Saturday, October 10, 2015

OATP primary

OATP primary

Open Access Without Tears (with tweets) · bfister · Storify

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 01:15 AM PDT

Use the link to access the discussion thread.

Affordable College Textbook Act Reintroduced in Congress | SPARC

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 01:15 AM PDT

"SPARC is excited to share that today the Affordable College Textbook Act was introduced in both chambers of the U.S. Congress. The bill aims to reduce the cost of textbooks by expanding the use of open educational resources on college and university campuses. It was introduced by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Al Franken (D-MN) and Angus King (I-ME) and Representatives Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX) and Jared Polis (D-CO) ..."

Figshare Raises Bar in Data Management for Researchers | Benzinga

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 01:14 AM PDT

"Figshare, an online digital repository for academic researchers, today announced the next generation of its data management platform targeted at academic researchers – ranging from individuals to teams in all-sized organisations – as well as funders and publishers. Figshare is introducing significant new capabilities designed to meet the challenges in collecting and sharing data ..."

Dems push bill to lower cost of college textbooks | TheHill

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 01:12 AM PDT

"Congressional Democrats are leading an effort to make college textbooks more affordable. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Angus King (I-Maine) introduced legislation Thursday that would create a competitive grant program to support open textbook pilot programs at colleges and universities. The programs would allow professors, students, researchers and others to freely access materials that are available under an open license. A companion bill was was also offered in the House on Thursday by Reps. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) ..."

FNIH expands diabetes research knowledge portal for open-access to public, scientists

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 01:07 AM PDT

"Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH) have expanded a recently launched online library, called a knowledge portal, which allows open-access searching of human genetic and clinical information on type 2 diabetes. Individual data will remain confidential. The portal External Web Site Policy includes information from several major international networks, collected from decades of research. A product of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) for type 2 diabetes, the portal is aimed at advancing type 2 diabetes research and treatment, and will include data from over 100,000 genetic samples obtained from clinical consortia supported by the NIH and FNIH. AMP is an innovative project of government, industry and nonprofit organizations working together to speed research in type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus ... The knowledge portal makes genetic and clinical information searchable in myriad ways, while keeping individual data confidential, to help researchers identify and describe the effects of genes on disease. Searches can include genes, gene variants and genetic regions, and can be cross-referenced with associations between glucose and insulin measurements and other criteria. The data can be sorted to include relevant genetic studies and the kind of data collected, and allows researchers to test biological hypotheses, and conduct many other analyses.  The portal is publicly searchable and can be used as a tool to learn about genetics and health. However, only approved researchers will be able to access detailed data, while the general public can access aggregate results. Creators of the research engine are eager to expand the network to include more national and international research networks. The international source samples of genetic and clinical data will be housed in their home networks to ensure use of each sample complies with each country's health information confidentiality rules ..."

Meeting Federal Research Requirements for Data Management Plans, Public Access, and Preservation | Microsoft Office Tutorials

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 01:05 AM PDT

"With the deadlines for achieving public access to scientific research data in digital formats approaching (October 2015 and January 2016), this webinar recording provides practical advice and resources for writing data management plans as well as tips for evaluating in-house or external public access data sharing services that meet federal research requirements ..."

Box is planning to open EU data centres after a major European court ruling on sharing data | Business Insider India

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 01:02 AM PDT

"Silicon Valley cloud computing behemoth Box is planning to open data centres in Europe following a court ruling that could have a major impact on American technology companies, according to The Telegraph. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected the 'Safe Harbour' agreement this week, which let American companies use a single standard for consumer privacy and data storage in both the US and Europe. Box, as well as companies like Facebook and Twitter, may now face scrutiny from individual European countries' data regulators - and could be forced to host European user data in Europe, rather than hosting it in the US and transferring it over. Box, a billion dollar enterprise software and collaboration firm, is one of the first American tech companies to say it will open data centres in Europe after the ECJ ruling was passed ..."

Recreating Ord Survey Explorer Maps w/ Open Data - xyHt

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:57 AM PDT

"The holy grail for many (UK) map users is the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 scale "Explorer" map. Not only are they easy to read due to the fantastic cartography used, but they also have information which is hard to source such as public rights of way, National Trust & Woodland Trust sites, even wind farms. To the casual rambler the map provides everything they need. To a business user, the map provides enough detail to undertake high-level scoping exercises and basic site analysis. It really is a great product; unfortunately, it is only available as a raster dataset at a cost. Around 10km² is currently around £50 at best.  So what if there were a way of recreating the Explorer map for free?With the recent release of the OS OpenMap (free) product it has become possible to get pretty close using data available in the public domain. Here is a map I created for a British Cartographic Society competition ..."

- See more at: http://www.xyht.com/spatial-itgis/recreating-ordnance-survey-explorer-maps-open-data/#sthash.9I1TWUi2.dpuf

figshare: Publishing Linked Open Data about University Scientific Outputs using the VIVO Ontology

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:52 AM PDT

"Initiatives promoting that institutions open their data are starting to have impact and slowly but consistently, as reported for instance by the World Wide Web Foundation in its Open Data Barometer . This is also reaching universities, especially public universities, which under budgetary constraints must transparently show where resources are spent and what results are being obtained.  In many cases, as in the one reported here, all the data is already available but scattered across different information systems and databases controlled by different institution units and using different vocabularies and custom terms. Therefore, the first step in order to provide an integrated view of all this data is to define a reference vocabulary.  Universitat de Lleida, a Spanish university, is currently undergoing this Linked Open Data publishing process of all its the research outputs. This includes papers, research projects, patents, grants, PhD thesis, etc. Given the broad range of entities under consideration, many of the evaluated reference vocabularies failed short in their coverage and required the combination of many different vocabularies, with the consequent integration burdens at the conceptual level ..."

Wikileaks release of TPP deal text stokes 'freedom of expression' fears | Business | The Guardian

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:50 AM PDT

"Wikileaks has released what it claims is the full intellectual property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the controversial agreement between 12 countries that was signed off on Monday. TPP was negotiated in secret and details have yet to be published. But critics including Democrat presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, unions and privacy activists have lined up to attack what they have seen of it. Wikileaks' latest disclosures are unlikely to reassure them. One chapter appears to give the signatory countries (referred to as 'parties') greater power to stop embarrassing information going public. The treaty would give signatories the ability to curtail legal proceedings if the theft of information is 'detrimental to a party's economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security' – in other words, presumably, if a trial would cause the information to spread. A drafter's note says that every participating country's individual laws about whistleblowing would still apply ..."

The upsurge in black market publishing

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:43 AM PDT

"Posted on the USA Africa Dialogue blog is the report of an international survey which documented the sharp rise, in recent years, of predatory, open access, scholarly publishing. The publication, which originated from research conducted by the Henken School of Economics in Finland, narrates a frightening upsurge in predatory publishing, illustrated by its growth from 53,000 articles in 2010 to almost half a million last year. More disturbing is the fact that Nigeria has the highest ratio of research published in these journals relative to those published in regular international journals. On this latter ranking, Nigeria's ratio is 1,580 per cent that of India, which comes second, in 277 per cent, Iran, 70 per cent, and the United States, seven per cent. What this implies is that the output of our academics is increasingly expressed through the vehicle of what, for want of a better word, can be described as black market, international journals. Black market, in the sense that a majority of them, bypass established quality control standards, such as peer review, charge processing fees that reportedly range between hundreds to thousands of dollars per article, aggressively solicit for prospective contributors, sometimes through unorthodox practices. Initially created to bridge the digital and information divide between resource-rich countries and developing ones, open access publishing is slowly wearing an ugly and reprobate face, in view of the steep rise in dubious transactions ..."

The Final Leaked TPP Text is All That We Feared | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:41 AM PDT

"Today's release by Wikileaks of what is believed to be the current and essentially final version of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn't survive to the end of the negotiations. Since we now have the agreed text, we'll be including some paragraph references that you can cross-reference for yourself—but be aware that some of them contain placeholders like 'x' that may change in the cleaned-up text. Also, our analysis here is limited to the copyright and Internet-related provisions of the chapter, but analyses of the impacts of other parts of the chapter have been published by Wikileaks and others ..."

Alberta OER funding for the Open Logic Project | Open Logic Project

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:38 AM PDT

"This spring, the Ministry of Advanced Education of Alberta launched a $2m pilot project to encourage Alberta universities to develop, adapt, and use more open educational resources (OER). Of 15 funded projects, the Open Logic Project is one. AlbertaOER is running stories on their projects on their website, and one on the OLP is up already. Here it is in its entirety (Creative Commons licensing lets us do that!) ..."

Honoring the 2015 Nobel laureates with free access to selections of their research

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:36 AM PDT

"Alfred Nobel's last will has been executed since 1901 to honor scientists from all around the world for their successful research and exceptional achievements. In recent years, all the science laureates have published their work in Elsevier's journals and books, or served as editors, editorial board members or reviewers. We congratulate them on this well-deserved honor and thank them for all they have contributed to our books and journals. To further illuminate their discoveries, we are making a collection of their work published with Elsevier freely available ..."

Next-Generation of Figshare Has Arrived! - Digital Science

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:34 AM PDT

"Today, Figshare announces the next generation of its data management platform targeted at academic researchers – ranging from individuals to teams in all-sized organizations – as well as funders and publishers. Figshare is introducing significant new capabilities designed to meet the challenges in collecting and sharing data ..."

'A taste for openness and change' - Interview - Research Information

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:33 AM PDT

"Daniel Hook founded Symplectic in 2003, alongside three fellow PhD students. Several years later the company was noticed by Nature Publishing Group, which was in the early stages of planning Digital Science. That lead to an investment in Symplectic and the start of Hook's relationship with Digital Science, where he is now managing director ..."

Authors Alliance Urges Reconsideration of Extended Collective Licensing | Authors Alliance

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:31 AM PDT

"Today Authors Alliance submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office in response to a proposal in the June 2015 Report on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization to establish a pilot program for Extended Collective Licensing (ECL) for mass digitization projects. We believe that mass digitization plays a crucial role in disseminating knowledge for the public good, and welcome the attempt to simplify the copyright and permissions complexities that can impede digitization efforts. However, we are concerned that the ECL proposal does not adequately address the interests of authors who write to be read. Nor does it consider the complexity and feasibility of managing permissions and licenses across multiple groups of potential rightsholders. These latter issues in particular have also been addressed by Authors Alliance co-founder Pamela Samuelson in her own comments to the Copyright Office, which detail specific reservations about the scope, creation, and implementation of the ECL pilot project. We suggest that the Copyright Office's proposal, while well intentioned, is not the solution we need to realize the potential of mass digitization, and urge the Office to reconsider implementing its proposed pilot program."

Scholastica Blog — Announcing Scholastica ArXiv Integration

Posted: 10 Oct 2015 12:30 AM PDT

"We're excited to announce that Scholastica has integrated with electronic pre-print repository arXiv. Now journals in fields supported by arXiv, including mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, and statistics, can choose to allow authors to import their submissions via arXiv links. Among the first journals using this new feature will be Discrete Analysis, a new mathematics journal launched by British mathematician and Royal Society Research Professor Sir Timothy Gowers and his team of esteemed colleagues. We hope the arXiv integration will improve the peer review workflow of journals using technology to embrace new open access (OA) publishing opportunities like Discrete Analysis, which will operate under a 'diamond OA' model. The journal will be able to remain free to authors and editors as a result of the costs it will save by hosting all of its papers on arXiv, rather than having to fund traditional 'publisher services' such as compiling print or digital issues. With the new arXiv integration feature, journals publishing under this or a similar model will be able to eliminate redundancies in the submission process for authors ..."
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