The pilot phase of SCOAP3 for Books has demonstrated the power of open access to help authors boost the readership and reach of their books. The average annual usage of the 19 Taylor & Francis titles in the pilot leapt by over 3,000% for 2021 and 2022, compared with the usage in the three years before they were converted to OA. Open access also made these titles available in regions where library budgets are limited, resulting in a five-fold increase in the average number of countries accessing the content.
Category Archives: oa.cern
National open science policies in Africa – Existing or in preparation
Several slide presentations 1st UNESCO Working Group on Open Science Policies and Policy Instruments, May 23, 2022.
Accelerating the Adoption of Open Science (10-July 14, 2023): Overview · Indico
“In celebration of the 2023 Year of Open Science, NASA’s new scientific information policy and the associated Transform to Open Science (TOPS) mission, and to mark the publication of CERN’s first comprehensive Open Science Policy, the two organizations are hosting a week-long event entitled “Accelerating the Adoption of Open Science”, from July 10th-14th at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The overall goal of the event is to engage a range of relevant stakeholders in the physical sciences to actively exchange experiences, ideas, and expertise toward promoting open science policies and practices. Specifically, the event will aim to put the diverse range of attendees on a clearer path towards developing action plans on open science for their respective institutions.”
Zenodo: Celebrating our 10th Anniversary
“Zenodo was launched 10 years ago on May 8th by CERN and OpenAIRE. The goal since day one has been to enable any researcher from anywhere in the world to participate in practising open science. Today, 10 years later, Zenodo supports more than 300,000 researchers in 7500+ research organisations in 153 countries to do just that. A recent study[1] conservatively estimated the socio-economic impact of Zenodo in society to 95 million EUR per year but more likely close to 1 billion EUR/year. All in support of the mission to provide the platform for all researchers to publicly share their work and join the open science movement.
We always believed that research data should end up where researchers can care best for them, whether that be a subject/institute/national repository, but we also knew that gaps in the offerings still left an enormous quantity of research data with nowhere else to go, that we could usefully offer help to.
Zenodo is now a core enabler of open science practice by providing trusted long-term storage of research, especially to those in most need and without the means. CERN is a leader of Big Data storage, creating technologies at the scale frontier, already keeping almost 1 exabyte of high-energy physics data safe. By housing Zenodo in a corner of the CERN Data Centre, we use this expertise to share what we find easy with others that find it hard….”
The World Wide Web became available to the broader public 30 years ago : NPR
“But 30 years ago this week, that all changed. On April 30, 1993, something called the World Wide Web launched into the public domain….
CERN owned Berners-Lee’s invention…, and the lab had the option to license out the World Wide Web for profit. But Berners-Lee believed that keeping the web as open as possible would help it grow….
Berners-Lee eventually convinced CERN to release the World Wide Web into the public domain without any patents or fees. He has since attributed the runaway success of the web to that single decision….”
Update on Open Access for the CERN community
Zenodo’s Open Repository Streamlines Sharing Science – SPARC
“A decade ago, the scientific community recognized that to move from open access to open science, there was a need for free unrestricted access to scientific knowledge. This meant valuing, sharing and preserving data, software and other digital artifacts from research, but the on-ramp to participate had to be faster and simpler if the practice was going to gain traction.
The European Union decided to fund CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) through the OpenAIRE project to build a catch-all repository to ensure all researchers had a place to easily upload software, data, preprints and other digital outputs.
That was the beginning of Zenodo, which CERN and OpenAIRE launched in 2013. Since, the free global platform has expanded faster than imagined. It now has 25 million visits a year, hosts 3+ million uploads and over 1 petabyte of data. This year marks the platform’s 10th anniversary and today Zenodo is widely viewed as a trusted place to preserve research materials that could be of use to others in advancing science….”
Zenodo’s Open Repository Streamlines Sharing Science – SPARC
“A decade ago, the scientific community recognized that to move from open access to open science, there was a need for free unrestricted access to scientific knowledge. This meant valuing, sharing and preserving data, software and other digital artifacts from research, but the on-ramp to participate had to be faster and simpler if the practice was going to gain traction.
The European Union decided to fund CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) through the OpenAIRE project to build a catch-all repository to ensure all researchers had a place to easily upload software, data, preprints and other digital outputs.
That was the beginning of Zenodo, which CERN and OpenAIRE launched in 2013. Since, the free global platform has expanded faster than imagined. It now has 25 million visits a year, hosts 3+ million uploads and over 1 petabyte of data. This year marks the platform’s 10th anniversary and today Zenodo is widely viewed as a trusted place to preserve research materials that could be of use to others in advancing science….”
Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution
“CERN and Fermilab jointly plan to provide AlmaLinux as the standard distribution for experiments at our facilities, reflecting recent experience and discussions with experiments and other stakeholders. AlmaLinux has recently been gaining traction among the community due to its long life cycle for each major version, extended architecture support, rapid release cycle, upstream community contributions, and support for security advisory metadata. In testing, it has demonstrated to be perfectly compatible with the other rebuilds and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
CERN and, to a lesser extent, Fermilab, will also use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for some services and applications within the respective laboratories. Scientific Linux 7, at Fermilab, and CERN CentOS 7, at CERN, will continue to be supported for their remaining life, until June 2024….”
CERN and Fermilab Opt for AlmaLinux as Standard for Big Science
“CERN and Fermilab will make AlmaLinux the standard distribution for experiments at their facilities based on feedback from stakeholders.
Following CentOS’s withdrawal from the enterprise server distribution market, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux have emerged as the two best RHEL-based derivatives in this segment. As a result, it is not surprising that when looking for a free alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the choice frequently comes down to one of the two.
Probably two of the world’s leading scientific laboratories, the Swiss-based CERN and the US-based Fermilab, faced a similar dilemma….
Unfortunately, CERN and Fermilab do not disclose any additional details about the nature of the tests or the alternatives that led to the final choice to adopt AlmaLinux exclusively….”
Large Hadron Collider Beauty releases first set of data to the public
“While all scientific results from the LHCb collaboration are already publicly available through open access papers, the data used by the researchers to produce these results is now accessible to anyone in the world through the CERN open data portal. The data release is made in the context of CERN’s Open Science Policy….”
CERN opens new era in knowledge sharing – CERN Courier
“In September, CERN approved a new policy for open science, with immediate effect. Developed by the Open Science Strategy Working Group (OSWG), which includes members from CERN departments and experiments, the policy aims to make all CERN research fully accessible, reproducible, inclusive, democratic and transparent for both researchers and wider society. …”
CERN publishes comprehensive open science policy | CERN
CERN’s core values include making research open and accessible for everyone. A new policy now brings together existing open science initiatives to ensure a bright future based on transparency and collaboration at CERN.
CERN moves closer to achieving full open access | CERN
“Since 2014, CERN has required that all peer-reviewed primary research articles from CERN authors are published open access (OA), i.e. freely available for anyone around the world to read and re-use with appropriate attribution. This policy reflects the moral imperative of CERN as a publicly-funded organisation – supported by contributions from its Member States – to ensure that the results of our work accrue benefits to all.
I’m pleased to report that we are close to achieving full policy compliance: in 2021, 93.7% of the 1058 publications from CERN authors were published OA. …”
SCOAP3 Extended by Two Years
The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) program—the world’s largest disciplinary open access initiative—has been formally extended by two years, until December 31st, 2024.