Gates Foundation announces world’s strongest policy on open access research

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced the world’s strongest policy in support of open research and open data. If strictly enforced, it would prevent Gates-funded researchers from publishing in well-known journals such as Nature and Science.  Read more

More than half of 2007-2012 research articles now free to read

More than half of 2007-2012 research articles now free to read

More than half of all peer-reviewed research articles published from 2007 to 2012 are now free to download somewhere on the Internet, according to a report produced for the European Commission, published today. That is a step up from the situation last year, when only one year in the three-year report period  – 2011 – reached the 50% free mark. But the report also underlines how availability dips in the most recent year, because many papers are only made free after a delay.  Read more

World’s first ‘clean coal’ commercial power plant opens in Canada

World's first 'clean coal' commercial power plant opens in Canada

The world’s first commercial coal-fired power plant that can capture its carbon dioxide emissions officially launched today in Canada – marking a milestone for so-called ‘clean coal’ technology.  Read more

US Department of Energy frees up access to research

The US Department of Energy has  revealed today how papers from research it funds will become free to read, making it the first federal agency to respond to new standards for open access and data-sharing ordered by the White House 18 months ago.  Read more

Germany pulls back from international mega-telescope project

Germany pulls back from international mega-telescope project

Germany’s science funding may look healthy to outsiders, but its research ministry seems to have stretched its cash too thinly. Last week, it decided that helping to fund the world’s biggest radio-telescope – to be built in South Africa and Australia by 2024 at a cost of more than €1.5 billion – was one international mega-project too many. On 5 June, it said it would pull out of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), to the dismay of German astronomers, who say they were not consulted and are hoping to reverse the move.  Read more

The decline and fall of Microsoft Academic Search

The decline and fall of Microsoft Academic Search

Five years after it launched, Microsoft’s free scholarly search engine has fallen into shabby disrepair, failing to track even a fraction of papers published since 2011. But the team behind the product says they are shifting their focus to a yet-to-be-released, next-generation version of the service.  Read more