Science Quick Picks » Open Access

Open Access Week

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:15:32 +0000

Open Access Week (OA Week, October 18-24, 2010), a global event now entering its fourth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

“Open Access” to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

OA Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward open sharing with the advancement of policy changes on the local level. Universities, colleges, research institutes, funding agencies, libraries, and think tanks have used Open Access Week as a platform to host faculty votes on campus open-access policies, to issue reports on the societal and economic benefits of Open Access, to commit new funds in support of open-access publication, and more.

See also, for instance, the 2010 Events, Videos or Forum Discussions.

More sites:
JISC Open Access Week
OER Foundation Open Access Week Webinars
SPARC favorite things on the 2010 OA Week site

Open Access Week is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

All H1N1 Related Articles Published in PNAS Freely Available Online

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:08:57 +0000

Seen on Liblicense – All H1N1 (swine flu) related articles published in PNAS are now freely available online: In light of the current alert about H1N1 (swine flu) issued by the World Health Organization and the public health emergency declared by the United States government, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) has made related research articles free online at www.pnas.org to assist with research on this topic.

Twelve research articles published within the past 6 months are now freely available online. All PNAS articles are accessible at no charge after 6 months.

All H1N1 Related Articles Published in PNAS Freely Available Online is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

Open Access Directory (OAD)

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:04:40 +0000

Press Release: Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, conceived the project in order to collect OA-related lists for one-stop reference and searching.

The wiki will start operating with about half a dozen lists – for example, conferences devoted to open access, discussion forums devoted to open access, and journal “declarations of independence” – and add more over time.

The goal is to harness the knowledge and energy of the open access community itself to enlarge and correct the lists. A list on a wiki, revised continuously by its users, can be more comprehensive and up to date than the same list maintained by an individual. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about open access.

Open Access Directory (OAD) is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

Open Access in 2007 According to Peter Suber

Jorge Goncalves — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:19:50 +0000

Open Access in 2007 by Peter Suber on SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue 117, January 2008. From the introduction: “The irrepressible progress of the open access movement means that every new year is richer than the last. At some point the thicket of new developments will make it impossible to write these annual reviews. As I wrote this year’s review, I kept thinking that the point had come last year. Here are some highlights of 2007 in 15 categories. Apologies to all the projects, policies, and developments I omitted.”

Open Access in 2007 According to Peter Suber is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

OAIster: Opening the Archives

Jorge Goncalves — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:42:34 +0000

OAIster. ‘OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources. We provide access to these digital resources by “harvesting” their descriptive metadata (records) using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). The Open Archives Initiative is not the same thing as the Open Access movement. Digital resources can range from an old-time advertisement of electric refrigerators (from the Library of Congress American Memory project) to Harriet Beecher Stowe memoirs (from the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service Making of America collection). OAIster currently provides access to 12,384,906 records from 854 contributors.’

Open Archives Initiative (OAI). ‘The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. The Open Archives Initiative has its roots in an effort to enhance access to e-print archives as a means of increasing the availability of scholarly communication. Continued support of this work remains a cornerstone of the Open Archives program. Over time, however, the work of OAI has expanded to promote broad access to digital resources for eScholarship, eLearning, and eScience.’

OAIster: Opening the Archives is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

CTWatch Quarterly: Web 2.0 in Science

Jorge Goncalves — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 10:32:14 +0000

Web 2.0 in Science, Timo Hannay, CTWatch Quarterly, Vol. 3, 2007. Excerpt: Perhaps the only thing on which everyone can agree about Web 2.0 is that it has become a potent buzzword. It provokes enthusiasm and cynicism in roughly equal measures, but as a label for an idea whose time has come, no one can seriously doubt its influence.
So what does it mean? Web 2.0 began as a conference, first hosted in October 2004 by O’Reilly Media and CMP Media. Following the boom-bust cycle that ended in the dot-com crash of 2001, the organisers wanted to refocus attention on individual web success stories and the growing influence of the web as a whole. True, during the late 1990s hype and expectations had run ahead of reality, but that did not mean that the reality was not epochal and world-changing. By the following year, Tim O’Reilly, founder of the eponymous firm and principal articulator of the Web 2.0 vision, had laid down in a seminal essay a set of observations about approaches that work particularly well in the online world.’

Other interesting articles on CTWatch Quarterly August Issue include: Trends Favoring Open Access by Peter Suber and Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web by Tim Brody et al.

CTWatch Quarterly. ‘CTWatch Quarterly is an online journal that focuses on cyberinfrastructure related research critical to collaboration and information dissemination within the science community as a whole. Each issue of CTWatch centers on a topic with currency and importance to this community with articles written by experts in their field from both academia and industry. CTWatch Quarterly is a publication of the CyberInfrastruture Partnership (CIP).’

CTWatch Quarterly: Web 2.0 in Science is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

Nature Launches 3 Open Access Websites

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:39:39 +0000

Nature Editorial: Community service. ‘Introducing three free-access websites for research networking and outreach.
The mission statement that appeared in the second issue of Nature in 1869 and is reproduced every week on our printed table of contents may use archaically high-flown language, but it still applies. In essence, we exist to help scientists communicate with each other and to communicate science to wider audiences.
Precisely that duality applies to two websites to be launched this week: Nature Reports Climate Change and Nature Reports Stem Cells. Aimed at researchers and at anyone else who is interested, both give an editorial perspective of their fields through a combination of original journalism and commissioned comment, alongside archived material from other Nature publications. Both sites also facilitate community interactions through blogs.These sites will develop further by way of community interactions and applications in the coming months. The original content of both is freely accessible.
Also free is a very different website to be launched next week: Nature Precedings. As its title implies, this site will enable researchers to share, discuss and cite their early findings. It provides a lightly moderated and relatively informal channel for scientists to disseminate information, especially recent experimental results and emerging conclusions.’

Nature Launches 3 Open Access Websites is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

BioMed’s PhysMath Central: Open Access for Physics and Mathematics Research

Jorge Goncalves — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:49:56 +0000

PhysMath Central. ‘PhysMath Central is an independent publishing platform operated by BioMed Central committed to providing immediate open access to peer-reviewed physics and mathematics research. All original research articles published by, or in cooperation with, PhysMath Central are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication. PhysMath Central views open access to research as essential in order to ensure the rapid and efficient communication of research findings.’

PMC Physics A is now open for submissions. PMC Physics A is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes articles on high-energy & nuclear physics, cosmology, gravity & astroparticle physics and also the instrumentation & data analysis of results in these areas.
Coming soon: PMC Physics B and PMC Physics C.

BioMed’s PhysMath Central: Open Access for Physics and Mathematics Research is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

Science 2.0: Sharing and Collaboration

Jorge Goncalves — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:03:16 +0000

The New Science of Sharing. ‘Companies such as Novartis and Intel are at the forefront of Science 2.0 by encouraging open systems of collaboration. Earlier this month, Swiss drugmaker Novartis did something rather unusual—and almost unheard of in the high-stakes, highly competitive world of Big Pharma. After investing millions trying to unlock the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes, the company released all of its raw data on the Internet. This means anyone (or any company) with the inclination is free to use the data—no strings attached. In other words, the research conducted by Novartis and its university partners at MIT and Lund University in Sweden merely sets the stage for the more complex and costly drug identification and development process. According to researchers, there are far more leads than any one lab could possibly follow up alone. So by placing its data in the public domain, Novartis hopes to leverage the talents and insights of a global research community to dramatically scale and speed up its early-stage R&D activities.’

Science 2.0: Sharing and Collaboration is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

The Croquet Consortium

Jorge Goncalves — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:28:05 +0000

The Croquet Consortium – An Open Source Software Foundation. ‘Croquet is a powerful new open source software development environment for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications on multiple operating systems and devices. Derived from Squeak, it features a peer-based network architecture that supports communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation between multiple users on multiple devices. Using Croquet, software developers can create and link powerful and highly collaborative cross-platform multi-user 2D and 3D applications and simulations – making possible the distributed deployment of very large scale, richly featured and interlinked virtual environments.
Every part of the system is designed around enabling real-time, identical interactions between groups of users. The architecture of Croquet actually makes it quite easy to develop collaborative applications without having to spend a lot of effort and expertise in understanding how replicated applications work. There are a number of simple patterns and rules to remember, but otherwise, it is quite simple to quickly develop very powerful systems. Click here or more detailed information on the technology.’

Croquet Uses: Collaborative Simulation, Education, 3D Games and Design.

The Croquet Consortium is a post from Science Quick Picks, a blog dedicated to the world of Science.

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