF (Research Excellence Framework) is explicit in disavowing impact factors and other rankings in its assessments: see the answer to this question: How will journal impact factors, rankings or lists, or the perceived standing of publishers be used to inform the assessment of research outputs? ..."

Thematic US History: Year 3 – DPLA as Research Playground | historyfriend

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:33 AM PDT

" ... One lesson will be centered around the Digital Public Library of America. DPLA is an enormous and eclectic database, with arms that reach into a wide number of collections across the US. It is the perfect playground for research. I will have students choose an event from US history to research in the DPLA. They will sift, refine, and then curate resources. I hope that they get taken down unexpected paths with resources they never imagined existed. In the end, I don't care where they arrive. Some will no doubt stay focused and curate a group of resources that they could use to research their topic. Others will get sucked into one resource and spend their time reading it, or trying to find out more about it. Others will jump around, not really focusing on any one thing and feeling a sense of panic or inadequacy as time in class winds down. All of those experiences are legitimate research experiences. No matter how they spend their time, they will all end with a reflection on their own process, conveyed to me either in written or oral form. Here is the assignment ..."

PLOS ONE: From Peer-Reviewed to Peer-Reproduced in Scholarly Publishing: The Complementary Roles of Data Models and Workflows in Bioinformatics

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:25 AM PDT

[Abstract Reproducing the results from a scientific paper can be challenging due to the absence of data and the computational tools required for their analysis. In addition, details relating to the procedures used to obtain the published results can be difficult to discern due to the use of natural language when reporting how experiments have been performed. The Investigation/Study/Assay (ISA), Nanopublications (NP), and Research Objects (RO) models are conceptual data modelling frameworks that can structure such information from scientific papers. Computational workflow platforms can also be used to reproduce analyses of data in a principled manner. We assessed the extent by which ISA, NP, and RO models, together with the Galaxy workflow system, can capture the experimental processes and reproduce the findings of a previously published paper reporting on the development of SOAPdenovo2, a de novo genome assembler ...

Seven Bridges Genomics Funds Open Access to Bioinformatics Research | Business Wire

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:11 AM PDT

"Seven Bridges Genomics today announced a new program to pay the open access publication fees for any publication resulting from research conducted on its platform. 'Open is the next step of what we started with Rabix -- our open-source toolkit for creating, running, and sharing bioinformatics workflows. We want to disseminate knowledge faster, and pairing open access research with fully portable workflows is the best way we know to do it.' Under the new program, called Open, any customer can quickly submit their information to be reimbursed for their open access fees through a simple online form ..."

Public-Friendly Open Science | Authorea

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 02:10 AM PDT

"In the 21st century science is growing more technical and complex, as we gaze further and further while standing on the shoulders of many generations of giants. The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society. One of the reasons for this is that scientists do not spend enough time communicating their findings outside their own scientific community. Obviously there are some exceptions, but the rule is that scientists write content for scientists. Academia is often perceived as an ivory tower, and when new findings are shared with the outside world, this is not done by scientists, but by the media or even the political class. The problem is that these external agents do not have the necessary background to digest and properly communicate this knowledge with the rest of society. They often misunderstand, over-hype and in some case even distort the results and views of the scientific community. It's ironic and somewhat frightening that the discoveries and recommendations for which society invests substantial economic and human capital, are not directly disseminated by the people who really understand them. At the same time transparency and reproducibility are at stake in the increasingly complex world of research, which is still using old-fashioned tools when packaging and sharing content. This is not only a big problem for research itself, but can give science a bad name in front of the public opinion, which increasingly does not understand and trust the work of scientists. To the average tax-payer science is often cryptic, with most recently published papers behind a pay-wall and the majority of research virtually inscrutable. In this scenario it is hard for the public to access and capture the relevance of scientists' work. I strongly believe that a society that does not trust its scientists is set on a dangerous course ..."

Open Access: What is the role of research libraries? | Inovação em Biblioteconomia nas Redes Sociais

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 01:57 AM PDT

"The main topic in discussions related to scholarly publishing is now Open Access. New open access journals and repositories emerge, existing journals publish open access articles (hybrid journals) or are transformed into open access publications. What does the growing number of open access publications mean for research libraries? How does open access change the way research libraries provide access to scientific information? ..."

OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers Released | News & Events

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 01:50 AM PDT

"We are happy to announce the publication of the OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers.The newly revised OpenAIRE Guidelines site  points to the three OpenAIRE Guidelines: Literature Repositories, Data Repositories and now CRIS systems ... The Guidelines specify the interoperability layer between Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) and the OpenAIRE infrastructure. The information interchange is based on the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) data model, the CERIF XML exchange format, and the OAI-PMH protocol.  These Guidelines are intended mainly for implementers and administrators of CRIS who plan to communicate research information to OpenAIRE. Using these Guidelines will be an effective way to comply with both existing and emerging Open Access mandates. Besides, additional visibility for the work of the researchers in their institutions will be gained ..."

 

Why academic journals are teaming up with Reddit | Simon Owens | LinkedIn

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 01:39 AM PDT

"The Public Library of Science, the academic publisher more commonly known as PLOS, doesn't lack for media coverage. Launched in the early 2000s, PLOS was one of the pioneers in what's called open access scholarly publishing. For decades, the scholarly journal industry has been coalescing into a handful of behemoth corporate entities who have leveraged their clout to raise subscription fees and force university library budgets into the millions of dollars. PLOS, through the launch of 10 journals ranging from PLOS Biology to PLOS Genetics, operates under the overarching principle that access to its articles should be completely free, and its staff has made every effort to ease the mode of discovery for the science it publishes. And it's been rewarded for those efforts; in a little over a decade it has become one of the highest impact scholarly publishers, with many of its articles generating national headlines. A quick search on Google News reveals that, in just the last week, thousands of mainstream news articles have referenced its work. But someone like Victoria Costello, who is the senior social media and community editor of all of PLOS, knows the company isn't adhering to its open access ethos if it's merely penetrating the traditional media. So she spends a fair amount of time thinking about how to leverage online communities to generate interest in PLOS articles, even if it means bringing the scientists who penned the articles directly to those communities. And that's how she found herself emailing one day with a moderator at Reddit, which through its r/science subreddit hosts one of the largest science-focused forums on the internet ..."

Metrics: how to handle them responsibly | Times Higher Education

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 01:30 AM PDT

" ... Amid concerns about the growing use – and abuse – of quantitative measures in universities, a major new review examines the role of metrics in the assessment of research, from the REF to performance management ... If you have recently received an email from human resources announcing that you are expected to publish three papers over the next year in journals with an impact factor of at least 20, there is one crumb of comfort. You will at least be able to enter the misguided missive for a new, annual 'bad metrics' prize, modelled on the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award for cringeworthy descriptions of hanky-panky .. Metrics – numbers – give at least the impression of objectivity, and they have become increasingly important in the management and assessment of research ever since citation databases such as the Science Citation Index, Scopus and Google Scholar became available online in the early 2000s. Metrics are particularly popular in political circles. The government commissions a report on UK research strength every couple of years from Elsevier, owner of Scopus, and its most recent headline finding – that with just 3.2 per cent of global research spending and 4.1 per cent of the world's researchers, the UK receives 11.6 per cent of all citations worldwide and produces 15.9 per cent of the most highly cited articles – is frequently trotted out as proof that the country punches above its weight.  Within universities, too, metrics have been widely adopted, not merely for institutional benchmarking but also, increasingly, for managing the performance of academics. A recent study byTimes Higher Education suggested that individual metrics-based targets of one form or another have been implemented at about one in six UK universities ..."

Paper: Commons Approach To European Knowledge Policy Could Yield Better Outcomes

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 01:15 AM PDT

"A new paper released earlier this month finds that the commons perspective, which embraces knowledge as a shared resource and its management a joint responsibility, could contribute to EU policy discussions and yield better policy outcomes in areas such as health, environment, science and culture, and the internet. The paper, 'The EU and the Commons: A Commons Approach to European Knowledge Policy', can be found here[pdf].  The paper was authored by the coordinators of The Commons Network, Sophie Bloemen, a civil society activist and policy advisor, and David Hammerstein, former member of the European Parliament. They explain that the commons approach requires policymakers to look beyond the narrow focus of intellectual property or economic value. Instead, a more comprehensive understanding of value and policies that serve the common good is required.  The paper notes that the commons approach enables policymakers to assess the collective interests of citizens as a whole rather than focusing on purely individual rights and a market-oriented worldview. The latter is seen as the very perspective that many consider to be at the root of current economic and environmental crises ..."

 

Use Open Online Courses to Increase Access to Tertiary Education-Anglin | News | Jamaica Gleaner

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 01:03 AM PDT

"A member of the distance education standards committee of the University Council of Jamaica (UCJ) is arguing that massive open online courses (MOOCs) can to be used to address issues of availability and affordability of higher education in the region. Patrick Anglin, in his contribution to the recently published book, Quality in Higher Education in the Caribbean, said that, compared to face-to-face delivery, MOOCs are a significantly cheaper and more extensive option that tertiary institutions in the Caribbean can leverage to make their programmes more accessible. MOOCs are defined as online courses aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the Web. Described as part of the fourth generation of distance education technologies, MOOCs generally include free online courses from a wide range of disciplines. Some popular MOOCs include Coursera, developed by Stanford University, and MIT OpenCourseWare. According to Anglin, there is an unmet need for fully online degree programmes given that the University of the West Indies only offers seven such graduate programmes ..."

Dutch universities square off with Elsevier - Science|Business

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 01:02 AM PDT

"Elsevier is resisting Dutch universities' demands to permit all papers published by their academics to be made open access – so called Gold Access - after the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) asked all scientists whether they were willing to give up editor roles on journals owned by the publisher. It is not clear how many researchers have obliged. However, in response to the proposed boycott, Amsterdam-based Elsevier, the world's largest science journal publisher, sent emails to Dutch scientists this week outlining its position. The email says, 'The challenge is that, apart from the Netherlands and the UK, no other country aims for Gold Open Access. […] Therefore, while a transition to Open Access is desirable, it needs to be managed carefully and funded properly as it is not cost-free for the Netherlands.' While Elsevier talks are stuck, VSNU has to date reached outline agreements with three other publishers, Springer, Wiley and Sage. Discontent with the publisher business model has bubbled to the surface in the last few years, with researchers complaining they take their work and sell it back to them. The contents of most scientific journals lie behind publishers' paywalls and universities pay annual subscription fees for access. In open access publishing, the author, not the reader, pays the publishing costs. Apart from being cheaper, proponents say open access articles generate a bigger audience. The Dutch government last year said that 60 per cent of research articles authored by Dutch scientists must be open access by 2019, and 100 per cent by 2024. VSNU opened talks with large publishers last year to move toward this gold open access model ..."

Open Access discussion vs. scientific content | Univers

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 12:59 AM PDT

"Chairman Koen Becking has personally been in touch with scientists from Tilburg about giving up editing positions at Elsevier journals. According to Tineke Bennema, spokeswoman for Tilburg University, a number of them have agreed on doing this. Universities are using this tool to put pressure on publisher Elsevier, in the negotiations about new contracts for journal subscriptions. The universities want a Gold Open Access model, but so far Elsevier does not give in. In other cities, executive boards have also been in contact with their scientists. In Nijmegen, where Gerard Meijer is chairman, people were 'very willing' to think about giving up their post, according to Vox. Meijer is negotiator with Elsevier and represents all Dutch universities. In an interview with the university magazine in Nijmegen, he says: 'The current system is no good and now we have the chance to change it. We should seize that chance.' The publisher itself, Elsevier, has also sent an e-mail to Dutch scientists. It reads: 'The challenge is that, apart from the Netherlands and the UK, no other country aims for Gold Open Access. […] Therefore, while a transition to Open Access is desirable, it needs to be managed carefully and funded properly as it is not cost-free for the Netherlands.' This is also the opinion of Theo Beckers, emeritus professor at Tilburg University and, until recently, editor in chief of the Elsevier journal Environmental Development. He recently resigned to make way for a younger perspective ..."

Walt at Random » Blog Archive » Czechlists: A bit of humor and a non-update

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 12:57 AM PDT

"I'm making great headway in looking at "the other 4,100+"–journals in DOAJ as of May 2015 that aren't included in my interim full-2014 Gold OA report. (I'm almost halfway through, and now do anticipate finishing before mid-September; more on that later) ... If you're waiting for the August 2015 issue of Cites & Insights, you'll have a long wait–if there is a separate August issue at all, it will probably appear in late August; a combined August/September issue is more likely Meanwhile, I can suggest a couple of recent issues to keep you going…but first, a little background on first-month (or first 25-to-27-day) readership figures. Here's what I see for this year so far ..."

New Discussion Paper: “Democratising the Data Revolution” | Open Knowledge Blog

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 12:52 AM PDT

" ... What will the 'data revolution' do? What will it be about? What will it count? What kinds of risks and harms might it bring? Whom and what will it serve? And who will get to decide? Today we are launching a new discussion paper on 'Democratising the Data Revolution', which is intended to advance thinking and action around civil society engagement with the data revolution. It looks beyond the disclosure of existing information, towards more ambitious and substantive forms of democratic engagement with data infrastructures.1 It concludes with a series of questions about what practical steps institutions and civil society organisations might take to change what is measured and how, and how these measurements are put to work. You can download the full PDF report here, or continue to read on in this blog post ..."

Library support in the transition to open access: membership cancellations | Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir les savoirs communs

Posted: 10 Jul 2015 12:47 AM PDT

"The purpose of this post is to shed some light on a specific issue in the transition to open access that particularly affects small and low-cost publishers and to suggest one strategy to address this issue. In the words of one Resource Requirements interviewee: 'So the other set of members that we used to have about forty library members , but when we went to open access online, we lost the whole bunch of libraries. Yeah, so basically we sent everybody ,you know, a letter saying we are going to open access online, the annual membership is only $30, we hope you will continue to support us even though there are no longer print journals, and then a whole flu of cancellations came in from a whole bunch of libraries, which we had kind of thought might happen but given how cheap we are, I have to say I was really disappointed when it indeed did happen especially from whole bunch of [deleted] libraries [for which our journal is extremely relevant]. I was going, seriously $30?' Comments: for a university library, a society membership fee, when not required for journal subscriptions, may be difficult to justify from an accounting perspective. $30 is a small cost; however, for a university the administrative work of tracking such memberships and cutting a check every year likely exceeds the $30 cost. With 40 library members at a cost of $30, the total revenue for this journal from this source was $1,200. A university or university library could sponsor this amount at less than the cost of many an article processing charge. The university and library where the faculty member is located have a support program for open access journals; clearly the will, and some funding, is there. One of the challenges is transitioning subscription dollars to support for open access, as I address in my 2013 First Monday article. Following is one suggestion for libraries, or for faculty to suggest to their libraries: why not engage your faculty who are independent or society publishers to gain support for cancellations or tough negotiations and lower prices for the big deals of large, highly profitable commercial publishers that I argue are critical to redirect funding to our own publishing activities? Here is one scenario that may help to explain the potential ..."
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