Displaying posts tagged with

“open access”

Bits and pieces: infosec, bad arguments, and more

Unlock the secrets of animals that survive freezing: a crowdfunded science project to sequence the genome of the North American wood frog. Thirteen days to go! Why information security is a joke. This week was Open Access week. While many researchers support the idea of Open Access, few see it as a consideration for publication. […]

Open Access: green vs. gold, and the culture of the disconnect

Four years ago I wrote about how Open Access would be adopted if it were convenient. Polls at the time showed that few scientists actively seek to publish OA, even though many support it. Reasons given, in no particular order: aiming for journals that were not OA and high publication fees. My conclusion was that researchers […]

The Right to Read

Since this is Open Access Week, I thought I’d do the Open-Access / CC thing and share someone else’s work. In this case, a highly topical short story written by Richard Stallman.  The author also has a constantly updated page with comments on the restrictions placed today on sharing reading materials. As you will see, […]

PeerJ

I didn’t have a clever title. “PeerJ: a new kid on the block” was already taken by Bora Zivkovic.  “PeerJ: Publish there or suffer” is aggressively counterproductive. “PeerJ is awesome”. Meh. So: PeerJ. A new open access scientific journal. PeerJ is the brainchild of Peter Binfield who was the managing editor of PLoS-one, and  Jason Hoyt who […]

Open Access Explained. Well.

Today is the last day of Open Access Week, where all things Open Access are heralded. William Gunn gave a great talk here at MU on how open access is changing scholarship. (And a big thank you to our librarians Jen Waller & Kevin Messner for hosting William!)  I have posted about Open Access before, […]

Does Open Access benefit small universities?

There has been quite a lot of chatter recently about different scientific publishing models. Prompted by Elsevier’s support for the Research Works Act, and the resulting proposed  academic boycott. Let there be no mistake: I value the Open Access (OA )model of publication, for both moral and practical reasons that have been elaborated upon in […]

Open Access: the Revolution Will be Convenient

Some time ago an article in Linux Journal discussed the adoption of free/open course software (FOSS) by the general public. The article (I can’t seem to find it now) talked about the people that do not care about the distinction between Free as in Free Beer vs. Free as in Freedom (libre). They want software […]

A Bad Rap

This came in my inbox today: solicitation to submit manuscripts to a journal completely outside my area of interest and proficiency. My email client software had an interesting reaction to it: The next email in my inbox was this: OK, that’s taking things a bit too far. Random solicitation of editors (did I mention that was not […]

Paweł Szczęsny in TEDx Warsaw

Pawel on Open Science. Full disclosure: I consider sharing an office with this guy for over a year to be one of the best experiences of my postdoc.

Thankful for…

In no particular order or context. No personal stuff and by no means a complete list: WordPress (like, duh). Wikipedia (default for looking up new stuff) Wikis in general (great lab management tool. Don’t need LIMS) Open Access Publishing and Creative Commons licensing. FLOSS licensing (90% of the software I use, and 100% of what […]

Open Access: what’s in it for me?

One problem that I am facing is convincing colleagues of the utility of an Open Access publication. The usual arguments: more visibility, retention of the right to re-use material, the Greater Good, taxpayer access to taxpayer-funded research and so on don’t stick very well when faced with a $1500-$2500 or higher publication fee. These can […]

Coming soon to an inbox near you

Respected Sir, I am Distinguished Professor First Class Nebulous Nimbus, Department of Organismal Motility of the University Technicality of Upper Freedonia. I have many articles accepted and pending in PLoS Biology, PNAS, and BMC. Unfortunately I cannot pay the Open Access publication costs as my University has suffered abysmally from ill-advised investments in derivatives both […]