Issue 52

Open Science Newsletter

OPEN SCIENCE

EBSCO is partnering with protocols.io and Code Ocean, investing in both companies. This boosts EBSCO’s stake in providers of open science services to its institutional customer base.

Open is Cancelled. Wait, what? Written from a more broader perspective of ‘open’ initiatives, this provocative piece by Mandy Henk does make notable points. When the principles of open are challenged, it is important not to loose sight of the original intentions of the movement. To quote: “The open movement failed when it centred freedom over justice. It failed when it placed abstract principles above actual human lives. It failed again when misogyny, racism, and colonialism went unchecked and unchallenged.” 

EarthArXiv ending its partnership with COS over new charges. The preprint server aims to move to a new platform over concerns with the Center for Open Science’s new funding model for preprint servers.

Discovering millions of datasets on the web. Last week in issue 51 I mentioned in passing that Google has shuttered a hosted research data service in 2008. Well, this week they announced a service to discover datasets available on the web.

Crossref is 20. Congratulations! By now, it is hard to imagine academic publishing without them.

Nationwide Academies’ Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science Receives Grant from Arcadia Fund. “The roundtable convenes important stakeholders to debate the effectiveness of present incentives for adopting open science practices, present limitations of all sorts, and methods to maneuver ahead to be able to align reward buildings and institutional values.”
  

PUBLISHING

University of California and JMIR Publications launch pilot to advance open access to UC research. This is the first such agreement of the University of California with a native open access publisher.
  

RESEARCH

Daily situation reports from the WHO on the novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) are available here. As released by the WHO, the R0 rate of average number of people infected from a single contagious patient is estimated at 1.5-2.5, which is a little higher than seasonal flu. The fatality rate appears to be around 4%. The scientific community has responded to the threat with unprecedented speed and openness.
    

PLOS

Research performance and age explain less than half of the gender pay gap in New Zealand universities. Study published in PLOS ONE.
  

EVENTS

NIH workshop on Data Metrics. Virtual workshop on 19 February.
 
Open Access Oxford. A week of events taking place at the University of Oxford, UK, from 9 – 13 March.

UKSG 43rd Annual Conference. Held in Brighton, UK, from 30 March – 1 April.

SciPy2020. Scientific Computing with Python. Held in Austin, Texas, from 6 – 12 July.

Open Science Festival. On 27 August at Wageningen University, Netherlands.
  

OTHER

eLife names Damian Pattinson as new Executive Director. Congratulations, and all the best for the new role!