open science
clock | July 25, 2007SPARC just announced the Mind Mashup: A Video Contest:
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced the launch of the first annual SPARC Discovery Awards, a contest to promote the open exchange of information. Mind Mashup, the theme of the 2007 contest, calls on entrants to illustrate in a short video the importance of sharing ideas and information of all kinds. Mashup is an expression referring to a song, video, Web site or software application that combines content from more than one source.
Consistent with SPARC's mission as an international alliance of…
clock | July 21, 2007Let's start with some Essential Facebook Readings of the day:
The Facebook Juggernaut...bitch!
Where are Facebook's Early Adopters Going?
Hmmm, Facebook: a new kind of press release
All your widgets are belong to Facebook
Why We're Like a Million Monkeys on Treadmills
Facebook: the new data black hole
What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?
Why I Dropped Scoble and Seceded from the Hunt for Newer Shinier Things
My predictions for the near future, and I'll explain them below:
1) In a Clash Of Titans, Google turns iGoogle into something better than Facebook. Facebook is…
clock | July 21, 2007Duke University, after years of being behind the curve, is now striving mightily to establish itself as a leader in online science communication. As a recent news article shows, the school is activelly encouraging its students to keep blogs and make podcasts.
I have already mentioned Sarah Wallace and her blog about genomics research in Chernobyl.
Nicholas Experience is a blogging/podcasting group working on environmental science (OK, Sheril is their most famous blogger, but she did it herself, without being prompted by the Nicholas Institute).
At the Howard Hughes Precollege Program…
clock | July 20, 2007HOUSE BACKS TAXPAYER-FUNDED RESEARCH ACCESS
Final Appropriations Bill Mandates Free Access to NIH Research Findings
Washington, D.C. - July 20, 2007 - In what advocates hailed as a major advance for scientific communication, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved a measure directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide free public online access to agency-funded research findings within 12 months of their publication in a peer-reviewed journal. With broad bipartisan support, the House passed the provision as part of the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education…
clock | July 18, 2007Curtis, one of the founders of JeffsBench wrote a very interesting article comparing JeffsBench to PLoS ONE in their roles in fostering online scientific discussions. Register, look around and comment....
clock | July 17, 2007Kim of Emergiblog explains nicely why you should support Open Access publishing:
The Public Library of Science:
You are writing a paper. You need to do some research, so you google your topic.
Ah ha! There it is! The perfect article for your paper. The abstract is right in front of you, but you must go to the actual journal for the full text.
Hmmm...you can access the full text of the article, but you must pay to do it! Anywhere from nine dollars to almost thirty dollars for twenty-four hour access.
"No way", you say! "I have access to my university's online library, I'll just go there and…
clock | July 17, 2007ASIS&T 2008 meeting - Joining Research and Practice: Social Computing and Information Science will be held in Milwaukee on October 19-24, 2007. The Program is now available online and it is very exciting. Especially this session ;-)
clock | July 15, 2007I missed this by weeks, but Dave asked a set of questions that I was pondering on, but found no time and energy to answer until now.
PZ, Janet, Martin, Chad and RPM responded (I am assuming some people outside SB did as well) and their responses (and their commenters') are very interesting.
1. What's your current scientific specialty?
Chronobiology, although I have not seen the inside of the lab for three years now. So, scientific publishing, education and communication - does that count?
2. Were you originally pursuing a different academic course? If so, what was it?
Yes, I went to vet…
clock | July 13, 2007Remember the threat of closing the KOBSON blog?
Well, Danica was a brave warrior for Open Science and published an article about this at a much more prominent place: on Global Voices Online.
While this may not be an immediate positive move for Danica's own career, it is a good move towards persuading the powers-that-be in Serbia that the way forward is towards more openness, not the opposite.
clock | July 13, 2007This paper (by Heather Piwowar) is not that new, but it is only now starting to get some traction and I'd like to see more people be aware of it:
Background
Sharing research data provides benefit to the general scientific community, but the benefit is less obvious for the investigator who makes his or her data available.
Principal Findings
We examined the citation history of 85 cancer microarray clinical trial publications with respect to the availability of their data. The 48% of trials with publicly available microarray data received 85% of the aggregate citations. Publicly…
clock | July 13, 2007In the USA:
Effective this week, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have proposed FY08 spending bills that direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to change its Public Access Policy so that NIH-funded researchers are required to deposit copies of NIH-funded research into the online archive of the National Library of Medicine.
This is big step toward making the policy a success -- we need your help now more than ever.
The bills now go to the full House and the Senate for approval. To help ensure success there, we ask that all supporters contact their Representatives AND…
clock | July 12, 2007Four excellent, thought-provoking articles all in some way related to the idea of Open Science. One by Bill Hooker:
Competition in science: too much of a good thing
and three by Janet Stemwedel:
Clarity and obfuscation in scientific papers
Does thinking like a scientist lead to bad science writing?
OpenWetWare
clock | July 11, 2007OK, so I've been here for about a week now. It's been so far an exciting and overwhelming experience - there is so much to learn! And I am impatient with myself and want to get in the groove right now. I need to learn to slow down a little...
Anyway, I did manage to drop in here at the blog a couple of times and report on meetups with some local bloggers, but here is a little bit more about the week so far...
San Francisco is quite a unique city - I really cannot say it reminds me of any other place I've been to. Quite ecclectic and freewheeling. And hilly! My house is on top of the…
clock | July 8, 2007Vedran Vucic is a Linux afficionado in Serbia. He and his organization have gone all around Serbia, wired up the schools, taught the teachers and students how to use Linux, taught the teachers and students how to use various online educational resources ranging from blogs to ATutor, etc.
Vedran also gives technical support to about 40 Serbian bloggers whose work he also aggregates.
He is now putting a lot of energy into persuading scientists, especially the young, not-yet-entrenched ones, to go online and to promote Open Access. It is an uphill battle, but he is persistent!
You'll see…
clock | July 8, 2007First, I'd like to thank Darksyde for placing the discussion of Open Access science publishing on the front page of DailyKos. If you are a registered user there, go ahead and add your 2 cents to the conversation.
Matt at Behavioral Ecology Blog explains RSS, what it is, how it works and how to use it to get science news. Recommended.
Greg Laden is a Linux advocate. While I am not, I understand that, though Open Source and Open Access are not the same thing, they do go hand in hand in a way. Something to think about...
Bjorn Brembs provides me with some useful advice and ideas.
My…
clock | July 3, 2007Interview with Timo Hannay, Head of Web Publishing, Nature Publishing Group
Scientific Communications in Web 2.0 Context
Publishing Versus Posting: Nature Magazine Turns to a Conversational Content Model
clock | July 3, 2007Buyer beware! Not everything in science publishing that calls itself Open Access actually is so.
clock | June 29, 2007Not that it costs anything to have one...
Yet, the Konsortium of science libraries in Serbia is seriously contemplating shutting down their KOBSON blog, an invaluable tool in science communication in the region.
Danica, who the regular readers of this blog are quite familiar with as she is the Number One Champion for Open Science and Web 2.0 science in Serbia, has put a lot of effort into building the online infrastructure for Serbian scientific communication, including the KOBSON blog and the KOBSON wiki, as well as teaching and preaching to the local scientific community about the…
clock | June 29, 2007It's always intriguing to know what the peer-reviewers have thought and written about a particular manuscript. Now, you can find out, at least in some cases, on PLoS-ONE papers. Chris Surridge explains.
clock | June 27, 2007Nature News just had an article announcing a new social networking site for physicians and biomedical scientists called Prometeo Network. Another one to check out and add to the ever-growing list of such new sites.