Open Source Database and Website to Provide Free and Open Access to Inactive U.S. Patents in the Public Domain

Authors : Yuenyong Nilsiam, Joshua M. Pearce

Although theoretically the patent system is meant to bolster innovation, the current United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is cumbersome and involves a significant time investment to locate inactive patents less than 20 years old.

This article reports on the development of an open source database to find these public domain ideas. First, a search strategy is explained. Then the operation and use of free and open source software are detailed to meet the needs of open hardware innovators.

Finally, a case study is presented to demonstrate the utility of the approach with 3-D printing. The results showed how the Free Inactive Patent Search enables users to search using plain language text to find public domain concepts and then provides a hyperlinked list of ideas that takes users to the USPTO database for the patent for more information.

All of the source code to operate the search and the website are open source themselves and provided in the public domain for free. In the case study on 3-D printing the time to identify public domain patents was cut by a factor of more than 1500.

This tool has the potential for accelerating the development of open hardware technologies to create high value for the public.

URL : Open Source Database and Website to Provide Free and Open Access to Inactive U.S. Patents in the Public Domain

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/inventions1040024

Effect of Government Data Openness on a Knowledge-Based Economy

Authors : Jae-Nam Lee, Juyeon Ham, Byounggu Choi

Many  governments  have  recently  begun  to  adopt  the  concept  of  open  innovation.  However,  studies  on  the  openness  of  government data and its effect on the global competitiveness have not received much attention.

Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of government data openness on a knowledge-based economy at the government level. The proposed model was analyzed using secondary data collected from three different reports.

The findings indicate that government data openness positively affects the formation of knowledge bases in a country and that the level of knowledge base of a country positively affects the global competitiveness of a country.

URL : Effect of Government Data Openness on a Knowledge-Based Economy

Open Post Publication Peer Review: An Innovation in Scientific Communication

Authors : Peiling Wang, Manasa Rath, Michael Deike, Wu Qiang

This research observes the emerging open peer review journals. In scientific publishing, transparency in peer review is a growing topic of interest for online journals. The traditional blind refereeing process has been criticized for lacking transparency.

Although the idea of open peer review (OPR) has been explored since 1980s, it is only in this decade that OPR journals are born. Towards a more open publishing model, the peer review process–once accessible only to the editors and referees—is now available to public.

The published article and its review history are being integrated into one entity; readers can submit or post comments to extend the peer process. This preliminary study observed four pioneer OPR journals representing pre-publication OPR and post-publication OPR.

Data collection focuses on publication’s lifecycle from its submission to peer approval. Preliminary results include comparisons of the level of openness and nature of interactions during refereeing process.

URL : http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_infosciepubs/55/

Free articles and Accounting for the timing effect

Authors : Nursyeha Binte Yahaya, Tay Chee Hsien Aaron

Various studies have attempted to assess the amount of free full text available on the web and recent work have suggested that we are close to the 50% mark for freely available articles (Archambault et al. 2013; Björk et al. 2010; Jamali and Nabavi 2015).

Our paper contributes to the literature by taking into account the timing issue by studying when the papers were made free. We sampled citations made by researchers who published in 2015 (based on records in the Singapore Management University Institution repository), checked the number of cited papers that were free at the time of the study and then attempted to “carbon date” the freely available papers to determine when they were first made available.

This allows us to estimate the length of time the free cited article was made available before the citing paper was published. We find that in our sample of cited papers in Economics, the median freely available cited paper (oldest variant) was made available 7-8 years before the citing paper was published.

Of these papers found free via Google Scholar, the majority 67% (n=47) was made available via University websites (not including Institutional repositories) and 32.8% (n=23) were final published versions.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01272

Scientific data science and the case for Open Access

Author : Gopal P. Sarma

“Open access” has become a central theme of journal reform in academic publishing. In this article, I examine the consequences of an important technological loophole in which publishers can claim to be adhering to the principles of open access by releasing articles in proprietary or “locked” formats that cannot be processed by automated tools, whereby even simple copy and pasting of text is disabled.

These restrictions will prevent the development of an important infrastructural element of a modern research enterprise, namely, scientific data science, or the use of data analytic techniques to conduct meta-analyses and investigations into the scientific corpus.

I give a brief history of the open access movement, discuss novel journalistic practices, and an overview of data-driven investigation of the scientific corpus. I argue that particularly in an era where the veracity of many research studies has been called into question, scientific data science should be one of the key motivations for open access publishing.

The enormous benefits of unrestricted access to the research literature should prompt scholars from all disciplines to reject publishing models whereby articles are released in proprietary formats or are otherwise restricted from being processed by automated tools as part of a data science pipeline.

URL : Scientific data science and the case for Open Access

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2566v1

 

Article Deposit Services in Support of Federal Agency Public Access Requirements

Authors : Michael Boock, Hui Zhang, Erin Clark

INTRODUCTION

Academic libraries have experimented with a variety of services to encourage article deposit to institutional repositories, with varying degrees of success. Universities now face the challenge of meeting federal agency public access requirements.

Following the White House Office of Science Technology and Policy public access directive in 2013, Oregon State University (OSU) initiated an article deposit service to help faculty meet funding agency requirements and facilitate deposit of articles to both federal agency repositories and the institutional repository.

This case study describes the article deposit form developed by the library to encourage article deposits to the institutional repository and federal agency repositories, the processes and people put in place to request and deposit the articles, and the impact of the service on the number of articles deposited to federal agency repositories.

DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT

In the two years since the article deposit service was initiated, a total of 102 articles have been deposited by the library to the PubMed Central or PAGES federal agency repositories.

The inclusion of a request for faculty to indicate federal funding in the article deposit form has not resulted in increased article self deposits. Identifying and requesting National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Energy funded articles from faculty for deposit to the institutional repository and to the agency repositories has also not received substantial uptake.

The majority of articles that have been deposited to federal agency repositories by the library were received after library staff reviewed bibliographies of grant funded research for compliance with public access policies.

NEXT STEPS

As a result, the library is now working with the university office of research to promote a service that asks faculty for a bibliography of their articles that result from NIH or DOE funding, identifies those that need to be deposited to the agency repositories, and provides a link to the library’s article deposit form for them to initiate article deposits to the institutional repository and to agency repositories.

URL : Article Deposit Services in Support of Federal Agency Public Access Requirements

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2147

Selection and Acquisition of E-resource Collection in Selected Libraries of R&D Institutions in Kolkata city: A Survey of Current Practices

Authors : Dhiman Mondal, Arabinda Maity

The study evaluates various aspects of current practices of selection and acquisition of e-resources in selected libraries of R & D institutions in Kolkata city. Selection of information resources is the core collection development function and the objective is to satisfy user needs.

The study highlights the responsible authority, method, criteria, availability and mode of subscription of e-resources in R & D libraries. The emergence of e-resources have changed role of selectors and now selectors must address the new issues of access, technological, licensing and pricing concerns as part of the selection and acquisition processes.

For planning, selection and acquisition of e-resources, it is recommended to assign a ‘acquisition library staff’ post who have knowledge about the latest issues and challenges of e-resources.

URL : Selection and Acquisition of E-resource Collection in Selected Libraries of R&D Institutions in Kolkata city: A Survey of Current Practices

Alternative location : http://irjlis.com/selection-and-acquisition-of-e-resource-collection-in-selected-libraries-of-rd-institutions-in-kolkata-city-a-survey-of-current-practices/