open access – Australian Science

Tear Down These Walls

Buddhini Samarasinghe — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 00:06:35 +0000

This article originally appeared on the Nature Soapbox Science blog. I am excited to be joining the Australian Science team, and wanted to re-post this article here as it encompasses my approach to science communication, and will set the tone for future posts from me.

On a cold weeknight in late November, 1660, a dozen men gathered in the rooms at Gresham College in London to found the Royal Society. Not all of them had a scientific background; some of them were lawyers, politicians, merchants and philosophers. The one thing they all had in common was a thirst for knowledge. The formation of the Royal Society was the coming together of a group of curious gentlemen determined to promote the accumulation and dissemination of useful knowledge. It represented a paradigm shift in the practice of science. The Royal Society invented scientific publishing and peer review, two major developments that redefined science from an amateur hobby to the rigorous beast that it is today.

Two remarkable characteristics distinguished the Royal Society from the other nascent scientific societies of its time. It was genuinely international, and being of noble birth was not a requirement for membership. It aspired to the ideal of meritocracy. External factors such as nationality, race, gender and wealth did not matter. This basic premise of science, that it is and must be open to everybody, began with its founding and should continue today. While the ability to practise science now requires a formal education in scientific theory and practice, access to science should not depend on nationality, wealth, geographical location or scientific training.

Two things stand in the way of public access to science. The first is obviously the paywall: the second is something that I describe as the ‘jargon-wall’. The language of science is precise and meticulous; it has to be. Somewhere along the way, it has also become esoteric, foreign and inaccessible to the public by existing only within the confines of the ivory tower of academia. This has contributed to the chasm of scientific ignorance we see today, and it has created a deep divide that could impede human progress.

Science shouldn’t be kept behind walls. Image credit: Scott Lewis.

So how do we bridge that divide? Open access publications can address the paywall, by allowing anyone with an Internet connection, anywhere in the world, to access scientific discoveries. Open access is not just about giving scientists free access to the science; it is also about giving the public access to the science. However, the jargon-wall is still present, and it prevents ordinary people from understanding the research. Ask yourself, how many non-scientists would understand the average paper published in a peer-reviewed open access journal?

Open access is meaningless without a scientist to interpret the findings. Social media can be a powerful tool for science outreach because it allows a general member of the public to contact and query scientists directly. And when scientists respond, the ivory tower is torn down. This engagement is key to breaking through the jargon-wall. The open access debate is a separate issue, but I want to make the point that open access by itself is not enough to make science accessible to the public.

As scientists, when we engage with the public, the benefits reach far and wide. The primary benefit is of course that the public gets to share and be a part of the adventure that is science. The secondary but equally important benefit is the windfall profits of educating the public. The anti-science movement, including (but sadly not limited to) anti-vaccinationists, climate change deniers, evolution deniers and pseudoscience believers, feeds on ignorance. By providing access to the science, by breaking through both the paywall and the jargon-wall, we reduce that pool of ignorance that the anti-science movement relies on. By getting the public involved in the scientific adventure, we defang the anti-science movement. As a tertiary benefit, it gives us, the scientists, a much needed dose of perspective. All too often we despair over a rejected manuscript, an unsuccessful grant application, or a botched Western blot. I know I do. We forget what we love about science. By engaging with the public, they can be introduced to the wonder, while we, the scientists, are reminded of it.

As an example, I recently came across a fascinating piece of research, published in PLOS Biology, about how a dying nematode worm displays a burst of intense blue fluorescence, generated within the intestinal cells as part of the necrotic cell death pathway. The paper was titled “Anthranilate Fluorescence Marks a Calcium-Propagated Necrotic Wave That Promotes Organismal Death in C. elegans

Cite this article:
Samarasinghe B (2013-08-27 00:06:35). Tear Down These Walls. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/open-access-2/tear-down-these-walls/

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Open Access in Australia: An Outsider’s Account

Sridhar Gutam — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:08:48 +0000

I am doing advocacy on Open Access in India and following the activities related to Open Access around the world online. After writing a blog post on ‘Open Access India’, I thought of writing a series of country specific Open Access activities and decided to write about Australia’s Open Access activities. With the launch of Australian Open Access Support Group (AOASG)’s website on February 2013, I see that the visibility of Open Access in Australia had significantly grown up. The internet resources which I have collected for this blog post says that the AOASG was formed during the Open Access Week 2012 by Victoria University being its first member.

John Shipp, a University Librarian from the University of Sydney in 2006 had given an account of Open Access in Australia which can be accessed here. In his article, Mr. John mentions about the Australasian Digital Thesis Program (ADT) has 5,391 full text files were available in mid-January 2006. Currently Australia has 71,880 thesis online and available via the National Library of Australia, Trove.

When we look at the Open Access Movement in Australia with the growth of Open Access Journals, we can see that it all started in 2003 and every year very good number of Open Access Journals are being added to the Directory of Open Access Repository (DOAJ).

The OAK Law project which had ended in 2009 had set up a database of all the publishers open access policies and publishing agreements. A similar database known to SHERPA/RoMEO publishers’ copyright policies is also existing at Univeristy of Nottingham, UK. These lists are facilitating researchers about what and how to share their research outputs legally with the cosmos.

According to the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), approximately 82 repositories are existing in Australia with Australasian Digital Thesis Repository of Tasmania being the oldest and Monash University Research Repository the recent one.

The Australia Australian Research Council (ARC) had announced its Open Access Policy in January 2013 which requires deposition of research outputs within a month from the publication date. However, according to the Creative Commons blog post, it appears that the Australian Government had already devoted to Open Access in 2010 for using CC-BY licenses for the Australian Public Sector Information.10 for using CC-BY licenses for the Australian Public Sector Information.

Support of Open Access in Australia is led by AOASG and Open Access Austalia group on openaccessweek.org

Image source.

Cite this article:
Gutam S (2013-05-21 00:08:48). Open Access in Australia: An Outsider's Account. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/australia-2/open-access-in-australia-an-outsiders-account/

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Linux – The Open Source Ecosystem

Kelly Burnes — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:33:12 +0000

Australian Science travelled to Canberra for the linux.conf.au (Linux Conference Australia) last week and had the opportunity for exclusive one-on-one interviews with a number of the keynote speakers. You may have been a little hesitant reading the first word of the title of this article, ‘Linux’, but perhaps the ‘Open Source Ecosystem’ in the latter part put your mind at ease. We are a computing world, a society heavily dependent upon computers. Computers, in their many shapes and sizes, are touching even greater areas of our lives and reaching a far greater number of people than ever before. Open source is revolutionizing the way we communicate. So while we all may not understand coding and app development, we can understand the end products that allow us digital consumers to produce and share our experiences and stories. The person who has had a tremendous impact in the Linux world is Bdale Garbee. And this is his open source ecosystem.

Bdale Garbee is a computer genius. Although he retired in 2012 after a long career with HP, serving as Open Source and Linux Chief Technologist, he shows no signs of slowing down. Quite the contrary, his workload may be picking up with the number of projects he is involved with, such as serving on the boards of The Freedombox Foundation and The Linux Foundation.

“Linux – euphemism for entire open source ecosystem and idea of collaborated development and maintenance of software and related data

Cite this article:
Burnes K (2013-02-07 14:33:12). Linux – The Open Source Ecosystem. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/linux-the-open-source-ecosystem/
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Open Access Explained!

Editorial Board — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 07:03:10 +0000

We wrote about Open Access many times: here, here, here, here, and here, and since it’s Open Access week everywhere in the world- it is good to be reminded what is OA – Open Access. This time Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it’s all about.

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Open Access Initiative policy recommendations for the next 10 years

Editorial Board — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:33:34 +0000

Ten years after the release of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, OA advocates last week released updated recommendations in support of open access around the world, touching on areas including policy, licensing, sustainability, and advocacy. Of particular interest are recommendations that urge funders to require open access when they make grants: “When possible, funder policies should require libre OA, preferably under a CC-BY license or equivalent.

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Free and Open Source Agriculture

Sridhar Gutam — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 01:05:22 +0000

Credit: Thamizhpparithi Maari, Wikimedia Commons

A recent news published online by The Wall Street journal about the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) offer of germplasm from its massive seed gene bank at National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) to multinational corporations (MNCs) in exchange for expertise and a share of the profits made me to put forth before you about the topic ‘Free and Open Source Agriculture’ which is proposed and discussed by Janet E. Hope (2004), Susan H. Bragdon (2005), Daniel D. Holman (2007) Keith Aoki (2009) and others. It is strange that the ICAR which is an the apex body of the world’s largest National Agricultural Research System (NARS) coordinating, many institutes involved in basic and strategic research, education and extension, is still looking at MNCs for next generation genetic technologies and the for the want of the same, it is going to share/sell its genetic materials. No doubt agriculture in India and elsewhere in the world is facing challenges from the changing climatic conditions, threats from biotic and abiotic factors. India is rich in biodiversity and with the use of agricultural biotechnology, it is now possible to develop new crop varieties that are tolerant to adverse climatic and poor soil conditions, pests, diseases, insects, weeds etc. and build agriculture and food security. The MNCs with their huge investments have taken proprietary rights on most of the rapid scientific and technological advancement tools and products. Now they are looking at harness the public plant genetic resources for the creation of new generation of crops with the use of advanced molecular biology tools.

As per the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 1992, plant varieties are national sovereign resources and with sui generis system of protection in India under the Protection of Plant Varieties & Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001(PVFR P), the plant breeders and farmers have been given rights for conservation, improvement and re-use. Now the question arises once the MNCs takes the role of plant breeders and claim their rights on the improved traditional varieties with the help of biotechnological tools, does the farmers have any right to use the same improved material for his own use? or would they be left with no choice other than to buy the planting material at the cost specified by the MNCs?

As per the PPVFR, the farmers would have the right to claim for rewards from Gene Fund if genes from their local varieties are used for the production of improved material for commercial purpose, they don’t have any right to participate in decision making on matters related to the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture as suggested in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGR) in Article 9.2. However it seems that in man of the decisions on sharing/selling the country’s germplasm, there is no seeking of prior consent from the farmers/communities from whose locations, the germplasm might have been collected.

Under the IPR regime, the free progress of science and innovation is hampering and the fruits are not reaching to the public while, the exchange of knowledge and tools should be a way of life in agricultural research. Hence, I would like to put forth the concept of ‘Open Source‘ in Agriculture and Biotechnology which is proposed/discussed since quite sometime when the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and GNU movements had become global movements. In contrary to the proprietary software which gives only license to work, FOSS gives source code and a bundle of rights to the user to use, reverse engineer, learn, share and improve it. We are seeing now many FOSS products which are built by the community and are very good. These products are licensed as ‘Copyleft‘ or ‘Share Alike‘ of creative commons and or GNU Public License which requires that the copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as that of original.

This concept of FOSS initiative in agriculture has not taken up as a policy by the public funded research institutes. Though the germplasm is being received and sent (shared) by material transfer agreements (MTAs), many of the breeders are not exploring the concept of ‘Share Alike‘. When the crop improvement is being taken up by both public and private, the MTAs should have the licensing terms which asks the agencies to share their improved materials in the similar terms to the public for further use and development without seeking any royalties for the further improvement and use. Recently, there are reports that there is a charge against the Bt Brinjal’s developers in India for violation of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and allegations that they had accessed Indian varieties of brinjal for the development of genetically modified ‘Bt Brinjal’ without prior permission from the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA). These issues could be avoided when the materials are freely available to everyone to use and also for re-use.

Though there is a provision for ‘Compulsory License‘ under PPVFR for undertaking production, distribution, and sale of the seed or other propagating material on the grounds that the reasonable requirements of the public for seeds or other propagating material of the variety have not been satisfied or that the seed or other propagating material of the variety is not available to the public at a reasonable price, there is no provision for the use of the material for further improvement.

The FOSS movement had not built in one day but its a continuous building movement. And if this initiative to happen in agriculture, it would be a great thing. However, for that it needs greater advocacy and to be built by the convinced breeders/farmers. Centre for Sustainable Agriculture from Hyderabad in India which is working for sustainable agriculture is now exploring the concept called ‘Open Source Seeds‘. In the world, the BiOS Initiative of Cambia (BiOS – Biological Innovation for an Open Society) is the one which is based on the GNU/FOSS model and is sharing enabling technologies with large community of innovators under ‘Protected Commons‘. The BiOS licenses when employed for MTAs, would enable the public to access to the technologies freely and there would not be any prevention of the same by appropriation of IPR rights by private players.

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Open Access for Open Knowledge: An Interview with Keita Bando

Danica Radovanovic — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:19:02 +0000

Keita Bando is a Digital Repository Librarian and Coordinator for Scholarly Communication database called MyOpenArchive we have presented MyOpenArchive earlier this year. Founded in September 2007, MyOpenArchive is an international Non-Profit Organization that advocates Open Access for never-before-published research papers on the web and provides Self-Archiving platform to enable better knowledge sharing in a way that’s easy to publish. We talked with Keita about Open Access (OA), scientific and scholarly publishing, and the current situation of the OA in the world.

Welcome! Would you, please, tell our readers a little bit more about yourself? What is your scientific background, and your professional scope?

Hello, Australian Science and its readers! Nice to meet you. I have been devoted my time on Open Access, Scholarly Communication, and recently Altmetrics. That’s why we (two colleagues and me) founded MyOpenArchive five years ago. An engineer and an designer helped me to develop my initial effort.

Also much of my time have been devoted on OA advocacy relations. For example, an presentation at 2008 Open Access Day, hosting Japanese website during Open Access Week 2009, and we hosted an event at that week. Furthermore, in 2011 we attended two conferences in Europe and the US, to make great acquaintances with those who deeply committed into Open Repository relations.

Besides, I have been devoted my time on Mendeley Advisor relations. Mendeley is a great service for me, and that’s why I advocate Mendeley in Japan. On one hand, Mendeley is famous as Reference manager. On the other hand, Mendeley is a Self-Archiving, Institutional Repository friendly service. Personally I am an OA Advocate who is interested in Mendeley Advisor relations.

As a volunteer I have been devoted my time on those relations, for I have a full-time job at an University (as a staff, but not a librarian).

How many individual and organizational ‘self-archiving’ units or members do you have within MyOpenArchive? What science disciplines the archive covers?

MyOpenArchive is not a sectional repository (arXiv, PMC etc). You can publish and share any type of research paper, of any section (Journal Article, Thesis or Dissertation, others) using Creative Commons License (or Public Domain). Users can upload material from any field, all science disciplines are present in the articles.

The first 3 years (2007-2010) we attracted 393 users and 210 posts. After 2010 renewal, 292 users and 166 posts. On the new site, we introduced Twitter/Facebook Sign in/up system to find that Twitter users overwhelmed Facebook users (214 vs. 78).

What do you think about “self archiving” today in the hyper connected networked surrounding and advancement of digital technologies? Do people deposit more or less?

Self archiving, so far, meant that librarians conduct the posting author’s final draft and/or others to Institutional Repository. These years, however, increasing number of users found their way to publish research papers to Mendeley, ResearchGATE, academia.edu and so on because those social networking services for researchers taps self archiving features into their site.

Thus, Self archiving can be achieved without IR. FigShare, PeerEvaluation, MyOpenArchive and numerous Social iR(s) represent Self archiving without help of librarians or IR. Researchers can do the self archiving, literally, on their own.

On the other, experimental efforts are increasing in order to match SNS for researchers and IR. For example, I am interested in DURA project, on which Mendeley and Cambridge University Library join forces upon JISC subsidy. Technology evolution let those services interact each other, and SWORD, Symplectic is critical on the Self archiving movement to advocate OA.

How do you see OA development in the next five years? How do you see the impact of open access on the science, education, and communication online?

In my opinion, altmetrics is the key to innovate OA relations. PLoS is the most important contribute to altmetrics innovation. It focuses on article level metrics, on which they can enhance the real time impact of individual papers. PLoS hires some of altmetrics guru, such as Cameron Neylon and Martin Fenner to the effort. Besides, PLoS talents like Mark Patterson and Peter Binfield (they are keen on altmetrics) are going to launch new OA journal (eLife Science, PeerJ) with some of Mendeley staff (Ian Mulvany, Jason Hoyt). Also, BMC show their understandings on OA journal. Hopefully Publication companies will increasingly submit altmetrics.com plans on and on.

I feel the importance of “being the part” of Open Access movement to know the global trend. Thus I am taking part in Facebook, LinkedIn, Google plus groups, while I follow them on Twitter to know the status of “person” as much as “information”. Most importantly, I can say that being the part of real friendship is critical. Last year I attended several international conferences as real friendship needed. “Why don’t we contribute” happens on these efforts, personally.

I know that you are very active online, collaborating with other Open Access chapters and nonprofit organisations. What are your current plans in the organisation and Open Access movement globally?

For example, Sridhar Gutam of Open Access India became allies with us, to share the Asia relations. On the partnership we hope to enhance the collaborations among those parties around the world.

We are going to attend Edinburgh Open Repositories 2012, on 9-13 July.

Berlin 10 Open Access Conference and Open Access Week also mean a lot for us, so this is going to be a “being the part” of discussion and real networking.

Thank you Keita for taking your time to talk with me!

Image source: flickr.com/photos/keitabando/3180077809/in/set-72157612285351143

Cite this article:
Radovanovic D (2012-06-20 00:19:02). Open Access for Open Knowledge: An Interview with Keita Bando. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/open-access-for-open-knowledge-an-interview-with-keita-bando/

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Open Access India: Movement for Making Public Funded Research Open

Sridhar Gutam — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:34:09 +0000

The ‘Open Access‘ movement which is built on the principle that the publicly funded research should be freely accessible online is gaining momentum around the world. In India, according to the Registry of Open Access Repositories and Directory of Open Access Repositories nearly 80 repositories have been registered since 2004 and three of them are listed in the top 200 of world repositories ranking. However, this momentum is slow in the field of agricultural sciences when compared with other sciences in India. Only few institutional repositories viz., Eprints@IARI, Eprints@CMFRI, E-Repository@IIHR, DSpice@IISR along with a thematic repository ‘OpenAGRI‘ have been established till date. Following the calls from Budapest Open Access Initiative and Berlin Declaration, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy took lead in Open Access activities in India. During the 93rd Indian Science Congress held in Hyderabad, a ‘Optimal National Open Access Policy for India‘ was proposed and the National Knowledge Commission of India had recommended an Open Access mandate for publicly funded research. As per the University Grants Commission‘s regulations (2009), a digital repository of Indian Electronic Theses and Dissertation ‘Shodhganga‘ was set up and made accessible to all.

However, the situation in the field of agricultural sciences is that earlier to the establishment of ‘Eprints@IARI’, an institutional repository of the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) in 2009 only the Journal of Tropical Agriculture from Kerala Agricultural University and Karnataka Journal of Agricultural Sciences from University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad are the two Open Access Journals available. The National Agricultural Research System (NARS) comprising all the 97 ICAR institutes and 47 State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) is the largest system of the world. When the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) had adopted Open Access policy and made all its journals Open Access and has established institutional repositories for all its laboratories in 2009, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in the year 2010, as a part of e-Publishing & Knowledge System in Agricultural Research project under National Agriculture Innovation Project (NAIP), launched its two flagship journals on Open Journal Systems and declared them as Open Access. It is now offering hosting support to scholarly societies on its ‘epubs‘ platform for their journals. Under another NAIP project, a thesis repository, ‘KrishiPrabha‘ was established for NARS. However, unlike ‘Shodhganga’ it is only available to NARS institutions for online viewing and without full-text download permission. In the NARS, more than 100 scholarly societies are functioning and the use of the community developed tools & techniques for sharing and enriching the research information on the web by these societies is uncommon. Though under the NAIP, the entire NARS is being provided with the access to relevant corporate journals under the project Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture. The access to the enormous outputs from Indian agricultural research which had aided in the advancement of agricultural science are being restricted for sharing openly with the world.

At this backdrop, seeing the slow pace of growing Open Access momentum in India, a group of agricultural researchers formed a voluntary group called ‘Open Access India’ (OAIndia) in July 2011 on ‘Facebook’ with an aim to take up the advocacy on ‘Open Access’ and to make agricultural information openly available, accessible and effectively used for farming in the country. Till date the group had grown to the membership of 1990 and to have a wider reach, OAIndia had created its page on Facebook, and groups on Linkedin, on Google groups and on openaccessweek.org. The group is listed in the Open Access Directory as one among the 15 groups formed on Facebook on Open Access.

The aims & objectives of ‘OAIndia’ are as follows:

Advocacy – sensitizing the researchers, policy makers and general public on the need to make data & information generated through public funds openly available.
Development of community e-infrastructure, capacity building and framework for ‘Open Access’ policies for sharing data & information.

In the NARS, researchers have generated extensive data and are stored in data books and project reports. Many a times, much of the data exists as unpublished (Grey Data) and once the researcher leaves the organization, the data is lost. Timely release of this data would help the researchers to carry forward the research for attaining the important scientific goals without ‘reinventing the wheel’ and in the light of recently approved National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy for India, the discussion on the development of data standards, collection & analysis, sharing, archiving and rewarding policies assumes a considerable importance. To take forward its aims and objectives, the OAIndia had started consultations with various agencies working for the open knowledge to seek support for the creation of community owned Open Repository for all the researchers to voluntarily archive data & information whose institution did not have any infrastructure for the same.

Now, the OAIndia now had become partner with MyOpenArchive an international Non-Profit Organization for advocating “green road

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MyOpenArchive – an Open Access repository

Danica Radovanovic — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:28:59 +0000

MyOpenArchive, founded in September 2007, is an international Non-Profit Organization that advocates Open Access for never-before-published research papers on the web and provides Self-Archiving platform to enable better knowledge sharing in a way that’s easy to publish. The following article is the courtesy of Keita Bando, Digital Repository Librarian and Coordinator for Scholarly Communication and is a source of OpenRepositories2011. You can also take a look at the poster version.

Open Access Week [1] indicated the potential of the Open Access Movement by reaching a large number of current users of Open Access Journals and Institutional Repositories (IRs). [2] The main focus of this study is to highlight the importance of self-archiving as a form of “iR

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Open access: Opening the Science

Danica Radovanovic — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:39:59 +0000

Open access databases, archives, repositories are hopefully present, for almost a decade, in technology, education, science, and the iron gates systems are slowly behind us; we can say that the technology, science, and academia are striving to be more and more open.

There is an international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked archives, libraries, online databases, information flow in general, that once hid and restricted knowledge.

One of the definitions of ‘open’ denotes ‘a piece of knowledge is open if you re free to use, reuse, and redistribute it.

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