8,200 Strong, Researchers Band Together To Force Science Journals To Open Access
singularityhub.comAcademic research is behind bars and an online boycott by 8,209 researchers (and counting) is seeking to set it free…well, more free than it has been. The boycott targets Elsevier, the publisher of popular journals like Cell and The Lancet, for its aggressive business practices, but opposition was electrified by Elsevier’s backing of a Congressional bill titled the Research Works Act (RWA). Though lesser known than the other high-profile, privacy-related bills SOPA and PIPA, the act was slated to reverse the Open Access Policy enacted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 that granted the public free access to any article derived from NIH-funded research. Now, only a month after SOPA and PIPA were defeated thanks to the wave of online protests, the boycotting researchers can chalk up their first win: Elsevier has withdrawn its support of the RWA, although the company downplayed the role of the boycott in its decision, and the oversight committee killed it right away.
But the fight for open access is just getting started.
Seem dramatic? Well, here’s a little test. Go to any of the top academic journals in the world and try to read an article. The full article, mind you…not just the abstract or the first few paragraphs. Hit a paywall? Try an article written 20 or 30 years ago in an obscure journal. Just look up something on PubMed then head to JSTOR where a vast archive of journals have been digitized for reference. Denied? Not interested in paying $40 to the publisher to rent the article for a few days or purchase it for hundreds of dollars either? You’ve just logged one of the over 150 million failed attempts per year to access an article on JSTOR. Now consider the fact that the majority of scientific articles in the U.S., for example, has been funded by government-funded agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, NIH, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, NASA, and so on. So while taxpayer money has fueled this research, publishers charge anyone who wants to actually see the results for themselves, including the authors of the articles.
“What is crucial to understand is that academic publishing is not a free market. Researchers send papers to journals for free, because their jobs depend on it. Senior scientists don’t charge journals to review potential articles, thereby helping the editors to identify the best work, because that is a part of being an academic. Libraries have to subscribe, because the researchers they serve cannot work without access to the scholarly record. Academic publishers thus have a captive work force and a captive audience.”
—From the same amazing Boston Globe piece, the quickest and clearest summary of academic publishing’s dysfunction I’ve ever seen. It is VITALLY IMPORTANT that everyone in the ecosystem understand these basic facts.
Elsevier - 6th Brain Research Meeting - Home
brainresearchconference.comRNA-Binding Proteins in Neurological Disease
Scientific research to the nth power
Back in April, Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, launched the Apps for Science challenge. The challenge asked software developers to create apps that enhance scientific search and discovery on the SciVerse platform.
Here are the winning apps:
- Grand Prize ($15,000):
Altmetric, by Euan Adie, measures the attention that scientific articles receive via social media and online news sites, then adds the data to articles and search results on ScienceDirect & SciVerse Hub. - Second Prize ($10,000):
Refinder, by Leo Sauermann and Bernhard Schandl of Gnowsis.com (a DFKI.de spinoff), adds personal information management and social functions to SciVerse. Users can add comments to articles, place multiple papers in a collection, and share comments with co-workers. - Third Prize ($5,000)/Popular Choice Prize ($5,000):
iHelp, by a team from Integra India led by Mourougane Arumugam and Ashok Kumar, enables researchers to search in their native language and retrieve articles using multilingual search. - Two apps received honorable mentions: Keyword Optimizer, by Scott Fortmann-Roe, helps authors identify keywords to boost the impact of their papers. ChemDetect, by Kevin Lynagh of Keming Labs, helps chemists quickly scan an article for mentions of chemicals and get the corresponding structure and image files.
In total, the competition generated 27 innovative applications, ranging from productivity and time-saving tools, to visualizations of search results and author data, to social add-ons enabling collaboration.
Ready to research smarter, not harder? Enjoy the power of these SciVerse enhancements!
By Samantha
Follow on Twitter: @ChallengePost and @ElsevierDev
Join us on Facebook: ChallengePost and Elsevier Apps for Science Competition
Press Release
Elsevier Competition Results in Some New Apps for SciVerse – And Science [SemanticWeb]
“PVV'er Noord-Holland weg vanwege rekruteren moslims ”
—Deze kop en de inhoud van dit bericht roept bij mij veel vragen op.
1. Waarom gebruikt Elsevier in haar kop het woord ‘rekruteren’? Een woord met militaire oorsprong. Een snelle zoekopdracht levert op dat Elsevier dat woord enkel gebruikt in gevallen van terreur, militaire operaties en radicalisering van moslims. Werving en selectie zou meer op de plaats zijn, ook als je daarop zoekt bij Elsevier.
2. Waarom vindt de PVV het geen goed idee dat allochtonen zouden werken? En zeker in de zorg waar de PVV, zie het verkiezingsprogramma (blz 25), 10.000 extra zorgmedewerkers wenst?
3. Wie zijn ‘moslims’. Dat was het enige kenmerk waarop dit bedrijf naar medewerkers zocht?
4. Waarom schrijft Elsevier, een opinie- en geen nieuwsmagazine, hier geen commentaar over? Zeker waar ze dat bij andere partijen vaak vrijwel direct doen?
Ohja natuurlijk, het gaat over gelovige allochtonen met een soms niet-westerse achtergrond moslims.. #scoren
UPDATE Hero Brinkman boos op berichtgeving. Reden dat De Bruin van de lijst is afgevoerd is dat hij geen Verklaring omtrent Gedrag kon overleggen. Meneer zou de afgelopen drie jaar tot twee keer toe met een slok teveel op gereden hebben.
UDATE 2: ‘Het moddergooien is begonnen’: aldus De Bruin. Hij meldt dat hij éénmaal is aangehouden voor drunk driving en helemaal klaar is met de PVV.
