Monthly Archives: May 2020

The Geek in Review Ep. 61 – Deep Dive on State Copyright Issues with Kyle Courtney and Ed Walters | 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Posted on by

“The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org and we take a deep dive into the issues in this matter. Kyle Courtney, Copyright Advisor at Harvard University, and Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase have strong opinions in this matter, and were both involved in submitting Amicus Briefs on behalf of Public.Resources.Org. Join us for this engaging and informative conversation as we look at what the arguments are from both sides, and how Justices’ questions may shape the outcome of this case.

For more information on this case, check out the oral argument transcript [PDF], or listen here, and a primer with supportive materials from Ed Waters’ on Medium.

 

We also catch up with Emily Feltren from the American Association of Law Libraries to hear what else has been going on in Washington, DC in regards to legal information (we skip the impeachment stuff.) Believe it or not, there are things actually getting done in DC despite all the obvious gridlock.”

Underline | Watch lectures from the best researchers.

Posted on by

“The world’s first repository platform for cutting-edge scientific lectures, research, discussions and conference live-streaming….”

We are building a forum-like platform for speakers and peers to engage with each other and spark ideas….

Each lecture has it’s own DOI number, it can be referenced, cited and shared across platforms and scientific literature….

Cite and share any lectures across the platforms. Be it a colleague from your organisation or collaborator overseas, Underline makes it easy for you to keep everyone on the same page.”

Apparently gratis at best, not libre. See the terms of use.

https://www.underline.io/terms-of-use

 

Archive-It – Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Posted on by

“A collection created by the Content Development Group of the International Internet Preservation Consortium in collaboration with Archive-It to preserve web content related to the ongoing Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. Identification of seed websites and initial web crawling began in February 2020, and the collection will continue to add new content as needed during the course of the outbreak and its containment. High priority subtopics include: coronavirus origins; information about the spread of infection; regional or local containment efforts; medical and scientific aspects; social aspects; economic aspects; and political aspects. Websites from anywhere in the world and in any language are in scope.”

Innovative Strategies for Peer Review

Posted on by

Abstract:  

Peer review is a crucial part of research and publishing. However, it remains imperfect and suffers from bias, lack of transparency, and professional jealousy. It is also overburdened by an increasing quantity of complex papers against the stagnant pool of reviewers, causing delays in peer review. Additionally, many medical, nursing, and healthcare educators, peer reviewers, and authors may not be completely familiar with the current changes in peer review. Moreover, reviewer education and training have unfortunately remained lacking. This is especially crucial since current initiatives to improve the review process are now influenced by factors other than academic needs. Thus, increasing attention has recently focused on ways of streamlining the peer review process and implementing alternative peer-review methods using new technologies and open access models. This article aims to give an overview of the innovative strategies for peer review and to consider perspectives that may be helpful in introducing changes to peer review. Critical assessments of peer review innovations and incentives based on past and present experiences are indispensable. A theoretical appraisal must be balanced by a realistic appraisal of the ethical roles of all stakeholders in enhancing the peer review process. As the peer review system is far from being perfect, identifying and developing core competencies among reviewers, continuing education of researchers, reviewer education and training, and professional engagement of the scientific community in various disciplines may help bridge gaps in an imperfect but indispensable peer review system.

 

Opinion | After the Coronavirus, Libraries Must Change – The New York Times

Posted on by

“As we face tragedy, devastating economic turmoil and dislocation, public libraries will play a key part in the recovery of our country, cities and lives. Libraries offer all people — regardless of background or circumstance — free access to the tools and knowledge they need to open doors of opportunity and be productive members of society. To remain true to their mission, all libraries must undergo radical change. To serve the public in the face of unprecedented challenges, libraries will need to transition their services to the virtual space and explore new avenues to serve the public and bring people together, even while we are apart….”

On the overhead of ‘business models’ | Martin Paul Eve | Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing

Posted on by

“All of this is to say that running a business model is expensive in terms of time and money. There is a point at which it is cheaper to sink the volunteer labour and not to bother investing in revenue generation that may be more appropriate for small organizations. Once you start taking money, you need to set aside a portion of that income just to sustain the revenue-generating activities, rather than using the revenue to perform the original publishing activities that you wanted to do.”

From research creation to dissemination | Research Information

Posted on by

“With the above objectives in mind, EBSCO has now partnered with companies that support open research and enable institutions to gain better stewardship over the totality of their research output: Code Ocean, protocols.io and Arkivum. The first two of these companies provide solutions for the creation, sharing, publication and reuse of computational code, data and research methods. Arkivum, on its part, ensures the long-term data management and preservation of research. Through these partnerships, libraries may support and deliver open platforms to the research community and, at the same time, benefit from improved visibility into and stewardship over the research that is created within the institution….

David Worlock | Developing digital strategies for the information marketplace | Supporting the migration of information providers and content players into the networked services world of the future.

Posted on by

“MicroPublishing in this context means the publication of short , single experiment, peer reviewed OA articles , with DOIs and metadata to make them citable and discoverable. Typically this might be supplementary or ancillary material that might have been once grouped into a major research program report , delaying it and making it too dense or bulky . Or it might be work on reagents that has genuine scientific interest but, as an incidental finding , only clutters the main report . And MicroPublishing might be a first chance for a post grad or even a student doing lab support work to get their name onto a collaborative publication for the first time . And in all of this work of adding small pieces to the jigsaw and making sure they did not get lost or overlooked – curation is clearly at the heart of these efforts – I heard  nothing described in terms of workflows or process  that would not have been identical in a commercial environment . And that is important . There is a great deal of bogus hype around “ publishing expertise” . If you are clever enough to be a Professor of Genomics , then mastering publishing does not seem to be a huge intellectual challenge .And the digitally networked world has democratised all processes like publishing . We can all be publishers now – and we all are! …

And we should be attentive not just because of the competitive element . I have a 30 year record of saying that the competitor to the information provider in a digital network is the user doing it for himself , and I am not altering that view now . But we really need to pay attention because this is where and how innovation takes place . This is where and how needs are discovered . If granularity , discoverability and speed to market are the critical issues here., then those are the issues that we must attend to , instead of packing articles with greater amounts of supplemental material , holding articles in peer review until they are “complete”  or using citations to game journal impact factors . Above all , we have to remember that scholarly communication  is communication by and for scholars . They will , and are , re-inventing it all the time . Rather than propagandising the virtues of “ traditional publishing “ commercial publishers should be forming relationships  that help change take place cost-effectively and at scale .”

Arcadia Fund | Our response to the OSTP’s Request for Information on Open Access – Arcadia Fund

Posted on by

“A significant part of Arcadia’s mission is to protect endangered nature. In order to best protect threatened landscapes and biodiversity, it is vital that the latest research is easily and freely available to everyone engaged in conservation and restoration sciences. Yet recent analysis of a large survey conducted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicates that half of the 2,285 respondents find it ‘not easy’ or ‘not at all easy’ to access relevant scientific research [1]. This is no surprise, as 85% of all conservation biology papers are not open for public readership [2]. These include many studies funded by US federal agencies. The situation is similar across most disciplines. For instance, in ophthalmology: across medical institutions there is widespread inequality of access to field-relevant research [3]. As these examples show, the traditional subscription journals business model does not provide equitable access to research paid for by public or philanthropic funds. It fails to provide sufficient easy access to discipline-relevant literature even to practitioners of the discipline, be it conservation sciences, ophthalmology or other scientific endeavours.

With easier and cheaper access, both researchers and practitioners would be more effective and productive.

Federal agencies have the power to mandate that federally-funded research should be immediately publicly available online, without a paywall, on publication. The United States has digital research infrastructures that could and would support such a policy. Government scientific research funders in Austria, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, Jordan, the United Kingdom, and Zambia have all committed to mandating the immediate public availability of government-funded research online, without a paywall. The world is now facing a pandemic that scientific research can help to solve. The United States would show leadership by making immediate public access to government-funded research the new normal. This would maximize the return on investment of US funded research – paywalled research outputs are a misuse and misappropriation of tax dollars.

We also note that academic paywalls harm national security: military consultancies and defense contractors have inadequate access to the latest research, which can deter them from turning concepts into reality [4]. The Department of Defense publishes unclassified research whilst protecting classified material. Open Access as practiced by Federal agencies is not a threat to national, military, or commercial interests….”

10 tips for tweeting research | Nature Index

Posted on by

“A paper presented earlier this month at the CHEST Congress 2019 in Thailand by researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada found that when authors tweeted about their own work, they saw as much as a 3.5-fold increase in tweets about their studies that year from other people, compared with authors who did not tweet about their studies at all….

A recent study by Finch and his colleagues investigating social media responses to ornithology papers found that Altmetrics – which measure attention received by a paper, including how many times it’s viewed, downloaded, or mentioned on social media, in blogs, news articles, and elsewhere online – not only complement traditional measures of scholarly impact such as citations, but might also anticipate or even drive them….

According to a 2018 study by Isabelle Côté from Simon Fraser University in Canada and Emily Darling from the University of Toronto, more than half of the average scientist’s Twitter followers are other scientists….”

 

In Canada, Inuit Communities Are Shaping Research Priorities

Posted on by

“Bell’s own claim to fame is SmartICE. Created in collaboration with the Nunatsiavut government, SmartICE integrates traditional ice knowledge with real-time data gathered from sensors embedded in and pulled across sea ice. Piloted in Nain beginning in 2012, SmartICE aims to generate a reliable map of travel hazards, accessible by desktop or smartphone.

SmartICE isn’t alone. Over the past decade, the Nunatsiavut government has redirected outside researchers’ efforts toward Inuit priorities, including mental health, marine pollution in wild foods, housing shortages, and, of course, sea ice. In doing so, Nunatsiavut has been an early contributor to the change now spreading across Canada’s four Inuit regions, which altogether encompass more than 1.4 million square miles, from the Alaskan border to the Atlantic. The consequences could transform the conduct of Canadian and international researchers in the north — a part of the world that holds vital clues about the future of a warming planet, but where the legacy of science-as-usual remains shadowed by centuries of mistrust, anger, and exploitation….

Six years before Nunatsiavut formed, the majority-Inuit territory of Nunavut was created in Canada’s high Arctic, and Canada’s other two Inuit regions are today moving toward limited self-government. All four regions come together as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, a group that represents Canadian Inuit interests federally. In 2018, ITK launched the National Inuit Strategy on Research (NISR), aiming to elevate research self-determination and give Inuit communities greater say in the research that takes place in their homeland….

As with SmartICE, his research involves deploying buoys to develop more accurate predictive models of sea-ice coverage. In order to work in Nunatsiavut, he shares data freely with community members, and tends to place buoys where the community requests….”

Unforgotten: the people, lost and found, in receipt of social care – Future Care Capital

Posted on by

“Our own work has made extensive use of publicly available data and, to help others, we have produced a Social Care Data Finder which comprises of a timeline with links to social care datasets that have been openly published in the UK since January 1st 2020. The aim is to maintain a data finder that can be used as a resource for social care research, so the timeline will be updated at regular intervals to capture the publication of new datasets and we welcome suggestions for inclusion. At present, our Social Care Data Finder serves as a portal to data published by pertinent national bodies, but we will move to incorporate local datasets and others in due course….”

Wayback Machine Compare: An Ideal Digital-Professional Portfolio Tool – Cal schol.com

Posted on by

“Don’t know how I missed this, but Internet Archive back in October of 2019 released a new feature on its Wayback Machine to enable users easily to compare different versions of an archived web page. I’ve been hoping for such a feature for a while as a crucial tool for Digital History / Digital Humanities and even made inquires to private software companies about developing it. I’m elated that the adept and agile team at Wayback Machine built it directly into their UI.

This new feature has been highlighted in various tech blogs, and yesterday in a blog post by a journalist noting its importance for fact-checking.

The usefulness of the “Changes” (compare) feature in the Wayback Machine extends well beyond Digital History and Journalism. It should be considered an essential tool for vocational portfolios and professional files for anyone working on online content and web development….”

COAR Recommendations for COVID-19 resources in repositories – COAR

Posted on by

“Around the world, research related to COVID-19 is being undertaken at unprecedented rates and rapid sharing of early research outputs at the international level is critically important. Many governments and funders are requiring immediate open access to COVID-19 outputs in the form of preprints, data and so on. With over 5,000 repositories around the world providing open access to data, articles, pre-prints and other valuable products of research, the international repository network represents critical research infrastructure. A coordinated and interoperability approach across repositories will to ensure that COVID-19 resources are widely available and discoverable.

To that end, COAR is making the following recommendations for repositories and repository networks: …”

Open research statement – Staff home, The University of York

Posted on by

“What is open research?

The core idea behind open research is that all aspects of the research cycle should be shared and accessible where possible. Research should be as open as possible, as closed as necessary. Open research practice enables a wide range of audiences to freely discover and engage with our excellent research. It makes the research process transparent and creates new opportunities for outputs and methods to be reused, reproduced and credited. It generates an environment for more effective and efficient research, and a culture where open is the default.

Open research embeds values of inclusivity, diversity, integrity and accessibility in the research process. It is based in the belief that knowledge produces the greatest benefit when it exists in a commons, and that research produced through public funding should belong to and exist for the benefit of all.

The terms ‘open research’ and ‘open science’ are sometimes used interchangeably but are based on the same principles of collaboration and accountability which can be applied widely. Open research is relevant to all researchers, but its applications differ between disciplines.

Our commitment to open research

The University of York is committed to the long-term development of an open research culture in support of our research foundations. As part of this commitment, we have created strong governance structures for advancement of open research. We aim to actively create and pursue opportunities to grow and foster a values-driven, pluralistic, multi-faceted approach towards open research, embracing disciplinary differences and supporting our staff and students in the process.

We believe that all stages of the research lifecycle can potentially be made open, within the bounds of the terms and conditions associated with your research; this ranges from opening up research methodologies through to pre-registration, sharing notebooks, software and data, and publishing open access. Open practice encourages sharing of outcomes with the principle of being as open as possible, as early as possible. Open practice also extends into the teaching domain, for example in the production and dissemination of Open Educational Resources (OERs).

It is widely accepted that open practices allow for greater visibility and wider distribution of research. Open practices unlock access to knowledge and generate new opportunities for collaboration and participation.”