CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-18 10:41:00 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

If you think that academics should be judged on the quality of what they produce rather than on dubious measures, such as impact factors, associated with where they publish, then there is a declaration that you can sign. It won't be easy to change the culture, but the benefits of doing so would be considerable, and one way to hasten the demise of the current system is to keep reminding people of its defects.

2013-05-18 10:18:21 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. Though it does not make the memories any less painful.

2013-05-08 01:13:54 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

US Govt seeking nominations for #OpenScience  champions

2013-05-03 23:30:26 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-05-03 23:29:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Nominate a pioneer who has applied scientific research published through Open Access to innovate in any field

2013-05-03 23:27:39 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Defending academic fair use against publishers who won't quit

I'm sure you remember the publisher lawsuit against Georgia State University in 2008. Three publishers sued the university for 99 instances of copyright infringement in reproducing works for classroom use. GSU claimed fair use, and in 2012 <http://goo.gl/5ocLM> a federal district court ruled in its favor for 94 of the instances. The publishers are now appealing their massive defeat. 

David Hansen, Peter Jaszi, Pamela Samuelson, Jason Schultz, and Rebecca Tushnet have written a superb amicus brief in defense of GSU and academic fair use. I'm proud to be one of the scholars who signed the brief.

"A finding of fair use in this case not only furthers the underlying goals of scholarship and education - access to knowledge - but also the very purposes of the Copyright Act itself....[T]he... more »

2013-05-02 09:46:46 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

#gsoc 2 days left for students to apply for Google Summer of Code 2013. The deadline is May 3: 19:00 UTC - no exceptions!!

Don't wait for the last 5 minutes to get your applications done in Melange!

2013-04-18 08:52:18 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-04-10 10:32:00 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Tasman Declaration
Research outputs should be open to increase benefits of research investments

During 6-8 February 2013, several dozen citizens from different sectors of Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK came together for the inaugural New Zealand Australia Open Research Conference. The group included researchers, lawyers, librarians, research infrastructure providers, technology consultants, and software developers.

New Zealand and Australia are among those nations pioneering open approaches across the public sector and in some aspects of research. The Tasman Declaration recommends key actions through which New Zealand and Australia can coordinate and advance their respective open approaches to research towards greater economic, societal, and environmental impact. 

Tasman Declaration

Publicly funded research should be openly available to maximise... more »

2013-04-06 09:23:47 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

We are pleased to announce the launch of PeerJ PrePrints - A brand new preprint server for the Biological and Medical Sciences. Announcement at: http://blog.peerj.com/post/47030855181/the-launch-of-peerj-preprints and there is a Scientific American guest post with more backstory at http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/04/03/who-killed-the-preprint-and-could-it-make-a-return/

2013-04-06 09:23:22 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

figshare partners with Nature on their #Scientific #Data journal.

http://figshare.com/blog/figshare_partners_with_Nature_on_their_Scientific_Data_journal/78

Scientific Data is a new open-access, online-only publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets from Nature Publishing Group. The ethos of the initiative is tightly aligned with that of figshare, focussing on making the data open under Creative Commons license, encouraging re-use and giving academics credit for all of their research.

2013-04-01 04:02:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Tasman Declaration recommends OA mandates

Participants in the Open Research conference (Auckland, February 6-7, 2013) have released the Tasman Declaration:

"Publicly funded research should be openly available to maximise return on investments into research, and to increase participation in research and its translation beyond the traditional research sector. 'Open Research' is about removing barriers for society to benefit from research, by ensuring open access to and reuse of research papers, data, materials, metadata and code, and by developing the supporting practices and policies. In the absence of a good reason, research outputs should be made available with as few restrictions as possible and as soon as possible....Open research is more transparent, accessible, efficient and reproducible.... Recommendations: ...Policy Mandates [to] support and prioritise Open... more »

2013-03-21 05:19:34 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

My TED talk on my grand unified theory of illusions. 

2013-02-01 01:08:33 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-01-15 20:08:00 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Timely comment on #pdftribute  :
"While this has been a noteworthy gesture, the problem of open access isn’t just about the ethics of freeing and sharing scholarly information. It’s as much — if not more — about the psychology and incentives around scholarly publishing. We need to think these issues through much more deeply to make open access widespread."

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/01/we-need-more-than-releasing-articles-to-make-open-access-work/

#oa  

2013-01-03 08:31:43 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

+Jeffrey Beall is the target of a dishonest smear campaign. This is his reward for investigating scam OA journals that give OA a bad name.

His work has generated some good-faith disagreement about which journals deserve his criticism. Fair enough. But his work has also triggered some nasty guerrilla counter-attacks. For example, some of his enemies have forged emails in his name pretending to demand money in order to remove publishers from his list of predatory publishers. 
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/2012-December/001407.html

Some of his enemies have forged emails from others in the OA movement attacking Beall and his work. I know this is happening because someone recently forged an email in my name for just that purpose.
https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/F1NMirUhAgL

These attacks are contemptible. 

We shouldiden... more »

2012-12-20 09:33:13 (1 comments, 6 reshares, 5 +1s)

Registration is now open for the Open Research Conference in Auckland, Feb 2013

2012-12-20 02:58:06 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2012-12-12 03:32:22 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

2012-12-06 10:40:34 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

2012-12-04 20:41:38 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Please take a look at this and sign the petition if you agree.  https://www.google.com/takeaction/#make-your-voice-heard

2012-12-03 21:44:36 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Awesome review of the PeerJ system from an early user: http://buildingblogsofscience.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/peerj-pulls-off-a-hat-trick/

2012-12-03 02:14:33 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Open Research Conference now underway ... and accepting sponsorship of any size!!! 

2012-11-22 09:44:04 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

If it were anywhere else, I'd be outraged. Here, it provokes little more than an eye-roll.

Why would I expect a outlet that serves as a venue of creationist and anti-vaccine pseudoscience to have anything interesting at all to say about scientific publishing. It's telling how the author apparently thinks the comparison to the "reportedly pornographic" 50 Shades is some kind of slam. Commenters, I salute you. It's a dirty job and I'm glad I didn't have to do it.

2012-11-20 09:40:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2012-11-19 09:35:54 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/Home

2012-11-15 10:04:12 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Failure to replicate as an opportunity from learning

2012-10-26 02:21:48 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Open Access Explained!

2012-10-26 02:00:17 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

Awfully specific stuff you can learn from MacKay

Charles MacKay (1814-1889) published Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds in 1841, which basically deals with social psychology.  In this work, he attempts to debunk all types of delusions - including witch hunts, fortune tellers, and haunted houses.  Carl Sagan thought well of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, as do several current prominent economists (MacKay wrote sections on economic bubbles).

 He also includes a section in this book on beards and length of hair.

Did you know that at the end of the eleventh century, the Pope decreed that all persons (read men) with long hair were to be excommunicated whilst alive and then not prayed for after death?  Or that North American Indians of some regions grew a “chivalrous lock” as a point of honour, so that enemies would have something to holdon to w... more »

2012-10-25 08:56:37 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

My presentation on Open Access for Stratus UAuckland is up on slideshare

2012-10-22 02:31:42 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

On the cultural heritage of science and other Open Access Week blog posts at Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zeaand

2012-10-22 02:30:40 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Hello Open Access Week

2012-10-19 08:06:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2012-10-18 03:33:05 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

The Philosophy of Open Access http://shar.es/5PHFY #openaccess

2012-10-18 01:03:09 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2012-10-16 08:13:39 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

If you are near Waikato, hope to see you there!

2012-10-16 01:09:28 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Sigh.  :(

2012-10-11 08:01:19 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Didn't see this one coming 

2012-10-08 02:41:46 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Indeed! Must tell my students to do this to shut me up!

2012-10-06 07:48:56 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Here's my conversation with +John Brockman of edge.org about open acccess to knowledge and "the clothesline paradox." 

From the summary: "If we're going to get science policy right, it's really important for us to study the economic benefit of open access and not accept the arguments of incumbents. Existing media companies claim that they need ever stronger and longer copyright protection and new, draconian laws to protect them, and meanwhile, new free ecosystems, like the Web, have actually led to enormous wealth creation and enormous new opportunities for social value. And yes, they did in fact lead in some cases to the destruction of incumbents, but that's the kind of creative destruction that we should celebrate in the economy. We have to accept that, particularly in the area of science, there's an incredible opportunity for open access to enable newb... more »

2012-10-03 09:00:27 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

six millions that could have been better used for research or educational resources. Craps. 

2012-09-21 01:02:26 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

I just purchased +Peter Suber Open Access book. One day I will stalk him to sign my copy. Let's see Kindle do that :)

2012-09-20 07:24:50 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Sydney Open Research: we have started a scrolling page to indicate what people are up to http://sydopenres.tumblr.com/ and for photos
, and we hope some will click on "Submit A Post" to say something about what you're interested in learning or what you're doing.

As mentioned at the meetup, we have written an open letter to the new Australian Research Council chief asking him to take steps to increase sharing of data sets collected with ARC money.  If you agree with the letter, please consider signing it by adding your name and affiliation to the bottom of the letter:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bcrrzu4Ljono5V_UqdJogtB-043XmxWVkm-jH9kw3m0/edit  The body of the letter together with a perspective we've written will appear in The Conversation in a week or so.

The other thing +Matthew Todd  and I are working on is the NZ AU Open Research meetingne... more »

2012-08-21 23:59:47 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2012-08-17 02:52:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2012-08-15 23:33:54 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

2012-08-08 22:26:07 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

2012-07-25 21:18:43 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

RT +Fabiana Kubke Interview #3 #OpenAccess with @CameronNeylon @ChiefSciAdvisor and @Kubke on @RadioNewZealand

2012-07-15 04:59:46 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Crunching data into narratives

I like the idea of intelligent software turning data into narratives. For example, see Narrative Science <http://www.narrativescience.com/> and +Mac Slocum's short article about it in O'Reilly Radar <http://goo.gl/BY8MB>.

I have no idea how well the software works today. But it's the sort of thing that can only get better with time.

I don't like the idea of stopping with the narrative generated by intelligent software. But like machine translation, machine narrative could provide a useful first whack at understanding.

NS pitches itself to business users trying to understand business data. Is anyone using it for scientific data? In any field?

#ai  

2012-07-14 10:56:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Congratulations to the Public Library of Science

"PLoS is delighted to announce that our 50,000th research article was recently published...."

#oa   #openacces   #plos   +Public Library of Science (PLoS)