openaccess

Copernicus Publications is an Open Access enterprise that provided the ability for an academic entity of some sort or another to create a new Open Access journal. In March 2013 the journal “Pattern Recognition in Physics" was started up and added to the Copernicus lineup. The journal apparently put out a few items, and then, recently, produced Special Issue 1, called “Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts." The special issue editors were Nils-Axel Mörner, R. Tattersall, and J.-E. Solheim. Readers of this blog will recognize R. Tattersall as TallBloke,…
Some interesting news from the Open Access front: The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) today announced the membership agreement with BioMed Central and SpringerOpen. Publication costs for research articles published by researchers funded by NWO for articles published no later than 2008, who chose to publish via BioMed Central will now automatically be covered (up to the maximum as defined by the NWO Incentive Fund Open Access Publications) Bev Acreman BioMed Central's Commercial Director said, "We are delighted that the NWO has taken this significant step to broaden…
At this very moment, PLoS Currents is expanding. Here is the information from PLoS: PLoS (Public Library of Science) is expanding PLoS Currents with the launch of two new sections, one on Huntington disease produced with support from CHDI Foundation, Inc., and the other entitled Evidence on Genomic Tests in collaboration with CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Another section called the Tree of Life (focusing on new phylogenetic analyses) is coming soon. PLoS Currents was launched in August 2009 ... as "a new and experimental website for the rapid communication of research…
The Saba Bank is a major coral reef in the Caribbean which sports a high level of biodiversity but also attracts oil tankers, and is thus an important natural area under threat. The tankers anchor here to avoid paying fees in various ports, but the anchors themselves drag along the reef and cause havoc. There is now an effort to have the Saba Bank designated as an internationally recognized sensitive area, but one thing standing it the way of this effort is a lack of scientific knowledge of the region. Open Access Publishing to the rescue! Anchor chain damaging a giant barrel sponge,…
I told you so, but most of you would not listen. Amazon has tossed an entire publishing company off its site (hat tip: H.G.) because that company would not comply with Amazon's universally imposed Kindle edition pricing strategy. That places Amazon at the decision making table where the publishers and the market (the buyers of books) usually sits, and not just as a stakeholder but as the holder of everyone else's nuts. (And when I say nuts, I'm talking chestnuts, so don't get any ideas.) Amazon is not a book store. It is a public utility that delivers a wide range of products (including…
Last weekend I attended Science Online 2010, which is a conference of science communicators with a heavy mix of bloggers, many journalists and others from the print industry, an increasingly large number of book authors, and OpenX (X=access, notebook, science, or whatever) advocates and practitioners. Science Online is now reaching a tipping point. It is a fantastic conference partly because of its small size and its focus, but it is now becoming much more popular, and faces the possibility of growing over the next couple of years to become not what it is today. Perhaps it will evolve into a…
One of the world's oldest plants turns out to be a 13,000 year-old scrub oak (Quercus palmeri, or Palmer's Oak) in Southern California. Apparently this tree has survived for so long, despite the fact that it was born in the ice age and there have been numerous climate changes since then, by cloning itself, hiding in a crevice, being small, and growing slowly. Luck was involved as well, almost certainly. The plant was actually discovered more than ten years ago during a survey of plant diversity in the Jurupa Hills of Riverside County, and it was noted at the time that this tree was utterly…
Raptors and their Talons are the subjects of a blog post on the DC Birding Blog called "How Raptor Talons Fit Their Prey" This post, which is quite excellent and that I highly recommend, on the November Plos Blog Post of the Month Award. We hope blog post author John Beetham will enjoy his trip around the world for two, his new Z sports car, and his life time supply of groceries. Or whatever they are giving out these days for this highly prestigious award.
And it's on You Tube!
Hat Tip: Who Else!?!!???
Ghostwriting, in the scientific medical literature, is the production of marketing literature which is then disguised as scientific literature. Part of this disguise is the appending of "authors" who are actual scientists who would normally write their own papers. Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known. NYT - caution, page…
I wrote this up on the request of a colleague who heard my talk recently on open data. I'm posting it here for comment and adding some hyperlinks... Moving from a Web of documents to a Web of data (or of Linked Open Data) is an oft-cited goal in the sciences. The Web of data would allow us to link together disparate information from unrelated disciplines, run powerful queries, and get precise answers to complex, data-driven questions. It's an undoubtedly desirable extension of the way that the existing networks increase the value of documents and computers through connectivity - Metcalfe's…
I was in a roundtable yesterday talking about Health IT with a bunch of very smart people in the bay area. It was sort of a briefing of ourselves and others about the real issues underpinning what it would take to generate real disruptive innovation in health technology and health costs. The vast majority of the conversation centered on payment reform, which is outside my ambit. But we did spend some time talking about health data standards, and the problem of getting standards that are so geared to the existing market-dominant companies that they actually froze out new market entrants. My…
I spoke last week at an event at the British Library about the future of the scientific article. It was a lively event - lots of friendfeed and twitter reactions - and it got me thinking a lot about the way we use publication in science. In my conversations with research staff and leaders at the BL, I ran across this statement. Publishers frequently claim four functions: registration (when was an idea stated?), certification (is the idea original, has it been "proved" to satisfactory peer review?), dissemination (delivery), and preservation of the record. The journal thus provides for both…
The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years…
I have obtained a document that describes the secret, inner workings of the on line publication PLoS ONE. The document also exposes future plans for the enterprise. The link is below the fold. The link for the PDF of the document is here. Don't tell anyone where you got it. From the Abstract, which I have decoded for you: PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed Open Access academic journal published by the Public Library of Science, was founded in 2006 with the intent of reevaluating many of the aspects of the scholarly journal. As a result, PLoS ONE has taken elements of the traditional publishing…
There's an interesting tweet about attribution in the data web. And it raises a tension I run into a lot but haven't seen a lot written about: the shifting nature of what the word "attribution" means. We have a fairly common understanding of attribution in our daily lives: credit where credit is due is mine, and it tends to be what most people think. This is whether one is a musician, a scientist, a teacher, or anyone who does creative or innovative work. We like getting credit for our work. No problem there. This idea of attribution encompasses the idea that we should get credit for our…
Paul Miller and I recorded a chat last week that's now online as a podcast from Cloud of Data. Paul is a smart guy and it was a fun interview. We first met when he was working with Talis, which is a very progressive company in the UK (they sponsored some of the development of the PDDL and currently host data in the public domain for free in the Talis Connected Commons) but he's now out freelancing. Check out the podcast and let me know your comments.
As noted on the Creative Commons blog, the folks at Digg have converted to CC0 (replacing a multiyear use of a different public domain legal tool). This is very cool on lots of levels. But Daniel Burka of Digg said it best, so I'll make this a short post by simply quoting him... This is good for the internet and good for society. He's talking about the public domain, and he's right.
hat tip Bora, where you can find more.