Category Archives: oa.osf

Open-access science in the misinformation era

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“While open-access science has made research available worldwide, some scholars worry that misinformation, fraud and politicization have become rampant in a system that rewards speed and sparkle….

In a widely discussed Scholarly Kitchen piece published last week, Schonfeld said that misinformation, politicization and other problems embedded in the open-access movement stem from a “mismatch” between the incentives in science and the ways in which “openness and politicization are bringing science into the public discourse.” …

While open access has democratized science, to good effect — making research available to sick patients interested in learning more about their condition or to scientists working in the Global South — it also has had “second-order effects” that are more concerning, he said.

“It’s now easier for scientific literature to be quoted and used in all sorts of political discourse,” Schonfeld said in an interview. “When the methods of scholarly publishing that we use today were first formed, there was no sense that there was going to be a kind of politicized discourse looking for opportunities to misinform the public and intentionally cause disunity.” …”

New OSF enhancements for community-developed, open source infrastructure

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“Not only do researchers use OSF as a tool to accelerate science by collaborating, managing and sharing their research; they’re also stakeholders in its sustainable development through the ability to access, review, interact with, and contribute to OSF’s open source code. 

By its nature, open source infrastructure is community oriented. The transparent OSF code invites the community of researchers and science stakeholders working to increase rigor and reproducibility to contribute code and ideas to enhance functionality, and benefit from the enhanced security and reliability by their involvement and review throughout the development process. These communities of researchers trust the OSF, and support it by maintaining its alignment to their needs by providing feedback and extending its use through third-party integrations. This continuum is propelled as OSF’s community of developers, users, and partners work together toward a shared vision: to accelerate scientific progress.

Together, an inclusive and open technology enables communities to embrace transparent and rigorous research practices with assurance that the infrastructure embodies the same principles of openness, transparency, and inclusion. As such, we prioritize the transparent development of an OSF experience that facilitates sustainability and mitigates technical barriers to the adoption of open and rigorous practices. 

A recent example of these priorities in action is the new Central Authentication Service (CAS) update for OSF, a state-of-the-art authentication framework that enhances the OSF login interface and brings a smoother, faster integration experience with external identity providers like ORCID and research institutions….”

New OSF enhancements for community-developed, open source infrastructure

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“Not only do researchers use OSF as a tool to accelerate science by collaborating, managing and sharing their research; they’re also stakeholders in its sustainable development through the ability to access, review, interact with, and contribute to OSF’s open source code. 

By its nature, open source infrastructure is community oriented. The transparent OSF code invites the community of researchers and science stakeholders working to increase rigor and reproducibility to contribute code and ideas to enhance functionality, and benefit from the enhanced security and reliability by their involvement and review throughout the development process. These communities of researchers trust the OSF, and support it by maintaining its alignment to their needs by providing feedback and extending its use through third-party integrations. This continuum is propelled as OSF’s community of developers, users, and partners work together toward a shared vision: to accelerate scientific progress.

Together, an inclusive and open technology enables communities to embrace transparent and rigorous research practices with assurance that the infrastructure embodies the same principles of openness, transparency, and inclusion. As such, we prioritize the transparent development of an OSF experience that facilitates sustainability and mitigates technical barriers to the adoption of open and rigorous practices. 

A recent example of these priorities in action is the new Central Authentication Service (CAS) update for OSF, a state-of-the-art authentication framework that enhances the OSF login interface and brings a smoother, faster integration experience with external identity providers like ORCID and research institutions….”

New Social Enterprise Seeks to Expand Affordable Global Access to Health Care – Open Society Foundations

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“A group of philanthropic funds and investors led by the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is today announcing the launch of Global Access Health (GAH), a social enterprise that will seek to expand access to affordable state-of-the-art medical technology through decentralized research, development, and manufacturing in and for the Global South….

The transaction is important in that it transitions a world-class for-profit company into a social enterprise and allows it to entirely reinvest its profits in pursuing these goals. This transformation will give it the ability to address gaps in the provision of global diagnostics in low-income communities and regions that profit-focused business has failed to address….”

Analyzing Education Data with Open Science Best Practices, R, and OSF | OER Commons

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“Overview: The webinar features Dr. Joshua Rosenberg from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Dr. Cynthia D’Angelo from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discussing best practices examples for using R. They will present: a) general strategies for using R to analyze educational data and b) accessing and using data on the Open Science Framework (OSF) with R via the osfr package. This session is for those both new to R and those with R experience looking to learn more about strategies and workflows that can help to make it possible to analyze data in a more transparent, reliable, and trustworthy way.”

UMD partners on Open Science Framework – News | UMD Libraries

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“The University of Maryland Libraries and the Division of Research are pleased to announce that UMD is now an institutional partner of the Open Science Framework (OSF), an online research management and collaboration platform from the Center for Open Science. The OSF system makes it easier for UMD researchers to manage projects throughout their life cycles and to collaborate with others across institutions, with an overarching goal of making more research outputs and data transparent, discoverable, and reusable. UMD researchers can log into the new OSF portal at https://osf.umd.edu/, using their university credentials….”

The Open Research Lifecycle | Center for Open Science – YouTube

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“Open science reduces waste and accelerates the discovery of knowledge, solutions, and cures for the world’s most pressing needs. Shifting research culture toward greater openness, transparency, and reproducibility is challenging, but there are incremental steps at every stage of the research lifecycle that can improve rigor and reduce waste. Visit cos.io to learn more.”

Preprints in the public eye – ASAPbio

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“Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints are being shared, reported on, and used to shape government policy, all at unprecedented rates and journalists are now regularly citing preprints in their pandemic coverage. As well as putting preprints squarely in the public eye as never before, presenting a unique opportunity to educate researchers and the public about their value, the rise in reporting of research posted as preprints has also brought into focus the question of how research is scrutinised and validated. Traditional journal peer review has its shortcomings and the number of ways research can be evaluated is expanding.  This can be a problem for journalists and non-specialist readers who sometimes don’t fully understand the difference between preprints peer-reviewed articles and different forms of peer review. Media coverage can result in the sharing of information which may later not stand up to scientific scrutiny, leading to misunderstanding, misinformation and the risk of damaging the public perception of preprints and the scientific process.

ASAPbio, with support from the Open Society Foundations, aims to consolidate and expand on existing efforts to set best practice standards for reporting research posted as preprints via the launch of our Preprints in the Public Eye project.  Read more in the project announcement.  To get involved, email Project Coordinator Jigisha Patel at jigisha.patel@asapbio.org….”

Preprints in the public eye – ASAPbio

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“Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints are being shared, reported on, and used to shape government policy, all at unprecedented rates and journalists are now regularly citing preprints in their pandemic coverage. As well as putting preprints squarely in the public eye as never before, presenting a unique opportunity to educate researchers and the public about their value, the rise in reporting of research posted as preprints has also brought into focus the question of how research is scrutinised and validated. Traditional journal peer review has its shortcomings and the number of ways research can be evaluated is expanding.  This can be a problem for journalists and non-specialist readers who sometimes don’t fully understand the difference between preprints peer-reviewed articles and different forms of peer review. Media coverage can result in the sharing of information which may later not stand up to scientific scrutiny, leading to misunderstanding, misinformation and the risk of damaging the public perception of preprints and the scientific process.

ASAPbio, with support from the Open Society Foundations, aims to consolidate and expand on existing efforts to set best practice standards for reporting research posted as preprints via the launch of our Preprints in the Public Eye project.  Read more in the project announcement.  To get involved, email Project Coordinator Jigisha Patel at jigisha.patel@asapbio.org….”

Open Science: Promises and Performance| Qualtrics Survey Solutions

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“Although many scientists and organisations endorse this notion, progress has been slow. Some of my research explores the barriers that have impeded progress and makes recommendations to encourage future success. This  survey forms part of that work and addresses a variety of issues, including attitudes towards data storage and access, the role of journals in open science, and associated ethical issues. 

Those interested in scientific progress are invited to take part, and participation should take less than 10 minutes. Responses will be anonymous and participants can withdraw at any time.

The findings from the survey will be submitted to open access journal and made available as open access preprint. The raw data will be lodged with the Open Science Foundation …”

Preprints in the Public Eye – ASAPbio

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“Today, we’re pleased to announce the launch of a project on the use of preprints in the media with support from the Open Society Foundations. 

Premature media coverage was the top concern about preprints in our recent #biopreprints2020 survey, for both those who had published their research as preprints and for those who had not….

ASAPbio, with support from the Open Society Foundations, now aims to consolidate and expand on existing efforts to set best practice standards for preprints via the launch of our Preprints in the Public Eye project. We are calling for involvement from researchers, journalists, institutions, librarians, funding agencies, and more to work on the following three main aims or the project:

To improve the transparency and clarity of how preprints are labelled so that readers understand what checks have and have not been made on a preprint.
To agree a set of best practice guidelines for researchers and institutions on how to work with journalists on research reported as preprints.
To agree a set of best practice guidelines for journalists on how to assess and report on research posted as preprints….”

Online Short-Seminar: Research Management with Open Science Framework – Countway LibCal – Harvard Library. Countway Library of Medicine

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“The Open Science Framework (OSF) is a free, open source project management tool to help scholars manage their workflow, organize their materials, and share all or part of a project with the broader research community. The tool connects to many other tools researchers often use such as: GitHub, Dropbox, ORCID, Zotero, Dataverse, and many more.

This workshop will provide a foundation for incorporating reproducible, transparent practices into your current workflows. We will demonstrate some of the key functionalities of the tool including how to structure your materials, manage permissions, version content, integrate with third-party tools, share materials, and track usage.

Learning Objectives: 

Learn how OSF facilitates reproducible research practices
Demonstrate some of the key functionalities of OSF
Apply OSF as a tool for best practices in data management
Find out where to get help or assistance …”

Looking back at 20 years of EIFL | EIFL

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” “In an unprecedented initiative called ‘Electronic Information for Libraries’ (EIFL Direct), libraries in 39 countries will have access to a wealth of electronic full-text scholarly journals.” This announcement, by press release, marked the birth of EIFL 20 years ago, on 5 October 1999. 

At that time I was working at the Open Society Institute, part of the Soros foundations network. We were receiving applications from ex-Soviet Union university libraries requesting grants to subscribe to print journals. There was a dilemma: the subscriptions were not cheap, and they only lasted for one year. So these grants were not sustainable in the long term, and we knew that there were thousands of libraries in other developing countries that also needed, and wanted, to have access to the latest scholarly information. A few years later, the shift from print to digital in the publishing industry began and we saw an opportunity to solve the problem. The Open Society Institute negotiated with EBSCO, a large content aggregator, for a 99% discount to online journals for all libraries in countries where Soros foundations existed, as well as free delivery of the content on DVD-ROM to those libraries with poor internet connectivity. At last we were able to provide access to more than 3,500 full-text journals. …”