Catégorie : status

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The case for open computer programs Scientific…

The case for open computer programs :

“Scientific communication relies on evidence that cannot be entirely included in publications, but the rise of computational science has added a new layer of inaccessibility. Although it is now accepted that data should be made available on request, the current regulations regarding the availability of software are inconsistent. We argue that, with some exceptions, anything less than the release of source programs is intolerable for results that depend on computation. The vagaries of hardware, software and natural language will always ensure that exact reproducibility remains uncertain, but withholding code increases the chances that efforts to reproduce results will fail.”

URL : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/nature10836.html

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Breaking the barriers of time and space the…

Breaking the barriers of time and space: the dawning of the great age of librarians :

“Purpose: This lecture, reflecting on future roles, posits the potential dawning of a “great age of librarians,” if librarians make the conceptual shift of focusing on their own skills and activities rather than on their libraries.

Discussion: In the digital age, physical libraries are becoming less relevant to the communities that they serve. Librarians, however, are more necessary than ever in helping members of their communities navigate the increasingly complex information space. To meet their social responsibilities requires that librarians seek new roles and recognize that their most important activities will take place outside of the physical library.

Conclusion: A great age of librarians is possible, but not guaranteed. We are at the very beginning of the development of a digital culture that parallels the print culture that has been dominant for five hundred years. Innovative and creative librarians have the potential to shape the development of that culture in ways that will truly serve the needs of their communities.”

URL : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257492/

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Making Intellectual Property Work for Global Health …

Making Intellectual Property Work for Global Health :

“Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are often conceived narrowly from the vantage point of offering incentives for private sector investment in research and development (R&D), but the legal regime of IPRs can also work to improve access to public goods for global health, particularly for those disadvantaged by destitution and disease. The WHO Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GSPOA), adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2008, calls for an “enhanced and sustainable basis for needs-driven, essential health research and development relevant to diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries.” How knowledge is generated, owned, and harnessed to support pro-poor development is at the heart of this effort. New approaches to tiering, pooling, and open-source collaboration have resulted from the struggle to deliver affordable treatments for AIDS and neglected diseases. In examining how intellectual property rights can most effectively and strategically support developing countries in implementing this ambitious and potentially catalytic agenda in enabling innovation for global health, this paper seeks to outline a coherent and strategic approach to address human development needs and to facilitate the harnessing of innovation and the sharing of knowledge for global health.”

URL : http://www.harvardilj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/HILJ-Online_53_SoSachs.pdf

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Publication of NIH funded trials registered in ClinicalTrials…

Publication of NIH funded trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov: cross sectional analysis :

“Objective To review patterns of publication of clinical trials funded by US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in peer reviewed biomedical journals indexed by Medline.

Design Cross sectional analysis.

Setting Clinical trials funded by NIH and registered within ClinicalTrials.gov (clinicaltrials.gov), a trial registry and results database maintained by the US National Library of Medicine, after 30 September 2005 and updated as having been completed by 31 December 2008, allowing at least 30 months for publication after completion of the trial.

Main outcome measures Publication and time to publication in the biomedical literature, as determined through Medline searches, the last of which was performed in June 2011.

Results Among 635 clinical trials completed by 31 December 2008, 294 (46%) were published in a peer reviewed biomedical journal, indexed by Medline, within 30 months of trial completion. The median period of follow-up after trial completion was 51 months (25th-75th centiles 40-68 months), and 432 (68%) were published overall. Among published trials, the median time to publication was 23 months (14-36 months). Trials completed in either 2007 or 2008 were more likely to be published within 30 months of study completion compared with trials completed before 2007 (54% (196/366) v 36% (98/269); P<0.001).

Conclusions Despite recent improvement in timely publication, fewer than half of trials funded by NIH are published in a peer reviewed biomedical journal indexed by Medline within 30 months of trial completion. Moreover, after a median of 51 months after trial completion, a third of trials remained unpublished.”

URL : http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7292
doi: 10.1136/bmj.d7292

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Electronic doctoral theses in the UK a sector…

Electronic doctoral theses in the UK: a sector-wide survey into policies, practice and barriers to Open Access :

“Sharing knowledge and research outputs is critical to the progress of science and human development, and a central tenet of academia. The Internet itself is a product of the academic community, and opening access to that community’s most important body of research, doctoral theses, is both a logical and an inevitable development. Progress toward open access to electronic theses has been slow in the UK. Much has been written on the perceived barriers and practical/infrastructural considerations that might explain this, but a comprehensive picture of that progress, and obstacles to it, was lacking. In 2010, a survey of policy and practice in UK HEIs was conducted by UCL (University College London) Library Services (commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee, JISC) to address this very issue. Incorporating inputs from 144 institutions currently awarding doctoral degrees, the work provides the first clear and detailed picture of the status of open access to doctoral research in the UK. The mission of the UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) is to promote and support the interests of graduate education, and this it does through dissemination of best practice and intelligence on emergent trends; helping to shape policy and practice for the benefit of the UK HEI sector. This report contributes to that mission by bringing to the membership’s attention the results of this important work by UCL Library Services; a collaboration between UKCGE and the authors of the original work, it sets out the policies and practices that emerged from the survey and also considers what has been learned about the perceived barriers to the implementation of open access to electronic theses.

The 2010 survey has enabled, for the first time, a differentiation to be made between barriers that are “real” and those which are unfounded and/or yet to be properly validated. At the same time, the work highlights the progress made in certain critical areas, as well as those that require our greater attention. A positive picture emerges for the UK on the adoption of the electronic thesis, with the majority of HEIs surveyed expected to be providing open access to their theses in five years’ time. A more detailed picture also emerges regarding the primary reasons for requests to restrict access to theses, some of which, notably, apply only to electronic (not print) theses. This has necessarily given rise to new policy developments. There is positive evidence also of collaboration among HEIs to provide an efficient and robust service for accessing electronic theses; pooling their resources and expertise either in the development of their institutional repositories or in operating a joint service. The key driver of open access to electronic theses is the opportunity for UK HEIs to “showcase” their research outputs to the widest possible audience and enhance their impact. There are no reliable means as yet to measure this impact, but there are encouraging early indications that electronic doctoral theses attract significant attention when made openly accessible. Open access to electronic theses may therefore indeed accelerate the sharing of knowledge and the progress of scientific discovery and human development.”

URL : http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1339905/

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How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted…

How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter Mentions, and Citations :

“We analyze the online response of the scientific community to the preprint publication of scholarly articles. We employ a cohort of 4,606 scientific articles submitted to the preprint database arXiv.org between October 2010 and April 2011. We study three forms of reactions to these preprints: how they are downloaded on the arXiv.org site, how they are mentioned on the social media site Twitter, and how they are cited in the scholarly record. We perform two analyses. First, we analyze the delay and time span of article downloads and Twitter mentions following submission, to understand the temporal configuration of these reactions and whether significant differences exist between them. Second, we run correlation tests to investigate the relationship between Twitter mentions and both article downloads and article citations. We find that Twitter mentions follow rapidly after article submission and that they are correlated with later article downloads and later article citations, indicating that social media may be an important factor in determining the scientific impact of an article.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.2461