Category: Open Science

"University of California Academic Council Statement on the University’s Negotiations with Elsevier Publishing"

The Academic Council of the Academic Senate of the University of California has released "University of California Academic Council Statement on the University's Negotiations with Elsevier Publishing."

Here's an excerpt:

The Academic Council of the Academic Senate of the University of California (UC), hereby signals its collective and resolute commitment to support UC's negotiating position with Elsevier in order to advance UC's mission as a public institution, make the products of our research and scholarship as freely and widely available as possible, and ensure that UC spends taxpayer money in the most ethically, morally, and socially-responsible way when entering into agreements with commercial publishers. . . .

At the present time, UC and Elsevier have reached an impasse in their negotiations and our contract has lapsed. Nonetheless, the Academic Council of the Academic Senate stands firm in its conviction that a comprehensive transformative agreement that covers all Elsevier titles is required to achieve the aspirations embodied in the Academic Senate's Open Access Policy, and articulated by the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication (UCOLASC) in its Declaration of Rights and Principles, and by the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Committee (SLASIAC) in its Call to Action. We support the unified strategies of the UC libraries to ameliorate the negative effects of the impasse on faculty, researchers, and students, and applaud their efforts to closely monitor alternative access along with the impacts it may have on research and teaching. . . .

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"Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier; Stands Firm with Projekt DEAL Negotiations"

The Max Planck Digital Library has released Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier; Stands Firm with Projekt DEAL Negotiations.

Here's an excerpt:

The President and scientific council members of the Max Planck Society (MPS), one of the world's largest research performing organizations, counting 14,000 scientists who publish 12K new research articles a year—around 1500 of which in Elsevier journals, have mandated the Max Planck Digital Library to discontinue their Elsevier subscription when the current agreement expires on December 31, 2018. With this move the Society joins nearly 200 universities and research institutions in Germany who have already cancelled their individual agreements with Elsevier in the course of 2016 and 2017 and affirmed their support of the national licensing framework Projekt DEAL, led by the German Rector’s Conference.

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Reimagined Universities in an “Open, Networked Era”: "The Principles of Tomorrow’s University"

Daniel S. Katz et al. have published "The Principles of Tomorrow's University" [awaiting peer review] in F1000Research.

Here's an excerpt:

In March 2017, 13 mostly early-career research leaders who are building their careers around these traits came together with ten university leaders (presidents, vice presidents, and vice provosts), representatives from four funding agencies, and eleven organizers and other stakeholders in an NIH- and NSF-funded one-day, invitation-only workshop titled "Imagining Tomorrow’s University."…

During the workshop, the participants reimagined scholarship, education, and institutions for an open, networked era, to uncover new opportunities for universities to create value and serve society. They expressed the results of these deliberations as a set of 22 principles of tomorrow's university across six areas: Credit and Attribution (A), Open Scholarship Communities (C), Outreach and Engagement (O), Education (E), Preservation and Reproducibility (P), and Technologies (T):

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"Do Authors Comply When Funders Enforce Open Access to Research?"

Vincent Larivière and Cassidy R. Sugimoto have published "Do Authors Comply When Funders Enforce Open Access to Research?" in Nature.

Here's an excerpt:

Of the more than 1.3 million papers we identified as subject to the selected funders' open-access mandates, we found that some two-thirds were indeed freely available to read.

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"Developing a Business Plan for a Library Publishing Program"

Kate McCready and Emma Molls have published "Developing a Business Plan for a Library Publishing Program" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Over the last twenty years, library publishing has emerged in higher education as a new class of publisher. Conceived as a response to commercial publishing practices that have strained library budgets and prevented scholars from openly licensing and sharing their works, library publishing is both a local service program and a broader movement to disrupt the current scholarly publishing arena. It is growing both in numbers of publishers and numbers of works produced. The commercial publishing framework which determines the viability of monetizing a product is not necessarily applicable for library publishers who exist as a common good to address the needs of their academic communities. Like any business venture, however, library publishers must develop a clear service model and business plan in order to create shared expectations for funding streams, quality markers, as well as technical and staff capacity. As the field is maturing from experimental projects to full programs, library publishers are formalizing their offerings and limitations. The anatomy of a library publishing business plan is presented and includes the principles of the program, scope of services, and staffing requirements. Other aspects include production policies, financial structures, and measures of success.

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"Identifying the Challenges in Implementing Open Science"

Sarah E. Ali-Khan et al. have published "Identifying the Challenges in Implementing Open Science in MNI Open Research (awaiting peer review)."

Here's an excerpt:

In October 2017, thought-leaders from across the world gathered at an Open Science Leadership Forum in the Washington DC office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to share their views on what successful OS looks like. We focused on OS partnerships as this is an emerging model that aims to accelerate science and innovation. These outcomes are captured in a first meeting report: Defining Success in Open Science.

On several occasions, these conversations turned to the challenges that must be addressed and new policies required to effectively and sustainably advance OS practice. Thereupon, in this report, we describe the concerns raised and what is needed to address them supplemented by our review of the literature, and suggest the stakeholder groups that may be best placed to begin to take action. It emerges that to be successful, OS will require the active engagement of all stakeholders: while the research community must develop research questions, identify partners and networks, policy communities need to create an environment that is supportive of experimentation by removing barriers.

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European Commission’s OA Plan S: "Academic Freedom and Responsibility: Why Plan S Is Not Unethical"

Stephen Curry, has published "Academic Freedom and Responsibility: Why Plan S Is Not Unethical" in Reciprocal Space.

Here's an excerpt:

Since its announcement on 4th September the European Commission's plan to make a radical shift towards open access (OA) has caused quite a stir. Backed by eleven* national funding agencies, the plan aims to make the research that they support free to read as soon as it is published. This is a major challenge to the status quo, since the funders are effectively placing subscription journals off limits for their researchers, even if the journals allow green OA (publication of the author-accepted manuscript) after an embargo period; Plan S also specifically excludes hybrid open access except in cases where journals have an agreed schedule for flipping to OA. The plan has been welcomed as "admirably strong" by OA advocate Peter Suber, though he has also offered cautionary notes on some aspects. Others have been less enthusiastic. A central charge, from some publishers and some academics is that Plan S is an infringement of academic freedom to choose how and where your work is published and it therefore unethical.

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"In Passing A.B. 2192, California Leads the Country in Open Access"

EFF has released "In Passing A.B. 2192, California Leads the Country in Open Access."

Here's an excerpt:

Under A.B. 2192—which passed both houses unanimously—all peer-reviewed, scientific research funded by the state of California would be made available to the public no later than one year after publication. There’s a similar law on the books in California right now, but it only applies to research funded by the Department of Public Health, and it’s set to expire in 2020. A.B. 2192 would extend it indefinitely and expand it to cover research funded by any state agency.

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"Towards a Culture of Open Science and Data Sharing in Health and Medical Research"

Anisa Rowhani-Farid has self-archived "Towards a Culture of Open Science and Data Sharing in Health and Medical Research."

Here's an excerpt:

This [Ph.D] thesis investigated the factors that contribute to the cultural shift towards open science and data sharing in health and medical research, with a focus on the role health and medical journals play. The findings of this research demonstrate that journal data sharing policies are not effective and that journals do not currently provide incentives for sharing. This study contributed to the movement towards more reproducible research by providing empirical evidence for the strengthening of journal data sharing policies and the adoption of an incentive for open research.

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Science as an Open Enterprise

The Royal Society has released Science as an Open Enterprise.

Here's an excerpt:

This report analyses the impact of new and emerging technologies that are transforming the conduct and communication of research. The recommendations are designed to improve the conduct of science, respond to changing public expectations and political culture and enable researchers to maximise the impact of their research. They are designed to ensure that reproducibility and self-correction are maintained in an era of massive data volumes. They aim to stimulate the communication and collaboration where these are needed to maximise the value of data-intensive approaches to science.

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"Open Science Support as a Portfolio of Services and Projects: From Awareness to Engagement"

Birgit Schmidt et al. have published "Open Science Support as a Portfolio of Services and Projects: From Awareness to Engagement" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Together with many other universities worldwide, the University of Gõttingen has aimed to unlock the full potential of networked digital scientific communication by strengthening open access as early as the late 1990s. Open science policies at the institutional level consequently followed and have been with us for over a decade. However, for several reasons, their adoption often is still far from complete when it comes to the practices of researchers or research groups. To improve this situation at our university, there is dedicated support at the infrastructural level: the university library collaborates with several campus units in developing and running services, activities and projects in support of open access and open science. This article outlines our main activity areas and aligns them with the overall rationale to reach higher uptake and acceptance of open science practice at the university. The mentioned examples of our activities highlight how we seek to advance open science along the needs and perspectives of diverse audiences and by running it as a multi-stakeholder endeavor. Therefore, our activities involve library colleagues with diverse backgrounds, faculty and early career researchers, research managers, as well as project and infrastructure staff. We conclude with a summary of achievements and challenges to be faced.

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"Data Management and Sharing in Neuroimaging: Practices and Perceptions of MRI Researchers"

John A. Borghi and Ana E. Van Gulick have published "Data Management and Sharing in Neuroimaging: Practices and Perceptions of MRI Researchers" in PLOS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

Neuroimaging methods such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) involve complex data collection and analysis protocols, which necessitate the establishment of good research data management (RDM). Despite efforts within the field to address issues related to rigor and reproducibility, information about the RDM-related practices and perceptions of neuroimaging researchers remains largely anecdotal. To inform such efforts, we conducted an online survey of active MRI researchers that covered a range of RDM-related topics. Survey questions addressed the type(s) of data collected, tools used for data storage, organization, and analysis, and the degree to which practices are defined and standardized within a research group. Our results demonstrate that neuroimaging data is acquired in multifarious forms, transformed and analyzed using a wide variety of software tools, and that RDM practices and perceptions vary considerably both within and between research groups, with trainees reporting less consistency than faculty. Ratings of the maturity of RDM practices from ad-hoc to refined were relatively high during the data collection and analysis phases of a project and significantly lower during the data sharing phase. Perceptions of emerging practices including open access publishing and preregistration were largely positive, but demonstrated little adoption into current practice.

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"Supporting the Proliferation of Data-Sharing Scholars in the Research Ecosystem"

Ali Krzton has published "Supporting the Proliferation of Data-Sharing Scholars in the Research Ecosystem" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Librarians champion the value of openness in scholarship and have been powerful advocates for the sharing of research data. College and university administrators have recently joined in the push for data sharing due to funding mandates. However, the researchers who create and control the data usually determine whether and how data is shared, so it is worthwhile to look at what they are incentivized to do. The current scholarly publishing landscape plus the promotion and tenure process create a "prisoner’s dilemma" for researchers as they decide whether or not to share data, consistent with the observation that researchers in general are eager for others to share data but reluctant to do so themselves. If librarians encourage researchers to share data and promote openness without simultaneously addressing the academic incentive structure, those who are intrinsically motivated to share data will be selected against via the promotion and tenure process. This will cause those who are hostile to sharing to be disproportionately recruited into the senior ranks of academia. To mitigate the risk of this unintended consequence, librarians must advocate for a change in incentives alongside the call for greater openness. Highly-cited datasets must be given similar weight to highly-cited articles in promotion and tenure decisions in order for researchers to reap the rewards of their sharing. Librarians can help by facilitating data citation to track the impact of datasets and working to persuade higher administration of the value of rewarding data sharing in tenure and promotion.

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