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Governance of a global genetic resource commons for non-commercial research: A case-study of the DNA barcode commons

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Janis Geary, Tania Bubela

Life sciences research that uses genetic resources is increasingly collaborative and global, yet collective action remains a significant barrier to the creation and management of shared research resources. These resources include sequence data and associated metadata, and biological samples, and can be understood as a type of knowledge commons.

Collective action by stakeholders to create and use knowledge commons for research has potential benefits for all involved, including minimizing costs and sharing risks, but there are gaps in our understanding of how institutional arrangements may promote such collective action in the context of global genetic resources.

We address this research gap by examining the attributes of an exemplar global knowledge commons: The DNA barcode commons. DNA barcodes are short, standardized gene regions that can be used to inexpensively identify unknown specimens, and proponents have led international efforts to make DNA barcodes a standard species identification tool.

Our research examined if and how attributes of the DNA barcode commons, including governance of DNA barcode resources and management of infrastructure, facilitate global participation in DNA barcoding efforts. Our data sources included key informant interviews, organizational documents, scientific outputs of the DNA barcoding community, and DNA barcode record submissions.

Our research suggested that the goal of creating a globally inclusive DNA barcode commons is partially impeded by the assumption that scientific norms and expectations held by researchers in high income countries are universal. We found scientific norms are informed by a complex history of resource misappropriation and mistrust between stakeholders.

DNA barcode organizations can mitigate the challenges caused by its global membership through creating more inclusive governance structures, developing norms for the community are specific to the context of DNA barcoding, and through increasing awareness and knowledge of pertinent legal frameworks.

URL : Governance of a global genetic resource commons for non-commercial research: A case-study of the DNA barcode commons

Alternative location : https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.18352/ijc.859/

EN

Crafting Linked Open Data to Enhance the Discoverability of Institutional Repositories on the Web

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Qiang Jin, Jane Sandberg

Institutional repositories are archives for collecting and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of institutions. Linked open data is to expose and connect pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web.

This paper studies how BIBFRAME 2.0 can be used to describe objects in institutional repositories, with the goal of bringing together efforts within two communities devoted to openness.

We examine a sample of mappings and conversions from Dublin Core to BIBRAME 2.0 ontology to see if BIBFRAME 2.0 will increase visibility of local digital collections on the Web.

URL : http://qqml-journal.net/index.php/qqml/article/view/505

EN

Plan S: challenges and opportunities in Spain

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors: Francisco Jesús Martínez-Galindo, Francisco Rubio, Javier Hernández-San-Miguel, Sergio Fernández Burguete

Spain is one of the most active European countries in the open access (OA) movement. Although the gold route has scarcely been used, the green route has been intensively implemented through fulfilment of European and national mandates and the development of institutional policies.

Plan S is becoming a disruptive element in the context of scientific communication, and Spain’s possible adherence to Plan S could imply technical challenges in journals and repositories, additional costs that are difficult to estimate, or refusal to accept the Plan on the part of researchers (based on the loss of freedom to choose the journal in which to publish).

However, the implementation of Plan S in Spain would also lead to greater transparency in APC spending, a reduction in publishing in predatory journals, greater visibility and impact for journals that are only published OA, improvements in OA monitoring and a change in the evaluation model for researchers from one based on the impact factor to one based on DORA recommendations.

URL : Plan S: challenges and opportunities in Spain

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.467

EN

A Generic Research Data Infrastructure for Long Tail Research Data Management

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Atif Latif, Fidan Limani, Klaus Tochtermann

The advent of data intensive science has fueled the generation of digital scientific data. Undoubtedly, digital research data plays a pivotal role in transparency and re-producibility of scientific results as well as in steering the innovation in a research process.

However, the main challenges for science policy and infrastructure projects are to develop practices and solutions for research data management which in compliance with good scientific standards make the research data discoverable, citeble and accessible for society potential reuse.

GeRDI – the Generic Research Data (RD) Infrastructure – is such a research data management initiative which targets long tail content that stems from research communities belonging to different domain and research practices.

It provides a generic and open software which connects research data infrastructures of communities to enable the investigation of multidisciplinary research questions.

URL : A Generic Research Data Infrastructure for Long Tail Research Data Management

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2019-017

EN

Revisiting ‘the 1990s debutante’: scholar-led publishing and the pre-history of the open access movement

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Samuel Moore

The movement for open access publishing is often said to have its roots in the scientific disciplines, having been popularised by scientific publishers and formalised through a range of top-down policy interventions. But there is an often-neglected pre-history of open access that can be found in the early DIY publishers of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Managed entirely by working academics, these journals published research in the humanities and social sciences and stand out for their unique set of motivations and practices.

This article explores this separate lineage in the history of the open access movement through a critical-theoretical analysis of the motivations and practices of the early scholar-led publishers.

Alongside showing the involvement of the humanities and social sciences in the formation of open access, the analysis reveals the importance that these journals placed on experimental practices, critique of commercial publishing and the desire to reach new audiences.

Understood in today’s context, this research is significant for adding complexity to the history of open access, which policymakers, advocates and publishing scholars should keep in mind as open access goes mainstream.

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/gty2-w177

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Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Jonathan P. Tennant, Harry Crane, Tom Crick, Jacinto Davila, Asura Enkhbayar, Johanna Havemann, Bianca Kramer, Ryan Martin, Paola Masuzzo,  Andy Nobes, Curt Rice, Bárbara Rivera-López, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Susanne Sattler, Paul D. Thacker, Marc Vanholsbeeck

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emerging new wave of ‘Open Science’ or ‘Open Research’ has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly debated topics.

Evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication.

This article aims to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices, and policies.

We address issues around preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, predatory publishers, and the legitimacy of ‘global’ databases.

These arguments and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and will inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.

URL : Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7020034