2015-New service to support open access in the post-2014 REF - HEFCE

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• Department of Entomology: MSU ENTOMOLOGIST TEACHES COMPUTATIONAL SKILLS FOR OPEN SCIENCE
• Who's afraid of open access? A growing movement, timely and necessary
• Open Access Dissertation - ProQuest
• Surprising Commons by Carol M. Rose :: SSRN
• An experiment in post-proposal peer review - physicsfocus.org
• Transparency in libraries - Crowdfunding on wemakeit
• Misrepresenting science is almost as bad as fraud: Randy Schekman - Livemint
• U of Illinois professor embraces open-source textbooks | FOX2now.com
• New policy recommendations on open access to research data | Digital Curation Centre
• Book Piracy as Peer Preservation : Computational Culture
• Eurodoc Statement on Open Access to Publications
• CDC: OPEN ACCESS
• Springer, Nature deal sign of times | The Australian
• Nature publisher merges with Springer to form a joint venture | Editage Insights
• Knowledge Unlatched:A Global Library Consortium Model for Funding Open Access Scholarly Books | Montgomery | Cultural Science
• Full Report on the KU Proof-of-Concept Pilot now available
• 2015-New service to support open access in the post-2014 REF - HEFCE

Department of Entomology: MSU ENTOMOLOGIST TEACHES COMPUTATIONAL SKILLS FOR OPEN SCIENCE Posted: 20 Jan 2015 03:23 AM PST "MSU Department of Entomology Research Associate Christie Bahlai taught a two-day workshop in data management and analysis to support open science at the University of Michigan, Jan. 5-6, 2015. The workshop, organized by Software-Carpentry.org, was targeted at Women in Science and Engineering. Says Bahlai 'Science is increasingly collaborative and the data we generate are getting larger and more complex. It's critical that young scientists develop the skills to rapidly share their data and analysis with others, allowing science to advance more efficiently.' Bahlai is a researcher with the Long Term Ecological Research project funded by the National Science Foundation at MSU's Kellogg Biological Station (KBS-LTER). She studies how communities of insects interact with the environment and each other over long periods of time. At the workshop, Bahlai taught groups of novice and intermediate learners how to write scripts and document their analysis using the statistical language R. 'When you're working in a national-scale collaborative experimental network like the LTER, it's important to be efficient and to be able to document everything you've done, because your work is all part of a larger experiment. Writing readable, reproducible analysis code makes you a better collaborator.' Demand for this training is high: within eight hours of its initial advertisement, all 70 spaces at the U of M WiSE workshop had been taken, and a waitlist formed ..."

Who's afraid of open access? A growing movement, timely and necessary Posted: 20 Jan 2015 03:21 AM PST Use the link to access the full text article from the journal Gaceta Sanitaria.

Open Access Dissertation - ProQuest Posted: 20 Jan 2015 03:18 AM PST "This quantitative study investigated the interrelationships among faculty researchers, publishers, librarians, and academic administrators when dealing with the open access of scholarly research. This study sought to identify the nature of any relationship between the perceived attitudes and actions of academic administrators and an institution's commitment to open access as reported by library directors. A survey research design was used to collect data based on perceptions of library directors at four year colleges and universities in the United States. Results of this study show that as academic administrator attention to open access increases so do the open access activities of faculty and librarians. Information presented may benefit members in each stakeholder group by allowing them to better position their organizations for future success in a complex environment. This study may also benefit advocates of open access who wish to expand services and other initiatives that encourage the greater accessibility of scholarly work."

Surprising Commons by Carol M. Rose :: SSRN Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:49 AM PST Use the link to access the full text article from SSRN.  "'Tragedies of the commons' due to overuse and underinvestment have long been known to affect open access resources. Yet decimation of open access commons often catches everyone by surprise. Why the surprise? Among other reasons, overuse may occur in very small increments, or may be an accidental byproduct of seemingly unrelated technology; more generally, a resource's common status undermines investment in learning about it. Open access to intellectual achievements does not destroy physical resources, but may undermine creative effort — but, in a happy surprise, may instead enhance creativity. An interesting surprise is that the drive to privatize creative achievements has generated a counter-movement to defend open access to these achievements. Scholars following Elinor Ostrom study common resources that are not left in open access but rather limited and managed; here surprises also show a mixture of attractive and unattractive features both in physical and intellectual domains, but they also generate lessons for such modern day developments as crowdsourcing and citizen science ..."

An experiment in post-proposal peer review - physicsfocus.org Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:47 AM PST "I'm a huge fan of post-publication peer review (PPPR). It's the future of scientific publishing and it'll be de rigeur – rather than a novelty – for the next generation of scientists. Because if that doesn't happen, science and society are going to continue to suffer from gaping holes in the quality-control mechanism that is traditional peer review. I'm about to describe an experiment which takes the online/public peer review process back a couple of steps from the point of publication. But before I do that, it might help if I explain just why I'm such an enthusiastic advocate of PPPR. Over the past couple of years, and along with colleagues at Nottingham, NIST, and Liverpool, I've been embroiled in a rather heated debate about the validity of a substantial body of research focused on the structure of coated (aka 'stripy') nanoparticles. I blogged about this for physicsfocus around about this time last year, and was delighted when our paper critiquing the nanoparticle research in question was finally published in PLOS ONE a couple of months ago. Long before the paper appeared in PLOS ONE, however, we had made it available (via the arXiv) at the PubPeer PPPR site, for what is perhaps best described as pre-publication peer review. This led to a large volume of very helpful comments (and, it must be admitted, the occasional less-than-helpful post) from our peers. The PubPeer contributions of one of those peers, Brian Pauw, were so insightful and important that he ended up being added as a co-author to the paper. In addition to highlighting the benefits of open and public next-generation peer review, the striped nanoparticle controversy made me intensely aware of a number of shocking deficiencies in the traditional peer review system. First is the demonstrated inability of traditional peer review to always filter out junk. I don't want to harp on about the deficiencies in the striped nanoparticle work (which is faulty, rather than fraudulent) so let's turn to a truly shocking example of the failure of traditional peer review: the nano chopsticks farce, as Brady Haran and I discuss in this Sixty Symbols video ..."

Transparency in libraries - Crowdfunding on wemakeit Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:44 AM PST [From Google's English] "In June 2014, I asked to be the owner several university libraries in Switzerland, what they pay to the three major scientific publishers. Although it comes to public money in the millions here, i have of libraries and their universities, with the exception of Lugano no numbers get. Against the cancellation of the ETH, EPFL, Lib4RI, consortium, University of Zurich (HBZ and ZB), ZHAW, unibas, UniBe, and UniGe have recourse / appeal filed / request for mediation. In Geneva, the result of the first appeal authority is now available. Although the Geneva privacy advocates and public hereby authorize ( PPDT ) concludes, the University should make the payments publicly, the University of Geneva denied further access to the file. For the university, it seems to be more important according Rector to comply with the unötigerweise assured confidentiality publishers opposite, as the public expel transparent for what they used tax money received. This decision, I would like to challenge the Geneva Administrative Court. It is pushing for democratic my understanding that public institutions can keep secret their spending. Since there are as yet no judicial practice of the present situation in Switzerland, I hope with this appeal to reach a Leitentscheid for other universities ..."

Misrepresenting science is almost as bad as fraud: Randy Schekman - Livemint Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:31 AM PST "In 2013, Randy Schekman was honoured with the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for his discoveries on vesicles—sac-like structures that make up a major transport system in our cells—and how genetic defects can lead to malfunctions in this transport system. The Nobel laureate has taken up the cause of journals and how the domination of a few popular journals may be disrupting science and research. Mint caught up with Schekman at the Indian Science Congress in Mumbai, and the ex-editor of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) talked about his stand against journals such as Science and Nature, the spectacular retractions that the journals saw last year, and which areas of life sciences will see the biggest breakthroughs in the coming years. Edited excerpts ..."

U of Illinois professor embraces open-source textbooks | FOX2now.com Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:29 AM PST "One professor at the University of Illinois thought textbooks were getting too expensive for his students. So he decided to partner with other educators to write their own book and make it available online for free. Jonathan Tomkin is associate director of the UI School of Earth, Society and Environment. He says it's hard to find textbooks for less than $100. He says he's a proponent of open-source textbooks, saying they are high quality and save money for students. The News-Gazette reports that the open-source book Tomkin worked on, 'Sustainability: A Comprehensive History,' has been used at a dozen colleges and universities. The books have student support too. The Illinois Student Senate approved a resolution last March asking the campus to offer incentives to faculty who use open textbooks."

New policy recommendations on open access to research data | Digital Curation Centre Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:26 AM PST "The EU FP-7 project RECODE has released findings of its case studies in open access to research data. RECODE (Policy RECommendations for Open Access to Research Data in Europe) held its final conference last week in Athens, coinciding with publication of a short booklet summarising the project findings and the following ten over-arching recommendations ..."

Book Piracy as Peer Preservation : Computational Culture Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:21 AM PST Use the link to access the full text article from Computational Culture: a journal of software studies.  "In describing the people, books, and technologies behind one of the largest 'shadow' libraries in the world, we find a tension between the dynamics of sharing and preservation. The paper proceeds to contextualize contemporary book piracy historically, challenging accepted theories of peer production. Through a close analysis of one digital library's system architecture, software and community, we assert that the activities cultivated by its members are closer to that of conservationists of the public libraries movement, with the goal of preserving rather than mass distributing their collected material. Unlike common peer production models emphasis is placed on the expertise of its members as digital preservations, as well as the absorption of digital repositories. Additionally, we highlight issues that arise from their particular form of distributed architecture and community."

Eurodoc Statement on Open Access to Publications Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:15 AM PST Use the link to access the full text statement from Eurodoc.

CDC: OPEN ACCESS Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:11 AM PST Use the link to access the full text article published by the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University, Luneberg.  "As a con­cept and prac­tice, open ac­cess has al­ways been hea­vi­ly de­ba­ted; by open ac­cess ad­vo­ca­tes, but also by the wi­der aca­de­mic com­mu­ni­ty as part of the de­ba­te over the fu­ture of scho­lar­ly com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on. From an in­iti­al sub­ver­si­ve pro­po­sal (Har­nad), open ac­cess has in­cre­a­sin­gly tur­ned into ac­cep­ted prac­tice, pro­mo­ted by go­vern­ments, in­sti­tu­ti­ons and busi­nes­ses ali­ke. Howe­ver, whi­le gro­wing in po­pu­la­ri­ty, the strugg­le over its spe­ci­fic im­ple­men­ta­ti­on in pu­blis­hing and scho­lar­ly com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on is on­go­ing and per­haps even more ur­gent than ever."

Springer, Nature deal sign of times | The Australian Posted: 20 Jan 2015 02:03 AM PST "THE merger of scholarly publishing giant Springer with the publisher of leading academic journal Nature, is the latest sign of the disruption facing scholarly publishing in the face of online technology and the growing pressure for journals to provide free access to research papers. The incorporation of the Nature suite of journals will give Springer a big boost in prestige compared with rival giants such as Elsevier, Wiley and Taylor & Francis. Macmillan Science and Education, which owns Nature and is proposing to merge with Springer, only produces about 160 scientific journals, well behind sector leader Elsevier with 3,057. But in Nature it has arguably the biggest single journal brand. Springer has 2,987 titles, putting it second behind Elsevier, but if the merger goes through it will be the biggest, just. The proposed merger still needs clearance from European competition regulators and academic libraries have been quick to voice concerns that they could be squeezed by the reduction in competition. But there is also optimism that the merger will bring efficiencies that can be passed on to libraries in the form of lower subscription costs. 'We are continually becoming more efficient and are expect the publishers to also take some of the hard yards they need to rather than expect us to simply keep paying more,' said Philip Kent, the University of Melbourne's library head. Mr Kent is also chairman of the Council of Australian University Librarian's journal purchasing consortium. He noted that the weak Australian dollar, which has declined steeply since September, is significantly increasing costs for university libraries ..."

Nature publisher merges with Springer to form a joint venture | Editage Insights Posted: 20 Jan 2015 01:26 AM PST "Macmillan Science and Education, the London-based publisher of Nature and Scientific American, will merge with one of the world's largest science publishers, Berlin-based Springer Science+Business Media. The consolidation was announced on January 15 by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (the private firm that owns Macmillan) and the private equity firm BC Partners (which bought out Springer in 2013). Derk Haank, CEO of Springer, stated that 'Combined, these two companies, both deeply rooted in a strong publishing tradition, offer breadth, volume and reach.' The joint venture would create an academic publishing group with around 13,000 employees and a turnover of around €1.5 billion, making it one of the biggest scientific publishers by revenues. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group is slated to own 53% of the combined venture, and anticipates that the deal will be approved by competition authorities in the first half of 2015. Reportedly, the deal excludes certain businesses: Macmillan Education's US higher education business, and Holtzbrinck's scientific software firm Digital Science and the education technology company Digital Education. Some librarians, however, are worried of the consequences of this deal. Paul Ayris, director of library services at University College, London says, 'The philosophy of the commercial market is that competition works to bring prices down. On that basis, the concentration of such large publishing volumes in one pair of hands is not good news for users.' Some industry leaders are of the opinion that the merger is indicative of the declining growth opportunities in technical publishing. As Richard Anderson, associate dean for scholarly resources and collections at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, puts it, 'I think more consolidation is inevitable. Publishers are fielding more and more submissions and chasing smaller and smaller budgets while also dealing with an increasingly complex scholarly communication environment.' This merger might mark the beginning of a trend of joint ventures in scientific publishing ..."

Knowledge Unlatched:A Global Library Consortium Model for Funding Open Access Scholarly Books | Montgomery | Cultural Science Posted: 20 Jan 2015 01:21 AM PST "This special issue of Cultural Science Journal is devoted to the report of a groundbreaking experiment in re-coordinating global markets for specialist scholarly books and enabling the knowledge commons: the Knowledge Unlatched proof-of-concept pilot. The pilot took place between January 2012 and September 2014. It involved libraries, publishers, authors, readers and research funders in the process of developing and testing a global library consortium model for supporting Open Access books. The experiment established that authors, librarians, publishers and research funding agencies can work together in powerful new ways to enable open access; that doing so is cost effective; and that a global library consortium model has the potential dramatically to widen access to the knowledge and ideas contained in book-length scholarly works."

Full Report on the KU Proof-of-Concept Pilot now available Posted: 20 Jan 2015 01:16 AM PST "Cultural Science Journal has published a full report on the KU Pilot project (Vol. 7, No. 2, 2014, ISSN 1836-0416) which can be read here: http://cultural-science.org/journal/index.php/culturalscience/issue/view/15.  'Knowledge Unlatched: A Global Library Consortium Model for Funding Open Access Scholarly Books. Full Report on the Proof-of-Concept Pilot 2014" provides information about the Knowledge Unlatched proof-of-concept Pilot, which took place between January 2012 and September 2014.  The report comprehensively reviews the KU Proof-of-Concept Pilot Collection, providing detailed analysis of how the Pilot was designed and funded, the process of engaging publishers and libraries in the Pilot, library participation, as well as data on use of the Pilot Collection during its first six months online. The Pilot involved libraries, publishers, authors, readers and research funders in the process of developing and testing a global library consortium model for supporting Open Access books.  297 libraries from 24 countries shared the cost of 'unlatching' 28 newly published Humanities and Social Sciences research titles, provided by 13 well known scholarly publishers. After 24 weeks of the Collection being online, the number of downloads was recorded at 12,763 from 138 countries ..."

2015-New service to support open access in the post-2014 REF - HEFCE Posted: 20 Jan 2015 01:07 AM PST "HEFCE has agreed to fund the development of a new shared service to support compliance with the policy for open access in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). At its core, this new service will enable authors and universities to check whether a given publication is compliant with the open access policy (Note 1). This service will build on the work of Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access (SHERPA), based in the Centre for Research Communications at the University of Nottingham.  It will link closely with the existing SHERPA/FACT service for authors funded by Research Councils UK and Wellcome Trust, and the SHERPA/RoMEO directory of journal self-archiving policies. We are keen for this new service to meet the needs of those that will use it. The first phase of its development will include a consultation with academics, repository managers, librarians and others to seek views on what the service should deliver. This consultation, led by Research Consulting, includes a number of surveys of various stakeholders ..."