Archive by category | Access

Citizendium calls for contributions to Biology week

Biology Week, an online “open house” for biologists, biology students and other interested people, begins today (22 September) on Citizendium, a ‘next-generation’ wiki encyclopedia started by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. (See this Peer to Peer post for a brief comparison of online encyclopaedias.)  … Read more

Nature’s special issue on ‘big data’

The Big Data special package of articles in this week’s issue of Nature (4 September 2008) looks at how massive influxes of data are changing the way science is done in many fields, and includes a feature story on ‘Wikiomics’ that might be of particular interest to the scientists who work with “web 2.0” tools. Coping with floods of data is now one of science’s biggest challenges, so the Nature special issue assess the need to complement smart science with smart searching; looks at what the next Google will be; interviews the pioneering biologists who are trying to use wiki-type web pages to manage and interpret data; and recalls that the first mass data crunchers were not computers, but the remarkable women of Harvard’s Observatory.  Read more

NPG will archive for authors

Nature Publishing Group announced this week that it will provide a free service to help authors fulfil funder and institutional mandates for the archiving of primary research papers. NPG has encouraged self-archiving since 2005. The new arrangements will provide uploading for NPG authors, starting later this year. See here for NPG’s press release announcing the service.  Read more

Nature’s Managing Director on future trends in publishing

Steven Inchcoombe, who became Managing Director of Nature Publishing Group (NPG) last October, is interviewed in the June/July issue of Research Information. He answers questions about the main information needs of researchers, the role of peer-review, NPG’s position on open access, and provides some predictions for the future.  Read more

UCSD-Nature Signaling Gateway seeks renewed funding

The USCD-Nature Signaling Gateway would like to apply for continued funding from the US National Institutes of Health. If you are a researcher in this field, or if you are interested in this area and have been reading the articles and other content on the Gateway, please show your support by writing a letter to the team via this web form, before 30 May. Your response will help keep the content on the site freely available for all users.  Read more

Publishing models and publication statistics

Juan-Carlos Lopez discusses the publication process from the authors’ perspective in a couple of posts at Spoonful of Medicine, the blog of Nature Medicine. First, he shares some data to show that the Nature journals are not biased in favour of authors based in the United States. The data shown are the ratio of submitted to published papers as a function of country. Take a look.  Read more

British Library surveys researchers’ attitudes to copyright

In March, the British Library conducted a survey on researchers’ attitudes and needs in the digital age. Of the respondents, 93 per cent stated that access to online research material should be the same as for books. Most of the 320 respondents agreed that, in the age of the Internet, anyone involved in non-commercial research should be allowed, via ‘fair dealing’ or exemptions, to copy parts of electronically published works, including online articles, news broadcasts, film or sound recordings. ‘Fair dealing’ is the ‘right’ to make a copy from an in-copyright work without permission from, or remuneration to, the rights holder for non-commercial research, private study, criticism, review and news reporting.  Read more