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Global Information Society Watch 2009 | Association for Progressive Communications

sennoma — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:10:00 -0500

This third report in the GISWatch series is entitled “Access to online information and knowledge – advancing human rights and democracy” and reveals how vulnerable the internet as we know it is. The report unpacks the key issues impacting on access to online information and knowledge, including discussions on intellectual property rights, knowledge rights, open standards and access to educational materials and libraries. The report also offers an institutional overview and a reflection on indicators that track access to information and knowledge. 48 country reports –-ten more than last year— analyse the status of access to online information and knowledge in countries as diverse as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Mexico, Switzerland and Kazakhstan, while regional overviews offer a bird’s eye perspective on trends in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. For the first time there is an innovate section that visually maps global rights as seen through the lens of Google searches, as well as a visual analysis of Twitter messages sent out during the recent Iranian political crisis. Tagged by sennoma under mangosteen, oa, oa.access,

Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age

sennoma — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:07:00 -0500

As digital technologies are expanding the power and reach of research, they are also raising complex issues. These include complications in ensuring the validity of research data; standards that do not keep pace with the high rate of innovation; restrictions on data sharing that reduce the ability of researchers to verify results and build on previous research; and huge increases in the amount of data being generated, creating severe challenges in preserving that data for long-term use. Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age examines the consequences of the changes affecting research data with respect to three issues - integrity, accessibility, and stewardship-and finds a need for a new approach to the design and the management of research projects. The report recommends that all researchers receive appropriate training in the management of research data, and calls on researchers to make all research data, methods, and other information underlying results publicly accessible in a timely manner. The book also sees the stewardship of research data as a critical long-term task for the research enterprise and its stakeholders. Individual researchers, research institutions, research sponsors, professional societies, and journals involved in scientific, engineering, and medical research will find this book an essential guide to the principles affecting research data in the digital age. Tagged by sennoma under opendata, oaos.review,

BioMed Central Blog : What is original research?

sennoma — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:06:00 -0500

growth in web technologies and increased transparency in the literature - and data - may be contributing to a shift in our perceptions of what constitutes a prior publication. Innovative online journals with virtually unlimited space provide researchers with opportunities to produce novel (original) contributions to the literature that are clearly and transparently linked to previously published articles. These include significantly extended/re-analysed reports of previously published summary findings in journals such as Trials and legitimate or incremental updates to previous studies in BMC Research Notes. Tagged by sennoma under science, openscience, scholarlycommunication,

The Law of Unintended Consequences - September 19, 2005

sennoma — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:43:00 -0500

Twenty-five years ago a law known as Bayh-Dole spawned the biotech industry. It made lots of university scientists fabulously rich. It was also supposed to usher in a new era of innovation. So why are medical miracles in such short supply? Tagged by sennoma under Bayh-Dole,

Patterns of information use and exchange: case studies of researchers in the life sciences | Research Information Network

sennoma — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:03:00 -0500

This report by the British Library and the Research Information Network (RIN) provides a unique insight into how information is used by researchers across life sciences. Undertaken by the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the UK Digital Curation Centre and the University of Edinburgh’s Information Services, the report concludes that ‘one-size-ﬁts-all’ information and data sharing policies are not achieving scientiﬁcally productive and cost-efﬁcient information use in life sciences. The report was developed using an innovative approach to capture the day-to-day patterns of information use in seven research teams from a wide range of disciplines, from botany to clinical neuroscience. The study undertaken over 11 months and involving 56 participants found that there is a signiﬁcant gap between how researchers behave and the policies and strategies of funders and service providers. This suggests that the attempts to implement such strategies have had only a limited impact. Key ﬁndings from the report include: * Researchers use informal and trusted sources of advice from colleagues, rather than institutional service teams, to help identify information sources and resources * The use of social networking tools for scientiﬁc research purposes is far more limited than expected * Data and information sharing activities are mainly driven by needs and beneﬁts perceived as most important by life scientists rather than ‘top-down’ policies and strategies * There are marked differences in the patterns of information use and exchange between research groups active in different areas of the life sciences, reinforcing the need to avoid standardised policy approaches Tagged by sennoma under scholarlycommunication, oa,

Will Open Access inhibit innovation? « Myrmecos Blog

sennoma — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:47:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under oa.problems,

aRDi Access to Research for Development and Innovation

sennoma — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:34:00 -0400

The Access to Research for Development and Innovation (aRDi) program is coordinated by the World Intellectual Property Organization together with its partners in the publishing industry with the aim to increase the availability of scientific and technical information in developing countries. By improving access to scholarly literature from diverse fields of science and technology, the aRDi program seeks to: * reinforce the capacity of developing countries to participate in the global knowledge economy; and * support researchers in developing countries in creating and developing new solutions to technical challenges faced on a local and global level. Currently, 12 publishers provide access to over 50 journals for 107 developing countries through the aRDi program. Tagged by sennoma under oa, mangosteen,

NEJM Beta

sennoma — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:08:00 -0400

On the Journal's beta site, we pursue new ideas in publishing and showcase innovative ways to present information for use in medical education, research, and clinical practice. This beta site is part of our commitment to physicians who "Never Stop Learning". Please check back often. Tagged by sennoma under publishing, publishing.models, scholarlycommunication, NEJM,

Fostering Innovation in Scholarly Communication | Scholarly Communication Program

sennoma — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:21:00 -0400

Advancements in digital technology offer today's scholars and researchers countless new ways to create, share, and archive their work. Besides granting new knowledge unprecedented reach and impact, these developments have sparked a reevaluation and debate around the conventions of scholarly exchange. The Scholarly Communication Program at Columbia University aims to facilitate discussion of and innovative approaches to sharing scholarly work, as well as offer practical information about the opportunities and challenges presented by scholarship and research in a time of technological change. The program's overarching goal is to encourage the Columbia community's active participation in creating a system that best serves the needs—and maximizes the impact—of scholarship and research at Columbia. Tagged by sennoma under oa, oa.resources, reference,

Open Source Biotechnology Project

sennoma — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:45:00 -0400

J Hope, BioBazaar: Biotechnology and the Open Source Revolution, Harvard University Press (forthcoming January 2008). [Note: This book offers the first sustained, theoretically and empirically grounded exploration of open source as a means of developing, licensing and commercialising biotechnology innovations. Release date is 15 January 2008. Pre-orders are available from Amazon.ca.] J Hope, Open Source Biotechnology (PhD Thesis), The Australian National University, Canberra, 2004. Tagged by sennoma under open.foo, openlicensing, janethope,

Knowledge Ecology Notes » Prizes and Grants, Type I, II and III diseases, rich and poor countries, open and closed medicine development

sennoma — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:41:00 -0400

OPENNESS For all innovation efforts, there are quite important issues concerning openness, and the hazards of enclosures of science and the hoarding of knowledge. A number of academics writers, patent professionals and R&D experts have called attention to the potential risks that innovation inducement prizes might lead to less sharing of knowledge, as people position themselves to win prizes. But this risk should be seen in a broader context. It is also often pointed out that patents can discourage upstream research and downstream product development. Government grant programs that encourage the privatisation of publicly funded R&D (like the US Bayh-Dole Act) can also move things in the wrong direction. It turns out this whole important topic is complicated. One area to pay attention to are the “Bayh-Dole” issues relating to prizes. In many of the US government funded prizes, and in the early X-prize designs, all of the intellectual property rights go to the recipient of the prizes. In some non-medical cases in the US, the government is barred from asking for licenses to use the inventions that win the prizes — an even worse outcome than for patents developed under federal grants, which are subject to (rarely used [fn1]) royalty free government licenses, and march-in and access requirements. So one debate is about obtaining the right bundle of rights in patents or data from prize winners, and managing also the disclosures. After a series of workshops on medical innovation inducement prizes, proposals also emerged to include new “open source dividends,” which involve sharing of prize money to entities that openly share access to knowledge, materials and technology. The open source dividends were modeled in several of the 2008 Bolivia Barbados prize proposals, and have unfortunately been ignored by some of those who have commented on those proposals. There are also much more transformation proposals for funding open source medicine, including the proposals to introduce “competitive intermediaries” that have as t Tagged by sennoma under openscience, oa, prizes, innovation, patents, intellectualproperty,

Science Commons » Blog Archive » Wilbanks’ talk on ‘Knowledge Interoperability’ from CSE now online

sennoma — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:28:00 -0400

In Wilbanks’ talk he details the need for an open approach when it comes to knowledge sharing in the digital world, necessary to really see network effects on available information and explosions of innovation. He argues that the ability to create and distribute is now ubiquitous, and that the digital commons presents a different opportunity for sharing, if allowed. Our work at Creative Commons aims to facilitate that sharing ecosystem, better leverage the power of the network, and enable sharing that’s legally sound, easy and scalable. Tagged by sennoma under oaos.talks,

OAN: New issue of European Review with section on OA

sennoma — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:34:00 -0400

The current issue of European Review has a section on OA. (Thanks to Russ Swan.) * Gerard Van Trier, Focus: Scholarly Publishing and Open Access * Michael A. Mabe, Scholarly Publishing * Dieter M. Imboden, Scientific Publishing: the Dilemma of Research Funding Organisations * Robert Aymar, Scholarly Communication in High-Energy Physics: Past, Present and Future Innovations * Paul Ayris, New Wine in Old Bottles: Current Developments in Digital Delivery and Dissemination Tagged by sennoma under oa, scholcomm, publishing, publishing.models,

miscellaneous factZ - The online home of Rufus Pollock » Blog Archive » Of Mice and Academics: Examining the Effect of Openness on Innovation

sennoma — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:08:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under collaboration, oa, openscience, oaos.examples,

Science Commons » Blog Archive » Galapagos NV: drug discovery innovator

sennoma — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:56:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under opendata,

Cofundos.org - community innovation and funding

sennoma — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:55:00 -0400

Cofundos helps to realize open-source software ideas, by providing a platform for their discussion & enrichment and by establishing a process for organizing the contributions and interests of different stakeholders in the idea. Tagged by sennoma under tools, opensource,

open...: The True Begetter of Innovation is Openness

sennoma — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:21:00 -0400

This work basically shows that recent attempts to introduce intellectual monopolies into science in order to "promote innovation" have actually been counter-productive. Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, oaos.examples,

MaRS Blog - Innovation and Commercialization in Canada » Blog Archive » Are we producing too many scientists?

sennoma — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:56:00 -0500

Tagged by sennoma under science.is.doomed,

Peter Suber, Open Access News

sennoma — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:12:00 -0400

From John Wilbanks' introductory article, Science Commons (p. 3): ...One of the reasons I believe so deeply in the commons approach (by which I mean: contractually constructed regimes that tilt the field towards sharing and reuse, technological enablements that make public knowledge easy to find and use, and default policy rules that create incentives to share and reuse) is that I think it is one of the only non-miraculous ways to defeat complexity. If we can get more people working on individual issues — which are each alone not so complex — and the outputs of research snap together, and smart people can work on the compiled output as well — then it stands to reason that the odds of meaningful discoveries increase in spite of overall systemic complexity.... Complexity is the enemy. Distributed innovation, built on a commons, is a strong tonic against that enemy. Tagged by sennoma under oaos.quotes,

SSRN-Open Source, Open Access, and Open Transfer: Market Approaches to Research Bottlenecks by Robin Cooper Feldman, Kristopher Nelson

sennoma — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:49:00 -0400

Abstract: One of the most hotly contested issues in the field of intellectual property law concerns the existence, or non-existence, of patent thickets and the extent to which any such bottlenecks may be interfering with research. For decades, scholars warned that problems related to the over proliferation of patent rights would interfere with innovation. In contrast, a growing body of commentary argues that patent thickets are not a problem in modern industries. Either patent thickets do not exist, or if they do, patent thickets do not interfere with the progress of research. The rhetoric is particularly heated these days because of dramatic changes underway in patent law. Research bottlenecks, or lack thereof, are invoked either in support of or in opposition to such changes, and it is difficult to have a rational discussion when so much seems to be at stake. Stepping back from the rhetoric a bit, this piece suggests that one can sometimes indirectly observe effects, even if one cannot directly measure the extent of a phenomenon. With this in mind, the piece describes three approaches appearing in modern patent markets that are directed at mitigating the effects of patent thickets. These approaches can be described as Open Source, Open Access, and Open Transfer. From our vantage point, we may not be able to see or to measure the depth of the thicket. We can, however, observe the altered growth patterns that give us some indication of where the problems lie. Tagged by sennoma under openscience, oa, intellectualproperty, openlicensing,