April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
Sign the Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research, available at: http://www.publicaccesstoresearch.org.
This petition builds on the 24,000+ signatures collected from around the world in support of free and open access to European research and for the recommendations proposed in the EU’s ‘Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe’ as well as the 132 higher education leaders who have written of their explicit support for public access to publicly funded research. The petition is open to supporters around the world to continue to demonstrate the depth and breadth of support for access to federally funded research. As lawmakers consider policies and legislation to advance public access, it is critical that supporters step forward and be counted.
For more information on current policies and legislation for taxpayer access to federally funded research – including the Federal Research Public Access Act – visit the Alliance for Taxpayer Access Web site.
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
Will articles published in open access journals persist?
Will publication in OA journals provide credit toward tenure / promotion / obtaining grants?
These and other issues are the concerns of scientists according to “Open Access & Science Publishing: Results of a Study on Researchers’ Acceptance and Use of Open Access Publishing” authored by Thomas Hess, Rolf T. Wigand, Florian Mann, and Benedikt von Walter. From the executive summary:
The study was conducted in 2006 by the Ludwig-Maximilans-University Munich, Germany, in cooperation with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The main focus is centered on the question if and why scientists decide or do not decide to publish their work according to the Open Access principle without access barriers and free of cost to readers. With the responses from 688 publishing scientists it could be demonstrated that the general attitude toward the Open Access principle is extremely positive. However, many seem to be rather reluctant to publish their own research work in Open Access outlets. Advantages like increased speed, reach and potentially higher citation rates of Open Access publications are seen alongside insufficient impact factors, lacking long-term availability and the inferior ability to reach the specific target audience of scientists within one’s own discipline. Moreover the low level of use among close colleagues seems to be a barrier towards Open Access publishing.
Read the study. (pdf)
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
Tanya Talaga, Fired editors launch online medical journal, Toronto Star, April 2, 2007.
Excerpt:
The editors who were fired or resigned over the editorial-independence controversy at the Canadian Medical Association Journal have reunited to start their own free, online medical journal.
Open Medicine will be a peer-reviewed, independent open-access journal that does not accept advertising from pharmaceutical or medical-device companies. It is published only at http://www.openmedicine.ca. The launch date of the first issue is April 17.
The virtual journal’s publisher is John Willinsky, a professor in the faculty of education from the University of British Columbia. Co-editors are Dr. Anita Palepu, an internist with St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver and Dr. Stephen Choi, an emergency physician from The Ottawa Hospital.
The idea of starting an open-access journal began shortly after the firings of the CMAJ’s former editor Dr. John Hoey and senior deputy editor Anne Marie Todkill in February 2006….
“It’s the academic freedom issue that is really at the heart of this,” said Willinsky. So is independence from a professional organization like the Canadian Medical Association and freedom from advertising dollars from drug companies, he added….
The journal is also conceived with the idea that there should be no financial barriers to accessing information that can benefit human health and scientific advancement. The authors of studies posted on the journal retain ownership and control over the articles they produce, unlike other medical journals that maintain copyrights. Simon Fraser University’s library is hosting Open Medicine’s website on their server….
Hoey and Todkill’s firings [from CMAJ] were largely condemned throughout the international medical community. After the move, many members of the CMAJ’s editorial board resigned in protest, concerned over editorial autonomy….Hoey and Todkill won the 2006 National Press Club of Canada’s World Press Freedom award….
Open Access News, 4/02/2007
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
The Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science Coalition, a coalition of 75 non-profit publishers, has stated its opposition to any legislation that would abruptly end the existing publishing system. One such measure, the Federal Research Public Access Act, introduced in the 109th Congress, would have required all federally funded research to be deposited in an accessible database within six months of acceptance in a scientific journal. Some open access advocates are pressing for the introduction of a similar measure in the 110th Congress.
According to members of the Coalition, such legislation would impose government-mandated access policies and establish government-controlled repositories for federally funded research published in scientific journals. The Coalition also reaffirmed its ongoing practice of making millions of scientific journal articles available free of charge, without an additional financial burden on the scientific community or on funding agencies. More than 1.6 million free articles are already available to the public free of charge on HighWire Press.
In addition, the Coalition expressed concern that a mandatory timetable for free access to all federally funded research could harm journals, scientists and, ultimately, the public. Subscriptions to journals with a high percentage of federally funded research would decline rapidly. Subscription revenues support the quality control system known as peer review and also support the educational work of scientific societies that publish journals. It noted that undermining subscriptions would shift the cost of publication from the publisher who receives subscription revenue to the researcher who receives grants.
Read the original press release.
Knowledgespeak, 22 Feb 2007
http://www.knowledgespeak.com/newsArchieveviewdtl.asp?pickUpID=3625&pickUpBatch=579#3625
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
From the March 22 issue of Nature. For the full-text, see http://ealerts.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/hc530SpivX0HjB0BOpY0EA
Excerpt:
The US government is considering a massive plan to store almost all scientific data generated by federal agencies in publicly accessible digital repositories. The aim is for the kind of data access and sharing currently enjoyed by genome researchers via GenBank, or astronomers via the National Virtual Observatory, but for the whole of US science.
Scientists would then be able to access data from any federal agency and integrate it into their studies. For example, a researcher browsing an online journal article on the spread of a disease could not only pull up the underlying data, but mesh them with information from databases on agricultural land use, weather and genetic sequences.
Nature has learned that a draft strategic plan will be drawn up by next autumn by a new Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (IWGDD). It represents 22 agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services, and other government branches including the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The group’s first step is to set up a robust public infrastructure so all researchers have a permanent home for their data. One option is to create a national network of online data repositories, funded by the government and staffed by dedicated computing and archiving professionals. It would extend to all communities a model similar to the Arabidopsis Information Resource, in which 20 staff serve 13,000 registered users and 5,000 labs.
Nature 446, 354 (22 March 2007) | doi:10.1038/446354b; Published online 21 March 2007
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
Darren Waters, Google helps terabyte data swaps, BBC News, March 7, 2007.
Excerpt: Google is developing a program to help academics around the world exchange huge amounts of data. The firm’s open source team is working on ways to physically transfer huge data sets up to 120 terabytes in size.
“We have started collecting these data sets and shipping them out to other scientists who want them,” said Google’s Chris DiBona.
Google sends scientists a hard drive system and then copies it before passing it on to other researchers.
It hopes that one day the data it helps to swap will be available to the public.
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
Elias Zerhouni, Director of the NIH, told the Senate last week that the NIH public access policy should be strengthened from a request to a requirement. He was testifying before the committee responsible for funding the agency. Quoting the Alliance for Taxpayer Access:
During testimony before the Senate Labor/HHS Subcommittee on Appropriations, NIH Director Zerhouni responded to a series of questions on the need for public access to NIH-funded research results. The questions were made by Subcommittee Chair Senator Harkin (D-IA). Dr. Zerhouni reiterated the need for publicly funded research to be made available to advance the conduct of science, and strongly asserted that the NIH the voluntary policy was not working. He made clear that the policy should be made mandatory. A video of Dr. Zerhouni’s testimony is available through the Committee Web site. (Note that the link launches a Real Media file. The relevant discussion begins at 1:20.)
Open Access News, 3/24/2007
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
Excerpt:
The Association of American Publishers has hired a public-relations firm with a hard-hitting reputation to counter the open-access publishing movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available to the public, the journal Nature reported on Wednesday.
The firm, Dezenhall Resources, designs aggressive public-relations campaigns to counter activist groups, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit organization that monitors the public-relations business.
The firm’s founder and head, Eric Dezenhall, apparently has suggested that traditional publishers should link their business model with peer review and “paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles,” the Nature article says.
Read the entire article: http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/01/2007012601n.htm
Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 26, 2007
See the original article in Nature,
Published online: 24 January 2007; Corrected online: 25 January 2007 | doi:10.1038/445347a
PR’s ‘pit bull’ takes on open access: Journal publishers lock horns with free-information movement.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html
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April 4th, 2007 by Karen Fischer
The official version of the full Eigenfactor web site is now available online at http://www.eigenfactor.org/. Eigenfactor.org is a non-commercial academic research project sponsored by the Bergstrom lab in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington which aims to develop novel methods for evaluating the influence of scholarly periodicals and for mapping the structure of academic research. The Eigenfactor web site now covers all 7000+ journals in the 2004 Science and Social Science JCR, and also covers 110,000+ reference items cited by these journals but not listed in the JCR.
The web site also provides information on the value-per-dollar that journals provide. Users can click on any journal title, and see a popup with more information, including full information about price, publisher, and value provided, courtesy of Ted Bergstrom and Preston McAfee’s http://www.journalprices.com/.
Why Eigenfactor?
1. Eigenfactor ranks journals much as Google ranks websites. Scholarly references join journals together in a vast network of citations. Eigenfactor uses the structure of the entire network (instead of purely local citation information) to evaluate the importance of each journal.
2. Eigenfactor contains 115,000 reference items. Eigenfactor not only ranks scholarly journals in the natural and social sciences, but also lists newsprint, PhD theses, popular magazines and more. In so doing, it more fairly values those journals bridging the gap between the social and natural sciences.
3. Eigenfactor corrects for differences in citation patterns across disciplines. Different disciplines have different standards for citation and different time scales on which citations occur. The average article in a leading cell biology journal might receive 10-30 citations within two years; the average article in leading mathematics journal would do very well to receive 2 citations over the same period. By using the whole citation network, Eigenfactor automatically accounts for these differences and allows better comparison across research areas.
4. Eigenfactor uses 5-year citation data. In many research areas, articles are not frequently cited until several years after publication. Therefore, measures that only look at citations in the first two years after publication can be be misleading. Eigenfactor is calculated based on the citations received over a five year period.
5. Eigenfactor provides information about journal prices. In collaboration with journalprices.com, Eigenfactor provides information about price and value for thousands of scholarly periodicals.
6. Eigenfactor is completely free and completely searchable.
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