Open Science – What is it good for and what about GDPR?
Danish Open Science: half a day with OpenAIRE and DeiC (Danish e-Infrastructure Cooperation).
Location: Ministry of Higher Education and Science, Bredgade 43, Copenhagen (Denmark).
Date: November 14, 2019 (13.30 – 16.00h)
Three presentations (in English):
- Open Science explained by Jon Tennant
- OpenAIRE and EOSC presented by Mike Mertens
- Making sensitive data FAIR through distributed learning presented by Dr. Carsten Brink
Registration: https://www.deic.dk/en/open-science/openaire/registration/2019/registration
More information: https://vidensportal.deic.dk/Event/OpenAIRE_Nov2019
OpenCon LatAm 2019
The OpenCon is an international open access conference especially aimed for students and young researchers. This year’s edition will take place in the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, both located in Bogotá, Colombia.
Dates: 26 – 28 Sept 2019
—–IN SPANISH—-
OpenCon es la conferencia internacional sobre acceso abierto al conocimiento científico y académico, educación abierta y datos abiertos, dirigida especialmente a estudiantes y a quienes están en sus primeros años de carrera profesional académica. Es una contribución a formar los líderes del futuro en estos temas.
OpenCon es organizada por Right to Research Coalition, SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) y un Comité integrado por estudiantes y profesionales académicos jóvenes, de diversas partes del mundo. En las ediciones de 2014 y 2016 la conferencia se llevó a cabo en Washington D.C., en 2015 en Bruselas, en 2017 en Berlín y en 2018 en Toronto.
Además, OpenCon apoya la realización de eventos satélite organizados por los propios participantes. Los eventos satélite han tenido lugar en 25 países y en ellos se discuten contenidos de educación, acceso y datos abiertos a nivel global, así como presentaciones locales. En la reciente OpenCon de Toronto 2018, los participantes de la región latinoamericana que participaron en la desconferencia eligieron a Colombia para realizar OpenCon LatAm 2019, debido a que se ha identificado en el país una comunidad activa, con actores relevantes, que impulsan y promueven los ecosistemas abiertos y elementos de la ciencia abierta.
Source: https://conferencias.unimilitar.edu.co/index.php/opencon/2019
Open Access Academic Books are More Downloaded and Cited
A research conducted by Springer Nature reveals that publishing academic books on open access platforms have many benefits. This report, according to Springer Nature, is the first of its kind to make a comparative analysis of open access and non-open access academic books. The study highlights the benefits open access books has provided to authors, publishers, funders and to a society at large.
The research used three metrics to measure the impact of open access academic books: downloads, citations and online mentions. In addition to these quantitative measures, Springer Nature also investigated the motivations and experiences with open access of researchers in a qualitative manner, by interviewing researchers and funders.
Results of the quantitative research
Most importantly, this study finds that:
- open access books are downloaded seven times more
- over the past four years the number of citations that open access books received is 50% higher
- open access books are mentioned online 10 times more
Results of the qualitative research
The interviews with funders show that the open access requirements put in place by funders are ethically motivated. Funders find it primarily important that the results from the research they funded disseminates to a large audience and is without access barriers.
The interviews with the researchers, on the other hand, shows that open access publishing was not solely ethically motivated. Researchers care most about visibility of their research output. They desire that their work gets disseminated to the widest possible audience and that this work gets cited more.
However, the researchers that were interviewed are not convinced about the benefits of open access to achieve wider dissemination and more citations. Although the interviewed acknowledged the quantitative results of the study, they pointed out that the causality is not proven. Other reason for the increased downloads and citations of open access scholarly work were suggested, such as authors reputation and the topic of the books that are open access.
Isn’t this skeptical attitude of these researchers slightly ironic? Indeed, this study doesn’t prove causality. But knowing that 1) open access removes an access barrier, 2) open access books are downloaded and used more, can we really not infer (1+1=2) that open access is increasing visibility? Are we not ‘scientific’ enough if we believe this inference? Or are researchers perhaps too skeptical stressing the lack of evidence for causality?
European research and institutional repositories are very much fragmented. The fragmentation has led to inefficiencies which might have impeded the speed of research and innovation. To address this issue, the European Commission has been working to realize a massive e-infrastructure- European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The EOSC will combine various data infrastructures to provide fast and seamless access to data. The EOSC will be a one-stop shop for data generated by member states, according to Mr. Carlos Moedas, the European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.
The rationale behind EOSC is to give consumers (researchers and other users) access to data generated by public funding. By creating a trusted environment for hosting and processing research data, EOSC ultimately aims at accelerating the EU science, research, and innovation.
The EOSC facilitates data sharing and re-use across disciplines and borders. Besides, EOSC reinforces Open Science and Open Innovation. The EU believes that this world-class data infrastructure will benefit science, business, and public services. The hope is that, once the project is concluded, it will stimulate the development of better-interconnected innovation centers and start-up ecosystems. Moreover, it will boost the cooperation between universities and industry.
The Commission appointed High-Level Expert Group that advises the Commission on European Open Science Cloud implementation. Mr.Silvana Muscella chairs the new High-Level Expert Group.
The EOSC provides access to 1.7 million researchers in Europe and more than 70 million science and technology professionals. Obviously, e-infrastructure of this size needs high-bandwidth networks, large-scale storage facilities and super-computer capacity to effectively access and process large datasets stored in the cloud. That is why the EU has put a plan in place to invest more than (I think there’s a misspelling in the following part; it’s probably more than 200 euros) euro 200 over the coming two years. It is estimated that half a million ‘core data scientists’ are needed to make the most of open research data in Europe so that the EOSC can be fully functional by 2020.