Monthly Archives: December 2020

Stop uploading articles with copyright: HC to open-access academic portal | Cities News,The Indian Express

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“The Delhi High Court Thursday asked Alexandra Elbakyan, the owner of Sci-Hub — a pirate website that provides free access to millions of research papers and books otherwise copyright protected — to disclose her physical address to court and also recorded her counsel’s statement that no articles or publications in which major publishing houses, which have approached the court with a copyright infringement suit, have copyright will be uploaded or made available on the website till January 6, the next date of hearing.

The court was hearing a case filed by Elsevier, Wiley India, Wiley Periodicals, American Chemical Society, which are top global publishing houses in the field of scientific and academic publications and market, sell and license various digitised journals including The Lancet and Cell. They have filed the case against Sci-Hub and Library Genesis (Libgen), another website which provides free access to journals, and alleged that they indulge in online piracy by making available to the public their literary work for free….”

Indian scientists express support for free access to academic research – Telegraph India

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“Sections of India’s science community have asked the Centre to oppose a petition by three international academic publishers in Delhi High Court seeking a ban on two alleged pirate websites that offer free access to academic research.

Over 2,000 teachers, scholars and students from institutions across India in a statement released on Friday urged the court and the Centre to allow researchers in India continued access to Sci-Hub and LibGen….”

Please sign the statement: Make knowledge accessible to all. No to banning Sci-Hub and LibGen – Breakthrough Science Society

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“We are shocked to learn that three academic publishers — Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society (ACS) — have filed a suit in the Delhi High Court on December 21, 2020, seeking a ban on the websites Sci-Hub and LibGen which have made academic research-related information freely available to all. Academic research cannot flourish without the free flow of information between those who produce it and those who seek it, and we strongly oppose the contention of the lawsuit.

International publishers like Elsevier have created a business model where they treat knowledge created by academic research funded by taxpayers’ money as their private property. Those who produce this knowledge — the authors and reviewers of research papers — are not paid and yet these publishers make windfall profit of billions of dollars by selling subscriptions to libraries worldwide at exorbitantly inflated rates which most institutional libraries in India, and even developed countries, cannot afford. Without a subscription, a researcher has to pay between $30 and $50 to download each paper, which most individual Indian researchers cannot afford. Instead of facilitating the flow of research information, these companies are throttling it.

Alexandra Elbakyan of Kazakhstan has taken an effective and widely welcomed step by making research papers, book chapters and similar research-related information freely available through her website Sci-Hub. Libgen (Library Genesis) renders a similar service. We support their initiative which, we contend, does not violate any norm of ethics or intellectual property rights as the research papers are actually intellectual products of the authors and the institutions.

We strongly oppose any form of commoditization of research information that is a hindrance to the development of science and the humanities. In the interest of the advancement of knowledge, Sci-Hub and Libgen should be allowed to operate in India.”

Please sign the statement: Make knowledge accessible to all. No to banning Sci-Hub and LibGen – Breakthrough Science Society

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“We are shocked to learn that three academic publishers — Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society (ACS) — have filed a suit in the Delhi High Court on December 21, 2020, seeking a ban on the websites Sci-Hub and LibGen which have made academic research-related information freely available to all. Academic research cannot flourish without the free flow of information between those who produce it and those who seek it, and we strongly oppose the contention of the lawsuit.

International publishers like Elsevier have created a business model where they treat knowledge created by academic research funded by taxpayers’ money as their private property. Those who produce this knowledge — the authors and reviewers of research papers — are not paid and yet these publishers make windfall profit of billions of dollars by selling subscriptions to libraries worldwide at exorbitantly inflated rates which most institutional libraries in India, and even developed countries, cannot afford. Without a subscription, a researcher has to pay between $30 and $50 to download each paper, which most individual Indian researchers cannot afford. Instead of facilitating the flow of research information, these companies are throttling it.

Alexandra Elbakyan of Kazakhstan has taken an effective and widely welcomed step by making research papers, book chapters and similar research-related information freely available through her website Sci-Hub. Libgen (Library Genesis) renders a similar service. We support their initiative which, we contend, does not violate any norm of ethics or intellectual property rights as the research papers are actually intellectual products of the authors and the institutions.

We strongly oppose any form of commoditization of research information that is a hindrance to the development of science and the humanities. In the interest of the advancement of knowledge, Sci-Hub and Libgen should be allowed to operate in India.”

Elsevier Wants To Stop Indian Medics, Students And Academics Accessing Knowledge The Only Way Most Of Them Can Afford: Via Sci-Hub And Libgen | Techdirt

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“Last month Techdirt wrote about some ridiculous scaremongering from Elsevier against Sci-Hub, which the publisher claimed was a “security risk”. Sci-Hub, with its 85 million academic papers, is an example of what are sometimes termed “shadow libraries”. For many people around the world, especially in developing countries, such shadow libraries are very often the only way medics, students and academics can access journals whose elevated Western-level subscription prices are simply unaffordable for them. That fact makes a new attack by Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society against Sci-Hub and the similar Libgen shadow library particularly troubling….”

Public Domain Day 2021 | Duke University School of Law

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“On January 1, 2021, copyrighted works from 1925 will enter the US public domain, where they will be free for all to use and build upon. These works include books such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, and Franz Kafka’s The Trial (in the original German), silent films featuring Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, and music ranging from the jazz standard Sweet Georgia Brown to songs by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, W.C. Handy, and Fats Waller….”

DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly: An Open Lab? The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab in the Evolving Digital Humanities Landscape

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Abstract:  As the scholarly landscape evolves into a more “open” plain, so do the shapes of institutions, labs, centres, and other places and spaces of research, including those of the digital humanities (DH). The continuing success of such research largely depends on a commitment to open access and open source philosophies that broaden opportunities for a more efficient, productive, and universal design and use of knowledge. The Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory (ETCL; etcl.uvic.ca) is a collaborative centre for digital and open scholarly practices at the University of Victoria, Canada, that engages with these transformations in knowledge creation through its umbrella organization, the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute (C-SKI), that coordinates and supports open social scholarship activities across three major initiatives: the ETCL itself, the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI; dhsi.org), and the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE; inke.ca) Partnership, including sub-projects associated with each. Open social scholarship is the practice of creating and disseminating public-facing scholarship through accessible means. Working through C-SKI, we seek ways to engage communities more widely with publicly funded humanities scholarship, such as through research creation and dissemination, mentorship, and skills training.

 

The Health care data sharing rule and its roots at Boston Children’s Hospital – Discoveries

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“Are you sick of health care systems not communicating with each other? Do you wish you could access more of your medical information — or your patients’ information — online? Do you ever wonder whether a health pattern you see is part of a larger trend? Two key developments have advanced the vision of seamless, secure exchange of electronic health records (EHRs) among health care institutions and patients.

That vision includes being able to learn from our data at a population scale. Through federal regulations issued this year, it will finally become reality in 2022. And the vision began at Boston Children’s Hospital more than a decade ago….”

Open Access, Global Inequalities and Scholarly Journals | Open Research Community

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“As Márton Demeter and Ronina Istratii (2020, p. 519) suggest in their article, even though scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences, such as in Area Studies, can be expected to have less financial resources at their disposal than their colleagues in natural sciences or technology fields, e.g., in Computer Sciences, this has not been found to be borne out by the levels of article processing fees that Open Access journals in these fields levy.

On the one hand, article processing charges levels have been found to be positively intercorrelated with journal-level impact factor metrics. On the other hand, Demeter and Istratii (2020, p. 519) indicate that, rather than responding to higher purchasing power levels in technology-related research sector, Open Access journals set their article processing charges’ levels based on the financial ability of global scholarly associations, such as  the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), to charge lower than market-average author-facing fees, despite the high impact factor rankings of their journals….”

Nitpicking online knowledge representations of governmental leadership. The case of Belgian prime ministers in Wikipedia and Wikidata.

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Abstract:  A key pitfall for knowledge-seekers, particularly in the political arena, is informed complacency, or an over-reliance on search engines at the cost of epistemic curiosity. Recent scholarship has documented significant problems with those sources of knowledge that the public relies on the most, including instances of ideological and algorithmic bias in Wikipedia and Google. Such observations raise the question of how deep one would actually need to dig into these platforms’ representations of factual (historical and biographical) knowledge before encountering similar epistemological issues. The present article addresses this question by ‘nitpicking’ knowledge representations of governments and governmental leadership in Wikipedia and Wikidata. Situated within the emerging framework of ‘data studies’, our micro-level analysis of the representations of Belgian prime ministers and their governments thereby reveals problems of classification, naming and linking of biographical items that go well beyond the affordances of the platforms under discussion. This article thus makes an evidence-based contribution to the study of the fundamental challenges that mark the formalisation of knowledge in the humanities.

 

Evaluation of the Reliability, Utility, and Quality of the Information in Transoral Endoscopic Thyroidectomy Vestibular Approach Videos Shared on Open Access Video Sharing Platform YouTube – PubMed

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Abstract:  Background: The internet is a broadly preferred source of information both by patients and medical professionals. YouTube™ is a significant information source that may be a useful tool to inform the public, medical students, and residents, and may improve the learning experience if used adequately. In this study, we aimed to estimate the quality and accuracy of videos regarding Transoral Endoscopic Thyroidectomy Vestibular Approach (TOETVA) aired on YouTube, which is the most popular video platform of the online world. Materials and Methods: We evaluated the first 50 videos, returned by the YouTube research engine, in reply to the “TOETVA” keyword. The popularity of the videos was assessed using the video power index (VPI). The educational quality, accuracy, and transparency of the content regarding TOETVA were estimated by using the DISCERN questionnaire score (DISCERNqs), Journal of American Medical Association benchmark criteria (JAMABC), and global quality score (GQSc). The technical quality was ranked through TOETVA Scoring System (TOETVA-SS) by a TOETVA practicioning endocrine surgeon. Results: The content of the videos were about surgical technique with a rate of 68%. According to sources, videos uploaded by physicians had significantly higher DISCERNqs, JAMABC, GQSc, and TOETVA-SS scores. Unlike, videos uploaded by physicians had a lower VPI than videos uploaded by nonmedical sources. The videos of surgical technique had significantly higher DISCERNqs, JAMABC, GQSc, and TOETVA-SS scores. Surgical technique videos also had higher VPI scores than “information about disease or surgery” videos. Also, negative correlations were found between the VPI (popularity index) and educational value (GQSc), transparency (JAMABC), and technical quality (TOETVA-SS) scores. Conclusions: The data acquired from YouTube videos regarding TOETVA is of below expected quality and reliability. Nevertheless, the educative potential of the online video platform, YouTube, cannot be underestimated.

Library of Congress Completes Digitization of 23 Early Presidential Collections | Library of Congress

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“The Library of Congress has completed a more than two decade-long initiative to digitize the papers of nearly two dozen early presidents. The Library holds the papers of 23 presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, all of which have been digitized and are now available online.

The Library plans to highlight each presidential collection on social media in the weeks leading up to the next presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021….

With the digitization of papers from Presidents Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft, Grover Cleveland and Coolidge, the Library’s complete set of presidential collections is now available online for the first time….”

OpenNotes – Patients and clinicians on the same page

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“OpenNotes is the international movement promoting and studying transparent communication in healthcare. We help patients and clinicians share meaningful notes in medical records. We call these open notes….

OpenNotes is not software or a product. It’s a call to action.”

 

Federal Rules Mandating Open Notes

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“Taking effect in April, 2021, rules implementing the bipartisan federal Cures Act specify that clinical notes are among electronic information that must not be blocked and must be made available free of charge to patients. To meet the interests of some patients, the rules allow specified exceptions….”