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  WhatsNew@nationalacademies.org  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.

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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