Tag Archives: open science

Seeking out stronger science: An incomplete, non-systematic list of resources

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Our reporter Monya Baker runs through some of the statistical tools she found when writing her latest story.

As I reported in a Nature feature published this week, I found more online courses that were being developed than were actually in place. Resources to help scientists do more robust research are set to expand quickly. For example, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences has a competitive program that awards funds to institutions to enhance graduate student training; of 15 such supplements awarded in 2015, a dozen involved data analysis, statistics, or experimental rigor. You can find more here, and that is only a fraction of what is available. Some courses are still being developed and piloted to select students; others are being offered only to those in a particular department or training grant. If you find one that interests you, it can’t hurt to ask.

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#Scidata15: Make the most of your research: Publish better data

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Primary research papers are the currency of academics, but they’re also part of a much wider body of knowledge that is restricted by a lack of transparency.

Guest contributor Lakshini Mendis

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Historically, a great deal of trust has been placed in statements made in research papers for which the underlying data have not been shared. The invention of the laser was described in a paper containing just three data-points, for instance, and Watson and Crick first described the structure of DNA in a paper without any data at all. But with about 1,500 papers retracted since 2012, and 26.6% due to misconduct, scientific papers are now firmly under the microscope.

Improving the availability and readability of original research data would go a long way to improving matters. And as scientific publishers largely determine how research data is disseminated, their involvement will be central to any change. Speaking at Publishing Better Science Through Better Data in late October 2015, Dr Joerg Heber and Dr Andrew Hufton, editors at Nature Communications and Scientific Data respectively, emphasised that to make the most of research data it must be more open.

Overcoming the data-sharing challenge

According to Hufton, the status quo is for researchers to only share data with others directly. As well as being inefficient, data associated with published work disappears at a rate of about 17% a year as a result of researchers failing to properly catalogue findings. There is now, therefore, a move from scientific publishers to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and re-useable – or, to use an acronym as those of a scientific persuasion are so often inclined to do, FAIR. Continue reading →

Data sharing: Contribute to the community

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Data sharing can make a significant contribution to the scientific community, but it comes with challenges, says Caroline Weight.

Guest contributor Caroline Weight

We have all heard of it. We are all worried about it. We hear whispers of it in the corridors. We are advised to be careful what we say to ‘others’. We constantly check the literature. It matters to us. After all, it is our careers on the line.

‘Scooped’.

The process of publication is vigorous, competitive and tricky. It’s not uncommon for five years to pass between writing the grant application and publishing the work. Big labs with state-of-the-art facilities stand a better chance of getting their work out there first, given the extra manpower and often more-established protocols. This race for ownership of the data makes it difficult to share information and present new findings at meetings or conferences. Even at manuscript submission, there is often a chance to actively inhibit particular referees in case of conflicts of interest or personal competitors, to retain the novel concepts and data until they have been made public. Not until the publication has been accepted and is in print can you heave a sigh of relief and move on to the next project. Yet, sharing of data is essential to the progression of science in the modern world. Continue reading →

I owe my business to my frustration as a Scientist – Brainspace Founder Dave Copps

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"What we’re seeing today is fairly dramatic and there is a sea change happening with open access publishing and the large publishers."

“What we’re seeing today is fairly dramatic and there is a sea change happening with open access publishing and the large publishers.”

Ahead of ESOF 2014, we talk to three leading figures in science, technology and academia who through frustrations of not having the effective tools necessary to do their work, decided to build their own.

In this three-part series in the run-up to Europe’s largest, general science meeting held every two years, this year in Copenhagen (June 21-26), we look at the increasing number of start-up companies that are “spinning out” of academic institutions worldwide.

Here, the founder of Brainspace, Dave Copps talks about how social platforms are changing the way in which scientists work and how technology is being used to advance open research.

Dave’s background:

Dave is a social scientist and serial entrepreneur that has founded and launched three companies focused on scalable semantic discovery. He is currently CEO of Brainspace Corporation where he is leading the creation of BrainspaceScience, the first global semantic network for science professionals. BrainspaceScience transforms the published works of scientists all over the world into a collective intelligence that can be used by science professionals everywhere  to semantically connect to relevant people and knowledge.

Where did the idea for Brainspace originate from?

I’ve always been a bit of a search geek and enjoyed discovery systems, but also often quite frustrated by them. Over time as the volumes of data are getting increasingly bigger, the systems that we have are equally becoming less and less effective.

I read a report recently that the success rate of an internet search is 50% and that the improvement over the last ten years has been 0%. This is a result of both just evolutionary improvement in search technology and an exponential increase in the amount of data being produced.

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I owe my business to my frustration as a Scientist – Figshare Founder Mark Hahnel

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“The main thing about Figshare is its community-based so all of our good ideas, all of these new innovations have come from the community, institutions and publishers.”

Ahead of ESOF 2014, we talk to three leading figures in science, technology and academia who through frustrations of not having the effective tools necessary to do their work, decided to build their own.

In this three-part series in the run-up to Europe’s largest, general science meeting held every two years, this year in Copenhagen (June 21-26), we look at the increasing number of start-up companies that are “spinning out” of academic institutions worldwide.

Here, the founder of Figshare, Mark Hahnel talks about making the leap from academia to business and why he thinks open science is revolutionising the research community.

Mark’s background:

Mark completed his PhD in stem cell biology at Imperial College London three years ago, having previously studied genetics in both Newcastle and Leeds. He is passionate about open science and the potential it has to revolutionise the research community. Figshare is looking to become the place where all academics make their research openly available, as well as producing a secure cloud based storage space for their outputs. By encouraging users to manage their research in a more organised manner, so that it can be easily made open to comply with funder mandates. Openly available research outputs will mean that academia can truly reproduce and build on top of the research of others.

What were the biggest frustrations you faced in academia?

As a stem cell biologist, I created lots of videos and datasets that never really fit into the publication process. So as of right now, three years on from finishing my PHD, I have three papers from that time that have five static images in each and none are suited to the new ways we can disseminate research, videos, the datasets and the molecules, so I wanted to make academia more web native and to disseminate the content in the way it was formed.

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