The European Commission published a scoping report summarizing the outcomes of extensive consultations with European and international stakeholders, that took place from March to November 2021. The consultation with stakeholders aimed at discussing how to facilitate and speed up a…
“A new decentralized autonomous organization is drawing inspiration from ConstitutionDAO and the ideals of information liberation exemplified by the late activist Aaron Swartz.
An early mission statement was shared on the currently nameless DAO’s Discord server during the call: “The vision is to design an incentivized system for open access academic peer-reviewed publishing.”
The idea began with a Twitter thread from Nov. 18, in which David McDougall, a vice-president at crypto prime brokerage Genesis Trading and instigator of the DAO suggested, “We could buy all of academic publishing for ~ $25 Billion, but we could start one journal at a time.” …
Various early supporters, most of whom were running other efforts aimed at making science more legible, also provided grounding thoughts for this first conversation. “This DAO could end up putting pressure on the big paywalled publishers,” said Patrick Joyce, of the open science community ResearchHub. “If anything comes out of this project it could be huge economic pressure on the powers that already exist to be better actors.”…”
Key findings from this year’s survey
73% support the idea of a national mandate for making research data openly available
52% said funders should make the sharing of research data part of their requirements for awarding grants
47% said they would be motivated to share their data if there was a journal or publisher requirement to do so
About a third of respondents indicated that they have reused their own or someone else’s openly accessible data more during the pandemic than before
There are growing concerns over misuse and lack of credit for open sharing
A slide presentation from U of Strathclyde.
The MIT Press today announced that it has reached the fifty percent threshold for participation in the Direct to Open (D2O) initiative, an innovative sustainable framework for open access monographs. Thanks to the early support of participating institutions, the full list of spring 2022 scholarly monographs and edited collections from the MIT Press will now be published open access. The D2O commitment window has also been extended through June 30, 2022.
Last week, the Enschede city council, the University of Twente, and housing corporations De Veste and Domijn signed a cooperation agreement to develop new housing at Kennispark Twente. The parties have joined forces with the aim of attracting more local and international talent to the region. Living, working, and recreational spaces will be created on the UT campus and the Business & Science Park of Kennispark, where students, enterprising researchers and innovative entrepreneurs can all feel at home. The aforementioned parties also signed an agreement with the construction company Trebbe today to install affordable flex-units for students on the university campus in the near future. These two initiatives are a major boost for the Kennispark housing project.
“Anyone who’s been to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will speak of its elevator ride through time, which takes visitors from the present day to the 15th century and kicks off the first exhibit, Slavery & Freedom. With the launch of a new virtual platform, visitors can now travel on the elevator down to that exhibit without ever leaving their homes.
The Searchable Museum, launched Thursday, transforms the artifacts, stories, and interactive experiences of the physical exhibit into a digital platform where museumgoers can take it in at their own pace.
Eventually, the museum plans to bring all of its exhibits online. The next exhibit, Making a Way Out of No Way, will go online this spring….”
“Do standard data sharing policies work for humanities authors? Here, Dr. Rebecca Grant, Head of Data and Software Publishing at F1000, questions how we can adapt current policies to reflect the working practices of humanities scholars. Plus, she shares how a group of academic publishers is coming together to tackle this challenge….”
“Are you an experienced and ambitious Research and Innovation Development professional looking to further your career in one of the UK’s leading research-intensive universities? Are you an advocate for a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive research culture? Are you a confident leader, capable of building productive working relationships with academic colleagues, funders and senior stakeholders? …”
“This report summarises the results of a survey of European libraries on Open Education (OE) and Open Education Resources (OER) prepared by SPARC Europe. It was done in consultation with the European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL).
Launched in May 2021, the survey, which targeted academic librarians across Europe, garnered over 230 responses from 28 countries. This report is the 2021 version of the 2020 report under the same title, which was the first of its kind. The 2021 report is framed by the UNESCO Recommendation on OER.
The survey questionnaire can be found here: https://zenodo.org/record/4892450
The survey dataset can be found here: https://zenodo.org/record/5734988 …”
Abstract: This recommended practice defines metadata indicators to be used to indicate free-to-read content and a link to license terms for the use/re-use of that content. Humans and machines will be able to assess the status of the content based on these indicators and in many cases the combination of the free_to_read and license_reference metadata will indicate Open Access content. The indicators include a date component so that content with access and re-use rights that change over time can be adequately understood by both humans and machines using the metadata.
In September 2020, a new NISO work item proposal was approved by NISO members to develop metadata and indicators that enable metadata users—including content platforms—to further qualify or scope the license being conveyed. For example, allowing publishers and platforms to utilize ALI tagging to establish sharing policies for a given research article using a specific permissioning framework. To meet this need, an additional attribute definition (applies_to) is added to this Recommended Practice.
SPARC Europe has just released a long-awaited report Open Education in European Libraries of Higher Education. This report is the 2021 version of the 2020 report under the same title, which […]
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SPARC Europe has just released a long-awaited report Open Education in European Libraries of Higher Education. This report is the 2021 version of the 2020 report under the same title, which was the first of its kind. The 2021 report is framed by the UNESCO Recommendation on OER.
The report, authored by Gema Santos-Hermosa, Vanessa Proudman and Paola Corti is a result of research conducted earlier this year. The authors analyzed responses to a survey of European libraries of Higher Education on Open Education (OE) and Open Educational Resources (OER). The survey focused particularly on the work being carried out by academic libraries in Europe to implement the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. It saw over 230 responses from 28 European countries.
“In particular, so-called “pirate” open access has the potential to undermine current for-profit exploitation of scientific knowledge, and thereby create a new era of genuine universal open access. Sci-Hub (https://sci-hub.st/) is currently the largest pirate open access platform, providing direct downloadable access to 50+ million scientific journal articles. Use of pirate open access provokes varying opinions in the professional community, including a palpable level of unease around questions of legality. However, pre-emptive dismissal of such platforms ignores the long-held right of citizens in democratic societies to challenge by means of civil disobedience circumstances, legal or otherwise, perceived to be unfair.
Some, even while believing that the construction of access paywalls and copyright transfer (a feature upon which the viability of corporate academic publishing depends) are unethical, may conclude that use of pirate open access, with its attendant contestable legality, is not justified. Others, however, may take the opposite view, concluding that use of pirate open access is not merely justified as a form of civil disobedience, but a moral imperative. Electronic civil disobedience in the latter instance is an act of protest against the self-evident unfairness of current publishing arrangements that permit (indeed, encourage) the sequestering, for reason of exploitation for private profit, scientific knowledge which rightly belongs in the public domain. Considering the level of corporate dominance in academic publishing, pirate open access, as a form of collective electronic civil disobedience, appears to be the best, and possibly only, option currently available for rendering scientific knowledge openly accessible to all.”
Announcing the winners of the 2021 Open Research Prizes!