OPEN SCIENCE
Open Data Metrics: Lighting the Fire. An open access book that makes the case for strong data metrics: “To realize the benefits of open data sharing practices and the impact of research data, we need a practical implementation of tools and community buy-in that will aid in the development of data metrics.” By Daniella Lowenberg, John Chodacki, Martin Fenner, Jennifer Kemp, and Matthew B. Jones.
The Hong Kong Principles for Assessing Researchers: Fostering Research Integrity. A proposal for an improved recognition and reward system for researchers. The five principles are: responsible research practices; transparent reporting; open science (open research); valuing a diversity of types of research; and recognizing all contributions to research and scholarly activity.
A consensus-based transparency checklist. The proposed checklist, published in Nature Human Behaviour, aims to improve the reporting standards for social and behavioral research.
TU Delft in the Netherlands has embarked on the Open Science Programme 2020–2024. The university aims to “to make open research and education a standard part of scientific practice.”
DOIBoost Dataset Dump. A resource of academic metadata, enriched from different sources: 108 Million Crossref data records, combined with abstracts from the Microsoft Academic Graph and with ORCID data. A total of 54 GB to download.
PUBLISHING
Crossref plans to make changes to the metadata it collects, and seeks feedback on the proposal. Considered are support for author credit, author id’s, funder id’s, data citations and others. See a related request for input from JATS4R to capture research funding in JATS DTD.
The Plan S open access initiative creates more opportunities than threats for Latin America. Johan Rooryck responds to an earlier blog post highlighting the benefits of Latin American open access publishing infrastructures. Instead, Rooryck defends an engagement with commercial publishers, as foreseen in Plan S. Rooryck is the Open Access Champion for cOAlition S.
Publishers Announce a Major New Service to Plug Leakage. A coalition of subscription journal publishers are aiming to create a service that makes accessing content easier for subscribers. A problem this tries to address is the effortless user experience when accessing pirate sites, which has affected legal distribution channels.
RESEARCH
China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West. As reported in The New York Times, attempts of unethical DNA phenotyping are increasing, raising concerns for the scientific community and for science publishers.
Increasing gender diversity in the STEM research workforce. An important and relevant commentary by multiple authors in Science calling for stronger responses to ending sexual harassment in research. It calls for treating sexual harassment in a similar manner as research misconduct. Journals certainly have to play a responsible part in this as well, for example concerning research affected by sexual harassment or when managing editorial boards. (subscription access only)
PLOS
Celebrating 6 Months of Published Peer Review at PLOS. A first glimpse at the outcome of the implementation of published peer reviews. Journal opt-in rates vary from 33% to 68%. At PLOS ONE we have seen significant differences across research fields, and further analysis is to come.
EVENTS
Putting Data to Work: Building Public-Private Partnerships to Increase Resilience & Enhance the Socioeconomic Value of Data. ESIP Winter Meeting on 7 – 9 January, 2020, in Bethesda, MD.
Open Science Days 2020. A meeting organized by the Max Planck Digital Library on the relationship between open science and good scientific practice. On 2 – 3 March, 2020, in Berlin, Germany.