24 new projects funded by BMBF under the “Open Access as standard” grant line | open-access.network

Overview of 24 new BMBF-funded projects published under funding guideline for a vivid open access culture

Under the guideline for the promotion of a lived open access culture in research and science practice, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports 24 projects. These establish science-supported financing models, contribute to increasing the recognition of open access in science and addressing the diverse needs of an open access culture. The currently funded projects are dedicated to the professionalisation, dissemination and increasing institutionalisation of sustainable open access structures. According to the BMBF, they are thereby contributing to the cultural change of scientific publishing towards more open access. A large part of the projects are suitable for the 1st September 2023.

Further information on the content of the individual projects can be found on the BMBF website: https://www.bildung-forschung.digital/digitalezukunft/de/wissen/open-access/projektstart-24-project-open-access-kultur/projektstart-open-access-kultur/projektstart-open-access-kultur.html

 

Übersicht zu 24 neuen BMBF-geförderten Projekten unter Förderrichtlinie für eine gelebte Open-Access-Kultur veröffentlicht

 

Unter der Richtlinie zur Förderung einer gelebten Open-Access-Kultur in der Forschungs- und Wissenschaftspraxis unterstützt das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) 24 Projekte. Diese etablieren wissenschaftsgetragene Finanzierungsmodelle, tragen zur Erhöhung der Anerkennung von Open Access in der Wissenschaft bei und gehen auf die vielfältigen Bedarfe einer Open-Access-Kultur ein. Die aktuell geförderten Projekte widmen sich der Professionalisierung, Verbreitung und zunehmenden Institutionalisierung nachhaltiger Open-Access-Strukturen. Dadurch tragen sie laut BMBF zum Kulturwandel des wissenschaftlichen Publizierens hin zu mehr Open Access bei. Ein Großteil der Vorhaben ist zum 1. September 2023 gestartet.

Weiterführende Informationen zu den Inhalten der einzelnen Projekte finden Sie auf der Webpräsenz des BMBF: https://www.bildung-forschung.digital/digitalezukunft/de/wissen/open-access/projektstart_24_vorhaben_open_access_kultur/projektstart_24_vorhaben_open_access_kultur.html
Eine weitere Übersicht zu Open-Access-Projekten, auf der sich bereits auch ein Teil der 24 BMBF-geförderten Projekte findet, haben wir auf unserer Website bereitgestellt. Sie wird fortlaufend aktualisiert: https://open-access.network/vernetzen/open-access-projekte

 

Job: Product Manager Wikibase Cloud (f/m(d) | Wikimedia Deutschland – Gesellschaft zur Fo?rderung Freien Wissens e.V. | softgarden

For our product team, based in Berlin, we are looking for a permanent Product Manager Wikibase Cloud (f/m(d), full-time or part-time (min. 35 h per week), as soon as possible.

About the position & the team:

You will be the Product Manager of Wikibase Cloud. Imagine a versatile digital platform that acts as a knowledge hub, allowing you to organise and share various types of data effortlessly. At its core, Wikibase is like a powerful toolbox that offers a collaborative space for individuals and groups to contribute, edit, and curate data in a structured way. With Wikibase, we are enabling the co-creation of the world’s largest knowledge graph of free and open data which will be used to open up new knowledge pathways for the world.

You can look at existing projects on Wikibase Cloud here.

You can have a look at Wikimedia’s Linked Open Data vision here.

The Wikibase Cloud team is composed of engineers, a UX researcher and a UX designer, as well as a mix of stakeholders concerned with community and partner management. You will be the sole Product Manager for this team, collaborating closely with the Engineering Manager and the Wikibase Suite Product Manager. You will also be a part of the Product Management team, and report to a Head of Product.

 

What you’ll be doing:

You are responsible for the product vision and strategy of Wikibase Cloud
You will understand the landscape in which Wikibase Cloud exists, as well as become an expert on the desires and problems of Wikibase users
You will define objectives and success criteria, which you will then use to measure the impact of the team’s initiatives
You will closely collaborate on tasks and prioritise on a day-to-day basis with the agile team comprised of UX research, design and engineering 
You will align, structure and communicate the product roadmap for Wikibase Cloud and keep internal and external stakeholders updated on progress and status

What we offer:

A participative collaboration guided by our values: participation, diversity, free and open access, equity, sustainability and respectful collaboration
Benefits: 30 vacation days (25 for working students) and additional time off on Dec. 24th and New Year’s Eve, public transport ticket, access to our company pension scheme allowance, continued salary in the event of sick children
All overtime is recorded and converted into compensatory time off
An office located in the center of Berlin and hybrid work options
In-house training and continued professional development as well as free external life coaching (professional advice and coaching on job-related and private issues)

What makes you right for this role:

You have strong software product management experience
You are excellent at translating complex scenarios into easily understood problems to solve
You have strong communications skills which allow you to understand needs from users, internal and external stakeholders, and align and explain product decisions from their perspective
You are impact focused, and are able to translate data and insights into priorities to make solid data-driven decisions
You are a team player and can collaborate well with a diverse range of people

 

Interested?

Then apply now! Send us your detailed application documents (Resume & Motivational Letter (yes, we read them)) via our job portal. We kindly ask you to refrain from application photos and information on date of birth, marital status and parents.

 

EOSC Symposium 2024 – EOSC Association

“We are happy to announce that the EOSC Symposium 2024 will be held 21-23 October 2024, in Berlin. The EOSC Association, with the support of EOSC Focus, will assume the organisational responsibility for the EOSC Symposium in 2024, which will be a critical event on the path to EOSC post-2027. The EOSC Symposium 2024 will build on the success and momentum established by the 2023 event, organised as in previous years by the EOSC Future project, while also expanding the potential for on-site participation.”

DEAL Consortium and Wiley Sign New 5-Year Open Access Agreement

“The DEAL Consortium and scholarly publisher Wiley today announced the signing of a new five-year agreement which will allow scientists from German academic institutions to publish their research open access (OA) within Wiley’s portfolio of scientific journals. Instituted by the Alliance of German Science Organizations the DEAL Consortium is open to more than 900 mostly publicly funded academic institutions in Germany. Signed by Wiley and MPDL Services gGmbH as the DEAL Operating Entity, the new agreement will begin in January 2024, offering further support for the needs of the scholarly community and accelerate the open access transformation.

The new agreement continues the successful collaboration that started in 2019 and through which by now over 38,000 articles have been published open access. It will provide authors at participating German institutions with open access publishing options across Wiley’s portfolio alongside read access to all Wiley journal content. The new agreement will also:

Support institutions in the transition to OA, honoring the immense value learned societies bring to the scholarly community.
Enhance infrastructure, including robust workflows to support authors, librarians and open access administrators.
Support participating institutions with bespoke training and continuing collaboration with the Wiley DEAL Advisory Board to monitor success….”

bjoern.brembs.blog » German funder DFG: Why the sudden inconsistency?

“Given this long and consistent track-record, now complemented by two major official statements, one could be forgiven to think that applicants for funding at the DFG now feel assured that they will not be judged by their publication venues any longer. After all, journal prestige is correlated with experimental unreliability, so using it as an indicator clearly constitutes “inappropriate use of journal-based metrics”. With all this history, it came as a shock to many when earlier this year, one of the DFG panels deciding which grant proposals get funded, published an article in the German LaborJournal magazine that seemed to turn the long, hard work of the DFG in this area on its head….”

What is Open Science for? – OSI Lübeck

“When we ask people what open science is, we typically receive a broad variety of responses, ranging from “it’s about making sure people can read your papers for free (open access)” to “you have to make your data available (RDM)” to “that’s really complicated to describe”. The truth is that open science is all of these things and more, but it is not necessarily complicated. In her talk ‘What is Open Science for? Introducing Helio, Science Reading and Problem Arcs‘ on Nov. 29 at 2 p.m. Monica Gonzalez-Marquez will present Helio as a model that clearly and quickly explains the goals of the open science movement in contrast to the current scientific dissemination system. She will delve into the real questions involving the pragmatics of adopting open science as the paradigm for scientific practice. As such, she will discuss the implementation of the two primary functions of an open scientific knowledge base: comprehension and documentation….”

Working Group Coordinator (f/m/d) – CoARA – Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development

“The Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) is a non-university research institute in the field of the spatial sciences and a member of the Leibniz Association. Our subject is the sustainable development and transformation of cities and regions in the context of the global human-ecological crisis.

Research assessment forms a crucial lever for the transformation of science systems with a view to strengthen their sustainability orientation. Contrary to the prevailing focus on quantitative evaluation processes, practices and metrics there is a need to acknowledge the diversity of research contributions, their specific qualities and impacts. This has long been recognized by initiatives such as the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Leiden Manifesto. In 2022, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has been formed as an important step towards implementation. Together with diverse inter-/national partners, the IOER is leading a new CoARA working subgroup on the topic of “transdisciplinarity”. It is part of the integrated Working Group “Towards Transformations: Transdisciplinarity, Applied/Practice-Based Research, and Impacts” (see: https://coara.eu). …”

Governments turn to Open Source for sovereignty | OpenSource.net

The German government has launched a new Open Source software project called openDesk, which aims to reduce the country’s dependency on proprietary software vendors and support transparency and interoperability.

openDesk is a collection of Open Source software modules that are important for day-to-day work in the public sector, such as text creation, file collaboration, project management, email, calendar and messaging.

[…]

 

The role of gender and coauthors in academic publication behavior – ScienceDirect

Abstract:  This paper contributes to the literature on differences in publication behavior of male and female scientists by examining two natural experiments in Germany that exogenously varied the attractiveness of journals. As a result of transformative open access publication agreements, journals published by Springer Nature and Wiley became more attractive as outlets for authors in Germany, while Elsevier journals lost some of their attractiveness within Germany due to substantial cancellations by university libraries. Studying 243,375 published articles in economics between 2015 and 2022, our findings suggests that men tend to seek reputation, while women favor visibility through open access, at least at the margin. While authorship in teams can dilute these behavioral patterns, female economists publish more single-authored papers. Overall female researchers appear to contribute more to the public good of open science, while their male colleagues focus on private reputation. These findings may offer an additional explanatory channel for the academic gender gap.

 

 

Introduction | Open Text Collections

“Next to grammars and dictionaries, text collections are one of the three elements of the Boasian trilogy of language description. The platform Open Text Collections will host a selection of the best text collections. Texts will undergo peer review in the regional boards (currently Africa, South America, North America, Eurasia, Caucasus, Oceania). Accepted text collections will be available in HTML, PDF and print-on-demand books. Additionally, a data dump of the entirety of collections will be available.

We will produce at least 10 text collections during the funding period, but hope to be able to deliver many more….”

20 Jahre nach der Berliner Erklärung für Open Access – iRights.info

Open Access für öffentliche Forschung und Kultur: Zwei Jahrzehnte ist es schon her, dass sich zahlreiche Organisationen in der Berliner Erklärung dafür aussprachen. Wie weit ist die Öffnung tatsächlich gekommen? Und was gilt es weiterhin zu tun? Spannende Fragen, die Berliner und Brandenburger Vertreter*innen aus Wissenschaft und Kultur letzte Woche diskutierten.

Wiley and German DEAL Consortium to Sign New 5-Year Agreement | John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

“Wiley (NYSE: WLY) today announced its intent to enter a new five-year agreement with the DEAL Consortium, a countrywide consortium representative of more than 1,000 academic institutions in Germany, commencing January 2024. Wiley and DEAL are creating a blueprint for the next phase of open access publishing to better meet the evolving needs of the scholarly community.

Wiley was the first publisher to sign an agreement with DEAL, which makes this partnership the most robust and long-lasting in Germany. Their new agreement will continue to provide authors at German institutions with open access publishing options across Wiley’s portfolio. This includes read access to all Wiley journal content….”

New Forum 13+ and Taylor & Francis Transformative Agreement to Realize the Benefits of Open Access for Germany’s Researchers – Taylor & Francis Newsroom

“Researchers in Germany will see a major boost to the reach and impact of their work as they join authors in other European countries benefitting from Taylor & Francis open access (OA) agreements.

A German library negotiation team under the umbrella of Forum 13+ and Taylor & Francis have announced a new three-year ‘read & publish’ deal, to begin in 2024. This will ensure researchers have continued access to Taylor & Francis journals and can choose OA for their articles in more than 2,000 Open Select (hybrid) titles.

These include journals under the Routledge imprint, one of the world’s largest Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) portfolios. It is anticipated that over 60% of articles published open access through the agreement will be in HSS subjects.

The agreement’s publishing allocation has been designed to enable all new articles with a corresponding author at one of the participating institutions to be made open access in hybrid Taylor & Francis journals.

German higher education and research institutions are now invited to join a consortium, with almost a hundred signaling their intention to do so during a consultation on the deal over the summer.

The consortium will be established and managed by the ZBW – Information Centre for Economics, a research-based information infrastructure for economics and a member of the German Leibniz Association….”

Dobusch & Heimstädt (2023) The structural transformation of the scientific public sphere: Constitution and consequences of the path towards open access

Dobusch, L., & Heimstädt, M. (2023). The structural transformation of the scientific public sphere: Constitution and consequences of the path towards open access. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537231203558

Abstract

We are currently witnessing a fundamental structural transformation of the scientific public sphere, characterized by processes of specialization, metrification, internationalization, platformization and visibilization. In contrast to explanations of this structural transformation that invoke a technological determinism, we demonstrate its historical contingency by drawing on analytic concepts from organization theory and the case of the Open Access transformation in Germany. The digitization of academic journals has not broadened access to scientific output but narrowed it down even further in the course of the ‘serials crisis’. For a long time, research institutions were not able to convince large academic publishers to adopt less restrictive forms of access to academic journals. It was only through the emergence of new and in part illegal actors (shadow libraries and preprint servers) that the existing path could be broken, and an Open Access path constituted. Following this analysis, we discuss consequences of the Open Access transformation for the public spheres of science and democracy. We conclude that Open Access publishing can only help to transform both communicative spaces towards the normative ideal of a public sphere when complemented by systematic support for non-profit publication infrastructures.

Konferenz „Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Open-Access-Publizieren“ | Zenodo

Slides from the “Satellite Conference on ‘Scholar-Led Open Access Publishing’ for the Open Access Days 2023” in Berlin are now online. / Folien der Satelliten-Konferenz „Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Open-Access-Publizieren“ zu den Open-Access-Tagen 2023 sind online.