Another wiki coming up for medical information

Medpedia would be an another wiki based collaborative project to collect and disseminate authentic information about health, medicine and the body.

Open Source Software in Education

Open Source Software in Education (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT

..Open source and digital education and learning, separately and together, aim to reach everyone. Although both movements have gained considerable maturity, a need for greater coordination exists..

Book on Open Access

An e-book on Open Access has been released by ICTP-SDU. This book titled "Science Dissemination using Open Access" aims to guide the scientific community on the requirements of Open Access. It includes available low-cost solutions for open access along with selected literature on Open Access.

The book is available as PDF File. It is also available from an interesting on-line publishing platform - ISSUU.

A scientist's view on making impact through Open Access Journals

Dr Jeetender Chugh in his blog JC says has a suggestion on how to increase Impact Factors for Indian Journals

"..Govt should make a rule, which should be applicable to all the universities and institutes across India, that we, the researchers of India should publish all the work in Indian Journals only. The journals may be peer-reviewed internationally. The journals may be available online free of cost, and free copies may be sent to major universities worldwide.."

Dr Chugh is emphasising on two things - Govt. directive on scholarly publishing and free availability of Indian scholarly publications. It has been proved number of times that unrestricted online availability of of scholarly articles results in better impact (Online or Invisible? by Steve Lawrence; NEC Research Institute). Thus if Indian research is published through open access journals, it would make better impact on further research world wide. However it appears impractical to force authors to publish only in Indian Journals. However Govt. could mandate that publications arising from public funded research be archived in some Open Access archives within a specific time after their publication. A policy similar to NIH Public Access could be explored for such a mandate.

The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit journal final peer-reviewed manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/). The Policy requires that these articles be accessible to the public on PubMed Central to help advance science and improve human health.

Self-corrective nature of scientific knowledge

Open access and the self-correction of knowledge (SPARC), From the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, June 2, 2008. By Peter Suber.

..Science is fallible, but clearly that’s not what makes it special. Science is special because it’s self-correcting. It isn’t self-correcting because individual scientists acknowledge their mistakes, accept correction, and change their minds. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Science is self-correcting because scientists eventually correct the errors of other scientists, and find the evidence to persuade their colleagues to accept the correction, even if the new professional consensus takes more than a generation. In fact, it’s precisely because individuals find it difficult to correct themselves, or precisely because they benefit from the perspectives of others, that we should employ means of correction that harness public scrutiny and open access..

Access to Learning Award

Access to Learning Award by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recognizes innovative efforts of public libraries or similar organizations outside the United States to connect people to information through free access to computers and the Internet.

Applications for 2009 Award are being invited by the foundation by Oct. 31, 2008.

e-polymers Journal

e-polymers is a peer-reviewed Open Access journal under the auspices of the European Polymer Federation (EPF).

Comment on Open Access 2.0

Left following comment on T. Scott's post on Open Access 2.0

The "2.0" qualifier is more often used in the context where readers themselves create content in a collaborative manner on the interactive web media. I was looking for this angle in Joe Esposito's article. However, I was bit disappointed as this aspect was missing. There is no 1.0 in Open Access. In fact, Open Access itself is "Access 2.0". This movement is all about scholars making their own scholarly literature accessible to their scholarly peers.

What can Bloggers do for Open Access?

Last Saturday I participated in a Bar Camp in Delhi. This was organized by IBNMS [1] and was named as Blog Camp Delhi [2]. I learned that the philosophy of such Bar Camps [3] is that everyone has to contribute in some way or the other. So, I decided to give a presentation on Open Access [4]. I knew I will be talking to entirely wrong audience. As the theme was on blogging, obviously the people can be expected to be more interested in the art of blogging and monetising their blogs. Most would be young and might not have tasted the frustration of obtaining scholarly articles [5]. But, I had no other way to contribute. I went ahead with my decision to give a presentation on my favorite topic i.e. Open Access.

I finally took a session on it - Open Access: What it is and why it is required for scholarly community?

While working on my presentation, I was always thinking on how to make it relevant to expected participants of blog camp. Without any lose of time, I thought of Peter Suber [6]. After all, he has been blogging on Open Access for years now. We are getting all the latest news on Open Access from his Open Access News blog [7]. But then, he is an Open Access advocate. Blogging is just a media for his advocacy of open Access. Many other like him are advocates first and bloggers afterwards. However, my job was to tell an audience that might not even know what scholarly literature is.

How to tell them that there is a community that does things just for the sake of science and advancement of knowledge? This Community of academicians, scientists and scholars has different value system. Here, the reputations of community members largely depend upon papers they publish and references they get to these papers. So, they need to publish papers to remain relevant in the community. This helps them to get promotions and other career advancements. Scholarly papers are often based on original research done in systematic manner over a period of time. Research is never done in vacuum but is always based on existing knowledge. New research aims to extend the baseline of existing knowledge in a specific domain. This requires searching and ‘consumption’ of relevant scholarly papers related to their research. Once the research is completed, the results are included in manuscripts for getting published as articles in scholarly journals. Before an article can be published in a journal, it has to undergo a process called peer-review [8]. In this process, the manuscript submitted by authors is referred to two or three scholars working in similar area. Editorial board consisting of eminent scholars takes final decision to accept or reject paper based on comments of reviewers. It can also send back manuscripts to authors for modification and resubmission. So, it is the members of same scholarly community that are playing the roles of consumers (researchers and scholars) of previously published papers, producers (as authors) as well as quality controllers (as peer-reviewers and editorial board members). All these players are contributing to science and knowledge without seeking immediate monetary benefits. However academic publishing business is more often guided by commercial interests. Publishers insist on exclusive transfer of copyrights of authors in their favour. While authors of books, non-scholarly and popular literature negotiate in terms of royalties, scholarly authors give away their rights without caring much about monetary benefits. Thus, years of hard work is given away for free by scholars so that their papers can be published. The same is then sold back to the same community at a very high subscription rates.

Scholars, academicians and scientists need to access knowledge locked up in high cost journals for conducting new research. It is same knowledge which they themselves had created. It means, only those researchers and scholars can access this locked up knowledge whose employers and institutes can afford to purchase this knowledge. This creates inequalities of access to knowledge. That results in inequalities in efficiency of producing new knowledge. Poor and developing nation are most hit as they can not spend much on purchasing scholarly journals in foreign currencies to the level of developed countries.

Thanks to Internet, things are changing now. Research can be reported much quickly. Authors can submit their manuscripts online. Manuscript management and online publishing has become much easier especially with manuscript management systems like Open Journal System [9]. All processes, from assignment of peer-reviewers to bringing out a new issue can be done online. Which means journal publishing now is much cheaper and prompt. Number of online journals have come up in last decade. Even the traditional journals now have online versions. Wait, that does not necessarily means that what all is available online can be accessed for free. However many journals do provide free access to their full content. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) [10] lists about 3390 open access journals. Out of which around 100 are from India [11]. These Open Access journals do whatever the traditional scholarly journals do for publishing peer-reviewed articles. Only difference is that they provide online access to anybody and everybody for free. Open Access journals are free to readers but obviously not free to produce. There are various business models for producing open access journals. Most professional societies have their official journals. These are distributed to society members. The parent society takes care of publication costs. Many such society journals have online version. These are normally accessible for free. In India, most online society journals come under this category. Then there are public funded organisations engaged in research and its promotion. These also publish research journals and make their online versions free. The best citied journal from India, Indian Journal of Medical Research [12], falls under this category. Somewhat controversial but successful model is being adopted by Open Access Publishers like PLoS [13] and BioMed Central [14]. Here once the article gets selected for publication after peer-review process, the author needs to pay a fee [15][16]. Popularity of such publishers with such a author-pays model sometime confuse people to belief that open access is all about author-pays and free-to-reader model of publishing. No, Open Access publishing of scholarly literature can be done through number of business models. The model adopted by publishers like PLoS and BioMed is just one of models.

There is one more route to open access. Here, the authors or other right holders retain [17] and exercise their right to self-achieve their papers in publically accessible digital repositories. These could be repositories run by their institutions (Institutional Repositories) or Subject Repositories allowing self-archiving without considering institutional affiliation of the authors. Number of universities, academic institutions and research funding agencies are making Open Access via such repositories mandatory [18]. Recently in U.S., NIH voluntary Public Access Policy has been made mandatory through an Act [19]. University faculties are becoming aware of benefits of archiving for open access, for example on 6th May 2008, Harvard Law faculty voted for 'open access' to their scholarly articles [20] through digital repositories. Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) had 1065 registered repositories with it as on 21st May 2008 worldwide [21].

I don’t know how much people in blogging or the wider domain of New Media know about this strange model of academic publishing. However bloggers, once made aware of it , can help open access movement [22] in number of ways. One way is to blog on Open Access itself. There are few already there and well established like the one by Peter Suber [7]. Some others which I know are OA Librarian [23]; The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics [24] and I will also mention the one from student community – Open Students: students for open access to research [25]. Second way is to blog about various open access resources. Every day, number of resources including journals, repositories, open courseware etc are launched and announced. These could be evaluated, annotated and listed under well planned categories (or tags) in a blog. Links of such tags or categories automatically collate resources into listings of related posts. It could be very similar to ‘Digital Scholarship’ [26]. Third way has to do more with subject experts. Scientists and Scholars can blog on how to promote open access within their own subject domain. Open Access Anthropology: Promoting Open Access in Anthropology [27] is beautiful example. Very similar concept has been highlighted in a presentation - Blogging Archaeology: creating an Open Access source for knowledge [28]. Fourth way is to blog about Peer-Reviewed Research. All such blog posts can be aggregated at one place [29]. There could be many more ways to promote Open Access through blogging.

Further Readings:

1. Indian Blog & New Media Society. http://ibnms.com/
2. Blog Camp Delhi. http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BlogCampDelhi
3. Bar Camp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp
4. Open Access Overview. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
5. Scholarly vs. Popular Articles. http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/research/schol-pop.php
6. Peter Suber. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm
7. Open Access News. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
8. Peer-review. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review
9. Open Journal Systems. http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs
10. DOAJ. http://www.doaj.org/
11. DOAJ Search for Journals from India. http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=findJournals&hybrid=&query=india
12. Indian Journal of Medical Research. http://www.icmr.nic.in/ijmr/ijmr.htm
13. PLoS. http://www.plos.org/
14. BioMed Central. http://www.biomedcentral.com/
15. PLoS: FAQ - Questions about publication fees. http://www.plos.org/about/faq.html#pubquest
16. BioMed Central: Frequently asked questions about BioMed Central's article-processing charges. http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq
17. Author Rights: Using the SPARC Author Addendum to secure your rights as the author of a journal article. http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml
18. Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies. http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
19. Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html
20. Harvard Law faculty votes for 'open access' to scholarly articles. http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2008/05/07_openaccess.php
21. Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). http://roar.eprints.org/
22. Timeline of the Open Access Movement. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
23. OA Librarian - http://oalibrarian.blogspot.com/
24. The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics - http://www.poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/
25. Open Students: students for open access to research - http://www.openstudents.org/
26. Digital Scholarship. http://www.digital-scholarship.com/
27. Open Access Anthropology: Promoting Open Access in Anthropology. http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/
28. Blogging Archaeology: creating an Open Access source for knowledge – http://www.slideshare.net/milozvu4na/blogging-archaeology-creating-an-open-access-source-for-knowledge
29. Research Blogging: Discussing and creating peer-reviewed research. http://researchblogging.org/index.php

Open Access: What it is and why it is required for scholarly community?

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Guides for OA journal publishers

Guides for OA journal publishers - OAD

Guidelines, primers, recommendations, and best practices for publishers of open-access journals

Open Access Directory (OAD)

A new wiki - Open Access Directory (OAD) - has been rolled out. It would serve as a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship.

Open Science Directory

Open Science Directory has been developed by EBSCO and the Hasselt University Library. About 13000 scientific journals are listed in this directory. It contains open access journals and journals in the special programs like Hinari, Agora,
OARE etc. Some other
programs like INASP-PERI and eJDS will also be added in the near future.

Why plagiarize when we can write?

Just back from a seminar on "Trends and Strategic Issues for Libraries in Global Information Society". We got printed proceedings of the seminar. While going through this proceedings, one paragraph looked very familiar to me. Oh, we had written it only few months back to report a group discussion on open access. This report, we made widely available over net through various discussion forums. We had also archived it in our repository. This familiar looking paragraph was included in a paper. I quickly jumped to reference section of the paper to see if we are lucky to get a citation. In vain, I should have remembered that people, who plagiarize, don't mention their actual source. It is their trade secret so won't even mention indirectly. For them, references are mere formality, so they will cite sources which they might have not even seen before.

But why get got? There are number of softwares for rewriting articles. Just have a look at "The best article rewriting software on earth". It mentions about software tools which will rewrite for you. Simply paste the text and you will get new text different from the original. These includes WordFlood 2.0, Content Rewriter Pro and Essay Town. Some payment may be required to get fully functional versions. With the help of these tools one can rewrite articles and hope to escape being caught by search engines like Google. However, do you know the best software? No prize for guessing it right, it is our brain. One can definitely use tools along with brain. WordWeb could be of great help. It is a small free utility to serve as English thesaurus as well as a dictionary.

There are no copyrights on ideas. Only well documented innovations are protected through patents. But coping ideas' written expressions as such without acknowledging the original authors is called plagiarism. It does not go well in academics when someone is trying to project others' idea as one's own. Punishment is mostly in form of bad reputation among peers and negative employer's assessment. Better would to express the idea in one's own words. Tools can help you if you are at lost for better words. Importantly, it won't cost anything if you cite the original author. At the most you will have to add more line in your word processor.

It is always a bad idea to plagiarize Open Access material because everybody knows about it. Being openly accessible, such material is widely indexed by Internet search engines. It will always show up. Modern search engines are designed in a fashion to understand which one is original and which one is plagiarized.

Definition of Open Knowledge

FrontPage - Open Knowledge Definition - Defining the Open in Open Data, Open Content and Open Information

A piece of knowledge is open if you are free to use, reuse, and redistribute it

(Via Open Access News)

Horror of closed-access publishing

Left the following comment on ‘The horror of closed-access publishing’ according to Jonathan Eisen « Pimm - Partial immortalization

The question here is different -

- Who is producer of the first hand information? - Scientists / researchers.

- What does the scientists / researchers gets after giving away
their research results? - No immediate monetary benefits from the
journal (Never from the Journal).

- Who does the quality control? - Fellow scientists and researchers acting as peer reviewers.

- What do the peer-reviewers get? Nothing, Not even their names are revealed.

- Who are the editorial board members? Eminent scientists and
researchers. Will get the tag of being on editorial boards or perhaps
annual subscription to the journal.

- Who are the publishers? Not scientists / researchers. Have marketing and distribution skills. Reap all the profits.

- Who are the readers? Scientists / researchers. Will Consume
expensive public resources to do research and produce papers to give
away free to publishers.

This model was necessary before internet era. Publishers had control
on distribution channels in the academic publishing and book trade.

Do
we still need this? Or Open Access is the answer?

Institutional Repositories - Ranks

Top 200 Institutional Repositories

We produce the knowledge they take away the profits.

Here is another reaction of a scholar on conventional scholarly publishing. Best scientific knowledge is produced (authored) and quality controlled (peer-reviewed and scrutinized by editorial board) by scientific and academic community. Arunn Narasimhan writes in his Unruled Notebook » Blog Archive » Open Access Publishing

.."As a researcher, I do all the hard work, think of an idea, find the research methods and tools, find the funding if necessary to accomplish certain tasks to realize the idea and see its merit, write the results using the idea and analyze the pros and cons of the idea and send that research article usually to a research journal office comprising of other researchers. The subsequent peer review process that qualifies my idea for its worthiness as original useful scientific knowledge is done by these academics and researchers mostly for no fee. It is a service they all must perform because it will be reciprocated in kind and quality by other researchers in the community to uplift their research work. Strict but free of money"..

Scholars give away their papers to journals without expecting any financial benefits in return. Their unknown peers do the quality control but do not even get a mention for doing so. Editorial boards consisting of eminent scholars take difficult decisions on some controversial papers. They also hardly get an annual subscription of the journal they edit. However, all these participants from the same academic and scientific community are doing all this because this is how the academic peer ranking and rating model works. And let us not forget, it is this very community that purchase the knowledge they have produced from the publishers. Without that producing or adding new knowledge won't be possible. Those not having enough purchasing power would obviously be handicapped in making contributions to such knowledge generation process.

It could be understood that prior to Internet era publishers were the only route for publishing nascent scientific literature. They have sound distribution network in the book trade coupled with marketing power. But Internet has given an alternative to their distribution network. Shouldn't now there be an alternative publishing model in the form of Open Access?

OAPEN

OAPEN - a new project for Open Access publishing of monographs.

Openness Transforms Health Care

Human Genome Project is a fine example of mass collaboration in biomedical research. It demonstrates benefits of allowing access to data and its manipulation by researchers around the world. Openness
allows contributions from large number of individuals thus often leads to greater innovation.

Openness with adequate care for personal privacy of patients has been recommended by a recent report - Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development.

(Found via Transforming Scholarly Communication).