Sunday, July 12, 2015

OATP primary

OATP primary

USAID steps forward on aid transparency | Brookings Institution

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 01:15 AM PDT

"With considerable discussion and side events expected next week at the Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the importance of transparency and open data, it is worth noting recent improvement within our own government that strengthens our voice on data transparency.  USAID, the principal U.S. development agency, while more accustomed to using data than most U.S. foreign affairs agencies, has been unexpectedly slow on the uptake on data transparency. But uptake has now occurred.  In June, the acting administrator of USAID, Ambassador Alfonso Lenhardt, approved the first three phases of a four phase plan to improve USAID's commitment to publishing data to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), and the plan was made public—score two goals for transparency!  Further evidence of USAID taking aid transparency seriously is an excellent blog by senior AID officials Alex Their (assistant to the administrator for policy, program, and learning) and Angelique Crumbly (assistant administrator for management), highlighting the value of transparency and USAID's commitment to being a leader on aid transparency.  The small team that produced the plan over a number of months is to be commended for developing a detailed, realistic plan that will significantly advance USAID's compliance withthe open data standards of IATI ..."

The secretive world of biomedical research - Research Information

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 01:11 AM PDT

I was, for many years, a typical publisher of scientific books and journals, but when the web arrived in the 1990s, I had a partial conversion and helped to create an online community for scientists (BioMedNet) and an associated web magazine (HMS Beagle). Soon afterwards, I realised that it was both possible and important to provide open, public access to research articles that were normally locked away behind subscription barriers. I launched the first open access publisher, BioMed Central, and was part of a small group of key individuals involved in launching the first open access repository, PubMed Central in 2000. I was the only publisher in that group; the others were scientists.   I continue to be a passionate advocate of open, online public access to scientific research and have since launched F1000 – an online community of more than 10,000 biomedical experts who help scientists to discover, write and publish research. We are working hard to try to tackle what we regard as 'the deadly sins' of science publishing, particularly problems around secrecy and delay. For example, I find it incredible that researchers who wish to publish findings in the fields of biology and medicine are accustomed to delays that regularly run anywhere from six months to one year before their results become public in scientific journals. Who benefits from this delay? Why is no one complaining? ... The editors who exert control over the publication process decide what and when to publish (or perhaps more often, what not to publish), but may not always be experts in the specific topic of the individual paper to really make this decision. They rely on the undisclosed advice of secretly appointed referees, who may do their work poorly (nobody but the editor will know), and may have obvious conflicts of interest (for example, they might be a direct competitor).

About two years ago, we started publishing research articles in a completely new way via an F1000 service called F1000Research – an author-led publishing platform for biological and medical research that makes no editorial decisions, performs no secret refereeing, and removes the delay in publishing. F1000Research is an open science publishing platform that uses a process of immediate publication (after an internal 'hygiene' check) followed by transparent peer review by invited experts, post-publication. All research articles are required to include the underlying source data, and all article types are encouraged, not only large research articles and reviews, but also short articles, negative findings, software articles, case histories, and many other valuable forms of research reporting currently shunned by many journals ..."

A Library Writer's Blog: CFP: Speak Up!--Communication between Academic Librarians and Scholarly Publishers (Against the Grain)

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 01:07 AM PDT

"Call for Papers:  Speak Up!--Communication between Academic Librarians and Scholarly Publishers I invite you to submit brief abstracts (1-2 paragraphs) prior to September 4th, 2015 for the December/January 2015/2016 issue of Against the Grain (http://www.against-the-grain.com/) We are interested in a variety of perspectives and combinations of perspectives.  Distributors, publishers, vendors, consultants, library patrons, and library workers are encouraged to send your ideas to egallagher@rollins.edu ..."

Webinar: Open Access, which direction?

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 12:58 AM PDT

"Fast and furious: That describes the change underway in scholarly publishing. Keeping up with the pace – and preparing for what lies around the corner – are critical. On Tuesday, July 28, at 11:00 EDT / 15:00 GMT, Copyright Clearance Center invites you to join industry analysts Mark Ware in London and Deni Auclair in Boston for a complimentary webinar covering the latest in Open Access news and market trends. Open Access isn't new, but it is riding the next wave. As Ware documented for RCUK in May, the momentum for openness is strong, yet challenges remain. In her April Outsell report, Auclair noted that the direction toward OA may be clear, while the path ahead is far from straight. Information is precious in this dynamic publishing environment. Learn the facts from the experts."

Real-time Stream of DOIs being cited in Wikipedia | CrossTech

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 12:57 AM PDT

"For years we've known that the Wikipedia was a major referrer of CrossRef DOIs and about a year ago we confirmed that, in fact, the Wikipedia is the 8th largest refer of CrossRef DOIs. We know that people follow the DOIs, too. This despite a fraction of Wikipedia citations to the scholarly literature even using DOIs. So back in August we decided to create a Wikimedia Ambassador programme. The goal of the programme was to promote the use of persistent identifiers in citation and attribution in Wikipedia articles. We would do this through outreach and through the development of better citation-related tools. Remember when we originally wrote about our experiments with the PLOS ALM code and how that has transitioned into the DOI Event Tracking Pilot? In those posts we mentioned that one of the hurdles in gathering information about DOI events is the actual process of polling third party APIs for activity related to millions of DOIs. Most parties simply wouldn't be willing handle the load of a 100K API calls an hour. Besides, polling is a tremendously inefficient process, only a fraction of DOIs are ever going to generate events, but we'd have to poll for each of them, repeatedly, forever, to get an accurate picture of DOI activity. We needed a better way. We needed to see if we could reverse this process and convince some parties to instead 'push' us information whenever they saw DOI related events (e.g. citations, downloads, shares, etc). If only we could convince somebody to try this…"

Faculty of Language: Open source journals?

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 12:49 AM PDT

"Adam Liter send me this interesting piece on the Dutch university boycott of Elsevier publications. The complaint is one we are all familiar with: too expensive. It seems that academic publishers make lots of money on journals. Moreover, they do this on the back of lots of free labor. Reviewers are free, editor salaries are paltry, and buyers have little bargaining power. Not surprisingly this leads to large returns.  With the internet, the thought that there must be a better way always comes bubbling to mind.  So is there? The obvious reply is that open source journals should be able to step into this breach and provide the same product at a better price. However, these journals have not taken over. Why not? Well, one reasons is that even such journals need cash and if it is not to be extracts from university libraries then it will come from this who want to publish. Some of this can be offset with grants. But this then means that scholars without such money will have to pony up (and the costs discussed can be large, running into 4 figures).  So, what to do? I really don't know, but I think that this is an important question, especially for linguists ..."

New Webinar@AIMS:Disseminating African Food and Nutritional Information through Open Access Publishing | Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS)

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 12:47 AM PDT

[Abstract] African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development (AJFAND) is an Open Access, scientific, peer reviewed, scholarly journal with a global reach, published in Kenya since 2001.AJFAND was founded in 2001 by Hon. Prof. Ruth Oniang'o who is the Editor-in-Chief, to provide an avenue for publishing scholarly works by African scholars and others who share an interest in topics related to food and nutrition security, agriculture and development; and also to give visibility to budding academics in Africa. AJFAND has been published by African Science Communications Trust (ASSCAT) since the year 2009. The goal of AJFAND is to provide a platform through which food and nutrition issues and information concerning Africa, and its unique problems can be effectively disseminated and addressed. The journal also provides an avenue for sharing information on national, regional and international-level food and nutrition programs. AJFAND is accessible online and fully Open Access. AJFAND is archived by CABI (London), disseminated by EBSCO Publishing (select articles), indexed by DOAJ and CAS and co-hosted by AJOL. Journal articles are also accessible though the African Union Library intranet, University of Botswana Library intranet, University of Zimbabwe Library intranet and Cornell University Robert R. Mann Library through TEEAL. The journal is quality assured by The University of Toronto through Bioline International since 2006.

NERC - NERC celebrates prestigious international appointments

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 12:44 AM PDT

"We are pleased to announce that two members of the NERC team have been appointed to high-profile positions with international science organisations. Mark Thorley, head of science information at NERC, will join the International Council for Science's Committee on Freedom & Responsibility in the Conduct of Science. He will use his expertise in open access publishing and in managing scientific information to support the committee's objectives, one of which is to promote scientists' freedom of access to data, information and research materials. The appointment underscores the strength of NERC's commitment to open access to our research outputs, including making data available as openly and widely as possible. This allows the huge amounts of information our researchers produce to be shared across the scientific community, and to be put to use to create wider social and economic benefits. NERC is investing heavily in projects that aim to apply the power of new methods of dealing with 'big data' to environmental research. We are delighted that Mark will be able to showcase NERC's work in this area as well as share his considerable experience and skills on this important committee. Meanwhile Dr Bill Eason, NERC's head of technologies and infrastructure, has been appointed deputy chair of the Environment Strategy Working Group of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). He is currently acting chair for the working group as it assesses proposals for major European projects to provide new infrastructure for environmental science. ESFRI is updating its Roadmap of Research Infrastructure, and the successful proposals will be included in the new roadmap when it is published in 2016. ESFRI's mission is to help direct the strategic development of new scientific facilities and infrastructure across Europe to ensure EU nations get the greatest possible benefit from investment in this area. We know that Bill will make a huge contribution to this group, bringing significant insight and talent to the role.  We congratulate both Mark and Bill on their appointments ..."

Academics, publishers find new communities on Reddit | InsideHigherEd

Posted: 12 Jul 2015 12:41 AM PDT

"For some academics, the social network Reddit is becoming less of a guilty pleasure and more of a credible platform to discuss academic interests with people whom they otherwise would not have had a chance to debate. Because of Reddit's decentralized structure, any user is free to create a community, or subreddit, around any topic. That structure has spawned everything from forums organized around broad subject areas such as politics, technology and video games to catalogs of bizarre memes and safe havens for racism and misogyny. But more tightly moderated communities have also sprung up, including subreddits where anyone can post questions and receive answers from people with relevant educational or professional backgrounds. Geoff Keelan, a postdoctoral fellow at University of Western Ontario, posts on Reddit under the username CanadianHistorian. He is particularly active in AskHistorians, a subreddit that has its own list of verified contributors. Keelan, for example, earned his Ph.D. this spring at the University of Waterloo, and the AskHistorians subreddit identifies him as an expert in -- as his username would suggest -- Canadian history. For Keelan, Reddit is one part of a broader social media strategy. At conferences, he said, he prefers to follow discussions on Twitter. He uses Academia.edu, the Facebook-like social network for academics, to connect with other scholars. Reddit, he said, enables him to discuss history with people outside of academe ..."
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