Tuesday, July 21, 2015

OATP primary

OATP primary

Scholarly Communications and Digital Publishing Strategist

Posted: 21 Jul 2015 06:46 AM PDT

"The Scholarly Communications and Digital Publishing Strategist [at the University of Cincinnati] develops, coordinates, and oversees the growth of scholarly communications and publishing programs and services at UC, including: providing outreach, knowledge and support to faculty, students, and staff about copyright, licensing, and scholarly publishing, and about the dissemination and preservation of the scholarly, historical, and cultural record. The position will also participate in the development of university policies regarding access to scholarly work, including copyright and intellectual property issues, fair use, authors' rights, privacy rights, open access, and other information policy issues within the libraries and university. Additionally, the position will collaborate with the Office of General Counsel in order to make specific information available to foster creative solutions and to develop best practices...."

Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking Announce $100 Million Breakthrough Initiative to Dramatically Accelerate Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe

Posted: 21 Jul 2015 05:29 AM PDT

"Yuri Milner was joined at The Royal Society today by Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Frank Drake, Geoff Marcy, Pete Worden and Ann Druyan to announce the unprecedented $100 million global Breakthrough Initiatives to reinvigorate the search for life in the universe. The first of two initiatives announced today, Breakthrough Listen, will be the most powerful, comprehensive and intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. The second, Breakthrough Message, will fund an international competition to generate messages representing humanity and planet Earth, which might one day be sent to other civilizations....The program will generate vast amounts of data. All data will be open to the public. This will likely constitute the largest amount of scientific data ever made available to the public. The Breakthrough Listen team will use and develop the most powerful software for sifting and searching this flood of data. All software will be open source. Both the software and the hardware used in the Breakthrough Listen project will be compatible with other telescopes around the world, so that they could join the search for intelligent life. As well as using the Breakthrough Listen software, scientists and members of the public will be able to add to it, developing their own applications to analyze the data...."

IFLA response to the Financing for Development “Addis Ababa Action Agenda”

Posted: 21 Jul 2015 05:20 AM PDT

"Specifically, we commend the United Nations for recommending a platform that will provide open access to research: "The online platform will facilitate access to information, knowledge and experience, as well as best practices and lessons learned, on science, technology and innovation facilitation initiatives and policies. The online platform will also facilitate the dissemination of relevant open access scientific publications generated worldwide." ..."

Addis Ababa Action Agenda

Posted: 21 Jul 2015 05:19 AM PDT

The Third International Conference on Financing for Development just released the draft Addis Ababa Action Agenda. It endorses OA in two places: point 118 at p. 33, and point 123 (third sub-point) at p. 35. ​

To find life in the universe, a new initiative to help us hear the signals

Posted: 21 Jul 2015 12:10 AM PDT

"Are we alone in the universe? A new project called the Breakthrough Initiative may help scientists like Stephen Hawking get closer to the answer. Tech investor Yuri Milner pledged $100 million to help survey one million of the closest stars to Earth for signals from other forms of intelligent life. Gwen Ifill discusses the project with Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center ... GWEN IFILL: OK. One of the things that caught my attention is that the public can be involved in this search.  ANDREW SIEMION: That's absolutely right.  There's a broad open philosophy to this entire project. All of the data that we collect from these telescopes will be open. All of the software we use, all of the hardware we use, everything will be open source.  And a component of that is a pairing with the SETI@home project. This is a screen saver that some of your audience may have heard of that they can download on their computer and run it and they can actually analyze some of the data from these telescopes that we collect on their home computer and contribute to the search ..."

 

What is open science? on Opensource.com | Opensource.com

Posted: 21 Jul 2015 12:06 AM PDT

" ... Lately, however, we've been hearing more about ways the relationship between open source and science might in fact be reciprocal—how science might begin to look more like open source. Researchers and scientists around the world are calling for freely-licensed data sets; open-access publishing conditions; and collaborative, transparent peer review. They're seeking ways open source principles might enhance centuries-old practices of knowledge production in the digital age. It's becoming a movement: open science. And we're here to explain it. Be sure to read and share our newest resource guide—'What is Open Science?'—to learn more about the ways openness, transparency, rapid prototyping, and collaboration are impacting the ways science is both practiced and funded. We're launching it today. As always, we welcome your feedback ..."

Data in action: The role of data in humanitarian disasters | Devex

Posted: 21 Jul 2015 12:04 AM PDT

"For nongovernmental organizations responding to humanitarian disasters, big data and open data are more than just buzzwords — they are fast becoming a necessity in saving lives. In World Vision International's case, the availability to pull and share data helped save lives when Cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu in March this year. Working in the country since the early 1980s, World Vision has made data gathering a critical part of project planning and reporting. This includes gathering, collecting and creating demographic, infrastructure and environmental data. Data has been critical not only to analyze the impact of programs, but also to evaluate the resources that will be required following an emergency. Andrea Swinburne-Jones, communications manager at World Vision International, believed the availability and use of technology and data limited the number of deaths from Cyclone Pam to 11, despite it being one of the worst cyclones on record. The groundwork that went into ensuring communities, the government and NGOs were prepared limited deaths and shows a zero casualties aim is a realistic expectation. More data to help to plan, prepare and respond will assist in making this possible. Philippine-based news website Rappler, meanwhile, launched Project Agos in 2013. Project Agos is a platform combining information from the government with that from the community to aid in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. As part of the project, an alert mapping system has been developed to maximize the flow of critical data before, during and after a disaster. Rappler has wanted to launch the project since it was established in 2010. Now, Project Agos has been growing rapidly, and has been receiving funding and support from various sources, including the Australian government. What lessons can World Vision and Rappler share for civil society organizations that may want to get involved in the data revolution and leverage data as a disaster and emergency response tool? ..."

Advocacy, Analysis, and the Vital Importance of Discriminating Between Them | The Scholarly Kitchen

Posted: 21 Jul 2015 12:01 AM PDT

"Here's a proposition with which I suspect publishers, editors, authors, librarians, and readers would all agree: over the past couple of decades, the scholarly communication environment in which we all operate has become much more complex ... The increasing complexity of our environment and the heightened emotion around the issues we're dealing with suggest, I believe, the increasing importance of discriminating between analysis and advocacy. As issues become more complex, the more important it becomes to do (and listen to) careful analysis of those issues; at the same time, however, as issues become more emotionally or politically fraught, the louder will become the voices of advocacy on all sides. To be clear, the world needs both analysts and advocates; however, it's essential that we be able to discriminate between them. If we don't carefully do so, we run the risk of accepting propaganda as reportage or debatable interpretation as solid fact.  Virtually every segment of the scholarly communication community has advocates, and every segment of the community also produces analysis of various kinds. In the United States, publishers have advocacy groups like the Association of American Publishers (AAP); scholarly authors have the American Association of University Professors (AAUP); libraries have the American Library Association (ALA). Analysts and analysis organizations include the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), Outsell, Inc., and a variety of individuals who provide research, data, and consultation to all segments of the community. Some organizations have one department or subunit that acts in an advocacy role and another that does analysis — consider, for example, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), which hosts both a Statistics & Assessment office dedicated to the gathering and analysis of quantitative data from member libraries, and an advocacy organization (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or SPARC), which lobbies Congress as well as encouraging funding agencies and the higher education community towards policy reform.  Furthermore, the dividing line between analysis and advocacy can sometimes be tough to identify, especially when a particular analyst has a hidden agenda ..."

Emerald | Open Access for authors

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:52 PM PDT

"Emerald works closely with the communities it serves to balance the requirements and rights of authors with the sustainability and development of titles. Our objective is to ensure the widest possible dissemination of research and future innovation in scholarly communication. We seek to respond specifically to the needs of researchers in the disciplines we serve and continue to review our policies on a regular basis. Key Principles of Emerald's Open Access Policy: Emerald is fully RoMEO Green across all its journal titles Emerald supports an author's right to voluntarily self-archive their works without payment or embargo If you have funds for an Article Processing Charge (APC), Emerald can publish your article via the Gold Open Access route under a Creative Commons (CC BY) Licence for an APC of £995 or £1,650, (plus VAT added as applicable under UK VAT rules) depending on the journal If you are mandated to make your work Open Access but have no funds for an APC, you may deposit your work 24 months after official publication, or contact permissions@emeraldinsight.com for consideration for an embargo exception ..."

CALL FOR PAPERS IS OPEN! | JNRD INFO | LinkedIn

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:50 PM PDT

" ... Issues to be included are of local, regional or global scale, referring to any world region. They should always be of interdisciplinary nature linking environmental and societal issues! Main objective of JNRD is to contribute to achieve the Millennium Development Goals!. Its scope opens to subjects like: .- Integrated water resources management. .- Land use dynamics and biodiversity. .- Energy efficiency and renewable resources. .- Regional management and sustainable livelihoods of the poor ..."

Thoughts on Ron Vale’s ‘Accelerating Scientific Publication in Biology’

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:48 PM PDT

"Ron Vale has posted a really interesting piece on BioRxiv arguing for changes in scientific publishing. The piece is part data analysis, examining differences in publishing in several journals and among UCSF graduate students from 1980 to today, and part perspective, calling for the adoption of a culture of 'pre-prints' in biology, and the expanded use of short-format research articles ... Vale has put his finger on an important problem. The process of publication has far too great an influence on the way we do science, let alone communicate it. And it would be great if we all used preprint servers and strived to publish work faster and in a less mature form than we currently do. I am very, very supportive of Vale's quest (indeed it has been mine for the past twenty years) – if it is successful, the benefits to science and society would be immense.  However, in the spirit of the free and open discussion of ideas that Vale hopes to rekindle, I should say that I didn't completely buy the specific arguments and conclusions of this paper.  My first issue is that the essay misdiagnoses the problem. Yes, it is bad that we require too much data in papers, and that this slows down the communication of science and the progress of people's careers. But this is a symptom of something more fundamental – the wildly disproportionate value we place on the title of the journal in which papers are published rather than on the quality of the data or its ultimate impact.  If you fixed this deeper problem by eliminating journals entirely and moving to a system of post-publication review, it would remove the perverse incentives that produce the effects Vale describes ..."

 

Accelerating Scientific Publication in Biology | bioRxiv

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:44 PM PDT

[Abstract] Scientific publications enable results and ideas to be transmitted throughout the scientific community. The number and type of journal publications also have become the primary criteria used in evaluating career advancement. Our analysis suggests that publication practices have changed considerably in the life sciences over the past thirty years. Considerably more experimental data is now required for publication, and the average time required for graduate students to publish their first paper has increased and is approaching the desirable duration of Ph.D. training. Since publication is generally a requirement for career progression, schemes to reduce the time of graduate student and postdoctoral training may be difficult to implement without also considering new mechanisms for accelerating communication of their work. The increasing time to publication also delays potential catalytic effects that ensue when many scientists have access to new information. The time has come for the life scientists, funding agencies, and publishers to discuss how to communicate new findings in a way that best serves the interests of the public and scientific community.

Pre-prints: just do it? | Reciprocal Space

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:40 PM PDT

"There is momentum building behind the adoption of pre-print servers in the life sciences. Ron Vale, a professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at UCSF and Lasker Award winner, has just added a further powerful impulse to this movement in the form, appropriately, of a pre-print posted to the BioarXiv just a few days ago. If you are a researcher and haven't yet thought seriously about pre-prints, please read Vale's article. It is thoughtful and accessible (and there is a funny section in which he imagines the response of modern-day reviewers to Watson and Crick's 1953 paper on the structure of DNA). His reasoning is built on the concern that there has been a perceptible increase over the last thirty years in the amount of experimental data – and therefore work – required for PhD students to get their first major publication. Vale argues that this is a result of the increased competition within the life sciences, which is focused on restricted access to 'top journals' and is in turn due to the powerful hold that journal impact factors now have over people's careers. Regulars readers will know that the problems with impact factors are a familiar topic on this blog (and may even be aware that their mis-use was one of the issues highlighted in The Metric Tide, the report of the HEFCE review of the use of metrics in research assessment that was published last week). Michael Eisen has written a sympathetic critique of Vale's paper. He takes some issue with the particulars of the arguments about increased data requirements but nevertheless espouses strong support for the drive – which he has long pursued himself – for more rapid forms of publication. I won't bother to rehearse Eisen's critique since I think it is the bigger picture that warrants most attention. This bigger picture – the harmful effect of the chase after impact factors on the vitality and efficiency of scientific community – emerged as a central theme at the Royal Society meeting convened earlier this year to discuss the Future of Scholarly Scientific Communication. At that gathering I detected a palpable sense among attendees that the wider adoption of pre-print servers would be an effective and feasible way to improve the dissemination of research results; (for more background, see proposal 3 towards the bottom of my digest of the meeting) ..."

UK University Journal Costs

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:37 PM PDT

Use the link to access the infographic.

Springer partners with the Fields Institute to publish two open access journals

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:35 PM PDT

"SpringerOpen is now co-publishing two journals from the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences: Mathematics-in-Industry Case Studies and Fields Mathematics Education Journal. Both open access journals' article-processing charges are covered by the Fields Institute, thereby removing all barriers to reading and publication. The Fields Institute is an international center for research and training in all areas of the mathematical sciences and their applications. It is located on the University of Toronto campus. Until this year both journals were published by the Fields Institute and articles were hosted on their website. It was decided that the journals would be published by SpringerOpen to increase their visibility and potential audience ..."

Universities lose access to digital journals - University World News

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:34 PM PDT

"The latest victims of Greece's crisis have been students and academics who have lost access to electronic journals, a vital source to continue their research and studies, due to non-payment, writes Anastasios Papapostolou for the Greek Reporter. The Hellenic Academic Libraries Link, or HEAL-Link, the internet portal that provides scientists in many Greek universities and research institutes with access to electronic journals, did not pay the subscription to its 27 publishers that provide those texts ..."

Draw Science: Open Access, Infographic Journal

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:32 PM PDT

"We live in an era where the public needs to know about science. Research is no longer funded by the private monies of rich aristocrats; grants for science come from the pockets of the layperson via charitable organizations and taxpayer money. Public opinion of science determines where this money goes through policy and funding. A clear example of this today is the relationship between public opinion and funding for climate change research. Yet, as a recent study by the Pew Institute shows, there is a significant disparity between public opinion and that of scientists in virtually every field. Over the course of a series of conversations with leading science communicators, one observation was repeatedly mentioned: 'the future of science communication is in graphics.' Traditional publishing is (a) repetitive, requiring each paper to repeat the state of a field in a long-winded 'Introduction' section, (b) inaccessible, both in the sense of open vs. closed access and in light of the rampant use of jargon and (c) frankly, boring, as most large blocks of text seem to be. Draw Science is an auxiliary path to traditional publishing where scientists can communicate their work in a graphical format–with a DOI and archival!"

About us - Authors - APCs | Cogent OA

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:28 PM PDT

" ... What are Freedom APCs? Cogent OA is proud to be the first multi-disciplinary publisher to introduce Freedom APCs. Cogent OA operates a 'pay what you want' model across all its journals, enabling authors to choose exactly how much they contribute towards open access publishing based on their specific funding and financial circumstances. The Freedom APC model enables all researchers to access the highest quality, peer-reviewed publishing. The Freedom APC model will contribute to a major research project into open access across different research fields, including the average APCs chosen by the diverse subject communities we serve. To register to receive a copy of our research report when it is published, please e-mail freedomapc@CogentOA.com ..."

Tell us about your paper – and make it short and tweet | Times Higher Education

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:25 PM PDT

"Researchers submitting articles with an abstract to a medical journal will now have to provide a tweetable version. A 110-character summary is now compulsory for academics seeking to be published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology ..."

BERLIN12

Posted: 20 Jul 2015 11:22 PM PDT

"The 12th conference in the Berlin Open Access series (Berlin, 8-9 December, 2015) will be an invitation-only workshop for high-level representatives of the world's most eminent research organizations. Some 100 delegates will convene in Berlin to discuss how the goal of Open Access can be realized more rapidly. The central theme will be the transformation of subscription journals to Open Access, as outlined in a recent white paper by the Max Planck Digital Library (http://dx.doi.org/10.17617/1.3). On the first day, there will be a review of the level of consensus about the extent to which this transformation is our shared goal; the second day will concentrate on how this goal can actually be achieved in the coming years. Delegates should be prepared to engage actively in these discussions by articulating the views of their constituencies."
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