open science
clock | March 14, 2008Toronto SciBarCamp starts tonight and I am so jealous for not being there. Perhaps next time. For now, I'll just follow it via blogs.
clock | March 14, 2008Got an e-mail from AAAS and will try to go if at all possible:
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and North Carolina State University, will be holding a one-day workshop "Communicating Science: Tools for Scientists and Engineers" on Thursday, April 3, 2008. We aim to extend an invitation to the faculty scientists, engineers, and Ph.D. students at your institution who would like to attend this workshop, in order to learn more about communicating science to news media and the general public. Please feel free…
clock | March 13, 2008A new deal: Wiley-Blackwell and JoVE Unveil Groundbreaking Online Video Publications
Moshe on TV:
clock | March 9, 2008On the Wired Science blog - The Internet Is Changing the Scientific Method:
If all other fields can go 2.0, incorporating collaboration and social networking, it's about time that science does too. In the bellwether journal Science this week, a computer scientist argues that many modern problems are resistant to traditional scientific inquiry.
The title of the post is a big misnomer as the paper does not say anything about the change in the Scientific Method, but about the change scientists go about their work (perhaps "methodology"?). Read the rambunctious comment thread.
The paper is…
clock | March 9, 2008Charles Leadbetter: People power transforms the web in next online revolution
Anna Kushnir: Science Participation and Going Incognito
Wobbler: Digital Scholarly Communication & Bottlenecks
Jonathan A. Eisen: Open Evolution
Peter Suber: Aiming for obscurity (the links within are important)
Stian Haklev: A "Fair Trade" logo for academic research?
clock | March 8, 2008Information Liberation By DANIEL AKST:
If your child has a life-threatening disease and you're desperate to read the latest research, you'll be dismayed to learn that you can't -- at least not without hugely expensive subscriptions to a bevy of specialized journals or access to a major research library. Your dismay might turn to anger when you realize that you paid for this research.
Read the whole thing....
clock | March 4, 2008Jane is the cool new tool that everyone is talking about - see the commentary on The Tree of Life, on Nature Network and on Of Two Minds.
In short, the Journal/Author Name Estimator is a website where you can type in some text and see which scientific Journal has the content closest to the text you input, as well as people who published on similar topics. If you click on "Show extra options" you can narrow your search by a few criteria, e.g., you can search only Open Access journals.
The idea is to discover journals to which you can submit your work. Most people know the journals available…
clock | March 3, 2008Get yourself free PDFs of old biology/taxonomy books and papers courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library:
Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project. The group is developing a strategy and operational plan to digitize the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections. This literature will be available through a global "biodiversity commons."
Participating institutions:
* American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY)
* The Field Museum (Chicago…
clock | March 2, 2008I just noticed recently, when looking up a paper in the Journal of Biological Rhythms, that SAGE publishing group is starting to offer the Open Access option to the authors in some of its Journals:
Independent scholarly publisher, SAGE Publications, is now offering authors of papers published on SAGE Journals Online, the option to make their primary research articles freely available on publication. The 'SAGE Open' publishing option has been launched primarily to ensure that authors can comply with new stringent funding body requirements, (for example those now in place from the Wellcome…
clock | February 26, 2008There are three interesting, thought-provoking articles on Open Education today:
The Digital Commons - Left Unregulated, Are We Destined for Tragedy?
An Interview with Ahrash Bissell of the Creative Commons
The Open Digital Commons - A Truly Endless Array of Success Stories
Worth your time and effort.
clock | February 26, 2008Journal of Visualized Experiments signed a deal with Wiley-Blackwell to provide videos for Current Protocols:
Wiley-Blackwell and JoVE Unveil Groundbreaking Online Video Publications
Online methods videos go mainstream
Visual journal partners with Wiley
Related...
clock | February 21, 2008Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards
March 27-28, 2008
Chapel Hill, NC
Discovering scholarly information and data is essential for research and use of the content that the information community is producing and making available. The development of knowledge bases, web systems, repositories, and other sources for this information brings the need for effective discovery -- search-driven discovery and network (or browse) driven discovery -- tools to the forefront. With new tools and systems emerging, however, are standards keeping pace with the next generation of tools?
Richard…
clock | February 21, 2008Are you confused with the new NIH Policy and unsure as to what you need to do? If so, Association of Research Libraries has assembled a very useful website that explains the process step by step. But the easiest thing to do is to publish with a journal that does the depositing for you free of charge and here is the list of such journals. Of course, PLoS automatically does that for you as well.
clock | February 19, 2008In my daily interviews I always ask: what new blogs did you discover at the Conference? If anyone asked me that question - and you know it's hard to surprise me! - one I'd pick would be the INFO Project blog run by Rose Reis, now my daily read.
Now, Anna (where did she get the idea, I wonder?) interviews Rose over on the JoVE Blog and the interview is worth your time. And yes, sooner or later, Rose Reis will be interviewed here as well - stay tuned.
clock | February 19, 2008Earlier today I went to UNC to talk about Science On The Web in Javed Mostafa's graduate course on Enabling Usability of Cyberinfrastructures for Learning, Inquiry, and Discovery. I showed and talked about the following sites:
The rapidly growing List of Open Access journals and how the recent NIH law and Harvard vote are pushing publishing inexorably towards the OA model.
PLoS, Open Access, the TOPAZ platform for a new breed of journals like PLoS ONE (and a couple of examples of user activity on ONE papers), as an example of the leader of OA publishing (and also the story of how I got to…
clock | February 18, 2008What is the difference between Free Access Beer and Open Access Beer?
You go to a bar to get your Free Access Beer. You sit down. You show your ID. The barista gives you a bottle. You don't need to pay anything for it - it's free, after all. You take your own bottle-opener from your pocket and open the bottle. You drink the beer from the bottle. You return the empty bottle to the barista. You go home.
You order you Open Access Beer online or by phone. You pick what kind of beer you want. It gets delivered to your door really fast. The delivery man opens the bottle for you. You are…
clock | February 15, 2008When Harvard does something, all the others follow. Perhaps this is the tipping point for Open Access as a whole. Peter Suber and Gavin Baker have the best commentary and all the links to other worthy commentary in a series of posts worth studying:
More on the imminent OA mandate at Harvard
Harvard votes yes
Text of the Harvard policy
Roundup of commentary on Harvard OA policy
More on the Harvard OA mandate
Stevan Harnad's proposed revisions to the Harvard policy
Three on the Harvard OA mandate
More comments on the Harvard OA mandate
Also read Revere: Unfettered access to scientific work…
clock | February 15, 2008Via Peter Suber, there is now something new - PLoL, or, Public Library of Law:
Searching the Web is easy. Why should searching the law be any different? That's why Fastcase has created the Public Library of Law -- to make it easy to find the law online. PLoL is the largest free law library in the world, because we assemble law available for free scattered across many different sites -- all in one place. PLoL is the best starting place to find law on the Web.
It's just like PLoS, but the material is law, not science (and the two are not affiliated with each other in any way, just thinking in…
clock | February 14, 2008The elephants in the room: How the GOP lost its way by Hal Crowther
Kafkaesque Bureaucracies Impede Import of Scientific Goods in Brazil by Mauro Rebelo
Open Science and the developing world: Good intentions, bad implementation? by Cameron Neylon
Alternative Agriculture in Cuba (pdf) by Sara Oppenheim