Monthly Archives: March 2009

Guide to Ethical Conduct in Research Released

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Report Cover

March 27, 2009 — A new edi­tion of On Being a Sci­en­tist: A Guide to Respon­si­ble Con­duct in Research offers researchers — par­tic­u­larly early-career sci­en­tists and their men­tors — guid­ance on how to con­duct research respon­si­bly and avoid mis­con­duct such as fab­ri­ca­tion and pla­gia­rism. The guide, issued by the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences, National Acad­emy of Engi­neer­ing, and Insti­tute of Med­i­cine, includes new case stud­ies and has been updated to reflect the emer­gence of elec­tronic pub­lish­ing and glob­al­iza­tion of research.

 

From    27 March, 2009

Public Library of Science (PLoS) launches a blog

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“PLoS ONE launches com­mu­nity blog for jour­nal authors and read­ers — 30 Mar 2009

PLoS ONE, a free online jour­nal pub­lished by open access pub­lisher Pub­lic Library of Sci­ence (PLoS), US, has announced the launch of every­ONE (http://everyone.plos.org), a new com­mu­nity blog for PLoS ONE authors and readers.

As of March 2009, PLoS ONE has pub­lished over 5,000 arti­cles, rep­re­sent­ing the work of over 30,000 authors and co-authors, and receives over 160,000 unique vis­i­tors per month. The blog is for authors who have pub­lished with the jour­nal as well as for those who haven’t.

The blog has been named every­ONE for three main rea­sons: PLoS ONE is for every rig­or­ous research arti­cle that passes the publisher’s our peer-review process; it is a forum for research in every sci­en­tific dis­ci­pline; and it is a source of infor­ma­tion for every inquis­i­tive reader with an inter­est in high-quality sci­en­tific research.

PLoS ONE is a peer-reviewed, open-access jour­nal for all sci­ence and med­i­cine. It fea­tures reports of orig­i­nal research from all dis­ci­plines within sci­ence and med­i­cine. By not exclud­ing papers on the basis of sub­ject area, PLoS ONE seeks to facil­i­tate the dis­cov­ery of the con­nec­tions between papers, whether within or between disciplines.”

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter, 30 March

Cornell University Library Historical Math Monographs Collection

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Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Library His­tor­i­cal Math Mono­graphs Collection

http://digital.library.cornell.edu/m/math/

“The Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Library His­tor­i­cal Math Mono­graphs Col­lec­tion has a rather inter­est­ing his­tory. The col­lec­tion began when a num­ber of brit­tle and decay­ing math mono­graphs were dig­i­tally scanned using equip­ment devel­oped by Cor­nell and the Xerox Cor­po­ra­tion. This col­lec­tion brings together all of those doc­u­ments, includ­ing a selec­tion of other rel­e­vant papers and schol­arly works. All told, there are over 1,000 works here, and vis­i­tors can use the “Browse” sec­tion to look over the offer­ings by title or author. Addi­tion­ally, vis­i­tors can per­form detailed searches across the entire col­lec­tion. Vis­i­tors should also take a look at the “Selected Titles” on the home­page to get a sense of what lies within this rather com­pelling col­lec­tion. Finally, there is a “Help” sec­tion that pro­vides some hints on mak­ing the best use of the site.”

Source:  The Scout Report from the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin, 27 Feb, 2009

Public Reaction to Science Research @ FAS website

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The FAS, the Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can Sci­en­tists has cre­ated a new tool to exam­ine  Pub­lic Reac­tion to Sci­ence Research, on their web­site.  It will help to mea­sure  pub­lic under­stand­ing of sci­ence and the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing sci­ence to the public.

“The mod­ule is the lat­est addi­tion to the FAS Case Stud­ies in Dual Use Bio­log­i­cal Research mul­ti­me­dia online edu­ca­tion mate­r­ial. The series illus­trates the impli­ca­tions of dual-use bio­log­i­cal research through case stud­ies of researchers and pro­vides a his­tor­i­cal back­ground on bioter­ror­ism, bioweapons and the cur­rent laws, reg­u­la­tions and treaties that apply to biode­fense research. Con­tin­u­ing devel­op­ment and expan­sion of the case stud­ies is funded in part through a grant by the Carnegie Cor­po­ra­tion of New York.”

From Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter, Mar. 23, 2009.

 

MIT Faculty votes for open access to scholarly articles

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 MIT fac­ulty votes for open access to their schol­arly arti­cles — 24 Mar 2009

The fac­ulty at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (MIT), US, has voted to make their schol­arly arti­cles avail­able to the pub­lic for free and open access on the Web. The move is aimed at broad­en­ing access to MIT’s research and scholarship.

The new pol­icy was approved unan­i­mously at a recently held MIT fac­ulty meet­ing and took imme­di­ate effect. Under the new pol­icy, fac­ulty authors give MIT nonex­clu­sive per­mis­sion to dis­sem­i­nate their jour­nal arti­cles for open access through DSpace, an open-source soft­ware plat­form devel­oped by the MIT Libraries and Hewlett Packard. The pol­icy gives MIT and its fac­ulty the right to use and share the arti­cles for any pur­pose other than to make a profit. Authors may opt out on a paper-by-paper basis.

MIT’s DSpace repos­i­tory con­tains the dig­i­tal research mate­ri­als of MIT fac­ulty and researchers and allows them to be saved, searched and shared world­wide. MIT Open­Course­Ware (OCW) was launched in 2001 with the goal of mak­ing all MIT course mate­ri­als avail­able, free of charge, to any­one over the World Wide Web. Since then, OCW has shared MIT course mate­ri­als with more than 50 mil­lion vis­i­tors world­wide and inspired hun­dreds of other uni­ver­si­ties to do the same. The new open access res­o­lu­tion will now remove bar­ri­ers to mak­ing all of MIT’s research openly avail­able to the world.

A fac­ulty com­mit­tee will work with the MIT Libraries to over­see imple­men­ta­tion and deter­mine a work­flow for adding arti­cles to DSpace. Under the new open access model, poten­tially thou­sands of papers pub­lished by MIT fac­ulty each year will be added to DSpace and made freely avail­able on the web and acces­si­ble through search engines such as Google.

MIT’s pol­icy claims to be the first faculty-driven, university-wide ini­tia­tive of its kind in the US. While Har­vard and Stan­ford uni­ver­si­ties have imple­mented open access man­dates at some of their schools, MIT is the first to fully imple­ment the pol­icy university-wide as a result of a fac­ulty vote. MIT’s res­o­lu­tion is built on sim­i­lar lan­guage adopted by the Har­vard Fac­ulty of Arts & Sci­ences in 2008.

Click here

ScienceBlogs.com launches in Brazil

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“ScienceBlogs.com launches Sci­ence­Blogs Brazil — 19 Mar 2009

ScienceBlogs.com, part of sci­ence media com­pany Seed Media Group, US, has announced the launch of its lat­est inter­na­tional site, Sci­ence­Blogs Brazil (scienceblogs.com.br). ScienceBlogs.com is claimed to be the largest blog­ging net­work ded­i­cated to science.

Sci­ence­Blogs Brazil seeks to bring together orig­i­nal and influ­en­tial voices within the Brazil­ian sci­ence com­mu­nity, some of whom have already won acco­lades for their blog­ging. Edited from São Paulo by Car­los Hotta and Atila Iamarino, Sci­ence­Blogs Brazil launches with 23 Portuguese-language blogs on top­ics rang­ing from genet­ics to the environment.

With its grow­ing sci­ence com­mu­nity and empha­sis on sci­ence as a cor­ner­stone of eco­nomic growth, Brazil is emerg­ing as a vital player in global sci­ence cul­ture. The coun­try is the fifth most pop­u­lous in the world and has over 67 mil­lion Inter­net users. Sci­ence­Blogs pub­lishes more than 130 blogs around the world span­ning all areas of sci­ence and all inter­sec­tions of sci­ence and society.

Click here”

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter, Mar.19, 2009

NIH Open Access Policy — SPARC enews

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The Open Access Pol­icy pro­posed by the National Insti­tutes of Health has been made permanent.

To read more about the pol­icy see the entry 

Here is the 1st paragraph:

“Wash­ing­ton, D.C. – March 12, 2009 – Pres­i­dent Obama yes­ter­day signed into law the 2009 Con­sol­i­dated Appro­pri­a­tions Act, which includes a pro­vi­sion mak­ing the National Insti­tutes’ of Health (NIH) Pub­lic Access Pol­icy per­ma­nent. The NIH Revised Pol­icy on Enhanc­ing Pub­lic Access requires eli­gi­ble NIH-funded researchers to deposit elec­tronic copies of their peer-reviewed man­u­scripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Cen­tral (PMC). Full texts of the arti­cles are made pub­licly avail­able and search­able online in PMC no later than 12 months after pub­li­ca­tion in a journal.”

Source: the SPARC enews which comes out monthly from The Schol­arly Pub­lish­ing & Aca­d­e­mic Resources Coalition.

Chemistry Central — new open access, peer-reviewed service

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Chem­istry Cen­tral is a new ser­vice pub­lish­ing peer-reviewed open access research in chem­istry, from Bio­Med Cen­tral — the lead­ing bio­med­ical open access pub­lisher. This site fea­tures chemistry-related arti­cles pub­lished in Chem­istry Cen­tral Jour­nal, Bio­Med Cen­tral jour­nals and inde­pen­dent jour­nals uti­liz­ing Bio­Med Central’s open access pub­lish­ing ser­vices. All orig­i­nal research arti­cles pub­lished by, or in coop­er­a­tion with, Chem­istry Cen­tral are made freely and per­ma­nently acces­si­ble online imme­di­ately upon publication.

Jump to: lat­est pub­lished articles

Source:  Bio­Med Cen­tral Update 11 March, 2009