Tag Archives: research

Petition for Public Access to all Publicly-funded Research

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ASU (Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity) Libraries have posted a con­cise piece about Open Access to schol­arly research in ” The Library Chan­nel” newslet­ter:  http://lib.asu.edu/librarychannel/2012/05/21/petition/

There is a video and a link to more infor­ma­tion as well as the peti­tion at http://www.whitehouse.gov

Freely share the data and the knowledge!

 

Boosting STEM research, proposals by McGraw-Hill Research Foundation

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McGraw-Hill Research Foun­da­tion releases paper on strate­gies to boost STEM research — 27 Sep 2011

The McGraw-Hill Research Foun­da­tion has released a new pol­icy paper by Dr. Free­man A. Hrabowski, III, that seeks to offer prac­ti­cal and scal­able solu­tions to the prob­lem of inad­e­quate sup­ply of col­lege grad­u­ates excelling in the fields of sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, engi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics (STEM). Dr. Hrabowski is Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more County (UMBC). He says research in STEM is crit­i­cal as the US addresses key chal­lenges in health­care, the envi­ron­ment, national secu­rity and the economy.

In the paper, Insti­tu­tional Change in Higher Edu­ca­tion: Inno­va­tion and Col­lab­o­ra­tion, Dr. Hrabowski dis­cusses how his insti­tu­tion has addressed the short­age of STEM grad­u­ates, par­tic­u­larly among groups that have been under­rep­re­sented in these fields, includ­ing minori­ties, women and stu­dents from low-income back­grounds. UMBC has been recog­nised widely as a leader in higher edu­ca­tion inno­va­tion, accord­ing to him. For three years in a row, the US News and World Report America’s Best Col­leges Guide has ranked the uni­ver­sity num­ber one among ‘Up-and-Coming’ national universities.

To help meet the grow­ing demand for STEM experts nation­wide and encour­age insti­tu­tional change, Dr. Hrabowski urges col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties to estab­lish pri­or­i­ties, focus on strate­gic plan­ning, and empha­sise effec­tive­ness and effi­ciency in the use of resources; reflect on their institution’s cul­ture, tak­ing into account school val­ues, prac­tices, habits and even the rela­tion­ships among fac­ulty, staff, and stu­dents; encour­age the involve­ment of the entire cam­pus, includ­ing fac­ulty, admin­is­tra­tion, and stu­dents, in under­stand­ing and address­ing broad reten­tion issues and gen­eral aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance; focus on the impor­tance of group study and other approaches that inform redesign for first-year STEM courses; increase sup­port for minor­ity groups by pro­vid­ing knowl­edge and skill devel­op­ment, aca­d­e­mic and social inte­gra­tion, sup­port and moti­va­tion, and advis­ing and mon­i­tor­ing; and develop dis­tinct pro­grammes and ini­tia­tives that address change needed in grad­u­ate programmes.

Dr. Hrabowski shows that the frame­work devel­oped through the Mey­er­hoff Schol­ars Pro­gram under­lies other impor­tant pro­grammes and ini­tia­tives at UMBC that have helped cre­ate a cam­pus cli­mate of inclu­sive excel­lence. He will dis­cuss the paper’s themes as a fea­tured speaker at the third annual Inno­va­tion in Edu­ca­tion Sum­mit in New York City on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2011. Spon­sored by The McGraw-Hill Research Foun­da­tion, the event brings together experts to dis­cuss crit­i­cal issues and trends and their impact on today’s edu­ca­tion environment.”

Source: Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter

The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey

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Astro2010: The Astron­omy and Astro­physics Decadal Sur­vey [pdf]

 

http://sites.nationalacademies.org/BPA/BPA_049810

 

“Every ten years, the National Research Coun­cil (NRC) of The National Acad­emy of Sci­ences pro­duces a series of sur­veys related to their areas of sci­en­tific inquiry. The pub­lic release of the Astro2010 sur­vey of astron­omy and astro­physics took place on August 13, 2010, and vis­i­tors to this site can read the report and also watch the web­cast from the release event. The goal of this pub­li­ca­tion is to “rec­om­mend pri­or­i­ties for the most impor­tant sci­en­tific and tech­ni­cal activ­i­ties of the decade 2010–2020.” Draw­ing on the exper­tise of schol­ars at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, Vas­sar Col­lege, the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, and other insti­tu­tions, the report is a cru­cial piece of work on what should be done across the board in these two branches of the phys­i­cal sciences.”

 

From the Scout Report, Univ. of Wisconsin, Aug.27, 2010

Geoscientific & Environmental Data available linked to ScienceDirect articles

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Netherland Else­vier, PANGAEA link con­tent for eas­ier access to full earth sys­tem research — 25 Feb 2010

“STM pub­lisher Else­vier, Nether­lands, has announced that the data library PANGAEA - Pub­lish­ing Net­work for Geo­sci­en­tific & Envi­ron­men­tal Data — and Else­vier have imple­mented rec­i­p­ro­cal link­ing between their respec­tive con­tent in earth sys­tem research. Research data sets deposited at PANGAEA are now auto­mat­i­cally linked to the cor­re­spond­ing arti­cles in Else­vier jour­nals on its elec­tronic plat­form Sci­enceDi­rect and vice versa. The link­ing func­tion­al­ity also pro­vides a credit mech­a­nism for research data sets deposited in this data library.

The inter­ac­tion of a pub­lisher with an open access data repos­i­tory is pro­jected as being ideal to serve the require­ments of mod­ern research by dimin­ish­ing the loss of research data. It also enables the reader of a pub­li­ca­tion to ver­ify the sci­en­tific find­ings and to use the data in his/her own work. The Elsevier-PANGAEA coop­er­a­tion fol­lows the most recent rec­om­men­da­tions of fund­ing bod­ies and inter­na­tional organ­i­sa­tions, such as the OECD, about access to research data from pub­lic funding.

Work­ing with the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity to pre­serve sci­en­tific research data is also an objec­tive of the Else­vier Con­tent Inno­va­tion pro­gramme. Through the lat­est agree­ment, Else­vier expects to sup­port long-term stor­age, wide avail­abil­ity and preser­va­tion of large research data sets.

Search for more research sup­port tools ”

Source: Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter

OpenHelix — resources portal for genomics research

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Open­Helix Resource Newslet­ter today pro­claims the launch of an open access search and learn por­tal: openhelix.com web site to help researchers find the most rel­e­vant of the thou­sands of data­bases and analy­sis tools.

From their “About’ page:

Open­Helix allows “More effi­cient use of the most rel­e­vant resources means quicker and more effec­tive research. Open­Helix empow­ers researchers by
  • pro­vid­ing a search por­tal to find the most rel­e­vant genomics resource and train­ing on those resources.
  • dis­trib­ut­ing exten­sive and effec­tive tuto­ri­als and train­ing mate­ri­als on the most pow­er­ful and pop­u­lar genomics resourcs.
  • con­tract­ing with resource providers to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive, long-term train­ing and out­reach programs.”

There is a blog.  There is a newslet­ter to which one is free to subscribe.

Hot topics and most-cited papers in scientific research, 2007-08

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April 2009  (from the Apr. 30, Thom­son Reuters Newsletter)

Sci­ence Watch takes its annual look back at the hottest of recent research.

Sci­ence Watch from Thom­son Reuters tracks trends and per­for­mance in basic research year-round. In this highly antic­i­pated annual review, it iden­ti­fies researchers who accounted for the high­est num­bers of Hot Papers pub­lished over the pre­ced­ing two years from 2008. It also high­lights which papers pub­lished dur­ing 2008 were the most cited by year’s end.

Kuo-Chen Chou of the Gor­don Life Sci­ences Insti­tute and Shang­hai Jiao Tong Uni­ver­sity tops the Hot Paper rank­ings, with 17 pub­lished since 2007 cov­er­ing a vari­ety of sequenc­ing tools for pre­dict­ing pro­tein loca­tion. Thir­teen of these reports were co-authored with another of the fea­tured sci­en­tists, Hong-Bin Shen.

The list of 2008’s most-cited papers is strik­ing for the promi­nence of physical-sciences reports in the top spots—especially those on iron-based super­con­duc­tors, a topic that accounts for the num­ber one paper and three oth­ers in the top ten. The­o­ret­i­cal physics, and specif­i­cally string the­ory, also reg­is­ters strongly, with sev­eral papers exam­in­ing recent refine­ments to M-theory.

The hottest research of 2007-08: read the full analysis

University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship–A Call to Action

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“US Lead­ing asso­ci­a­tions call for uni­ver­si­ties need to pro­mote broader dis­sem­i­na­tion of research and schol­ar­ship - 16 Feb 2009

Four lead­ing asso­ci­a­tions serv­ing research uni­ver­si­ties — the Asso­ci­a­tion of Research Libraries (ARL), the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ties (AAU), the Coali­tion for Net­worked Infor­ma­tion (CNI), and the National Asso­ci­a­tion of State Uni­ver­si­ties and Land-Grant Col­leges (NASULGC) — have issued a joint state­ment, ‘The University’s Role in the Dis­sem­i­na­tion of Research and Schol­ar­ship.’ The state­ment is a call to action for uni­ver­si­ties to ensure the broad­est pos­si­ble access to the prod­ucts of their work.

The state­ment is an out­growth of a round­table dis­cus­sion hosted by the four organ­i­sa­tions that engaged provosts, chief research offi­cers, chief infor­ma­tion offi­cers, senior fac­ulty, and library and uni­ver­sity press direc­tors. These lead­ers iden­ti­fied a set of actions that should be taken to expand the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the full range of prod­ucts of the uni­ver­sity community’s research and schol­ar­ship. The call to action offers a broader vision for the university’s role and pro­vides a series of rec­om­mended actions, both for cam­pus lead­ers and for col­lec­tive action by the uni­ver­sity community.

The com­plete doc­u­ment, ‘The University’s Role in the Dis­sem­i­na­tion of Research and Scholarship—A Call to Action,’ is avail­able online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/disseminating-research-feb09.pdf.”

Click here

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter

Publication imbalance in Science and Medicine

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US Cur­rent pub­li­ca­tion prac­tices may dis­tort sci­ence, say researchers - 08 Oct 2008

“Open access jour­nal PLoS Med­i­cine has pub­lished a paper in its lat­est issue, accord­ing to which the cur­rent sys­tem of pub­lish­ing med­ical and sci­en­tific research pro­vides a dis­torted view of the real­ity of sci­en­tific data that are gen­er­ated in the lab­o­ra­tory and clinic. In their paper, a team of researchers — Neal Young of the National Insti­tutes of Health; John Ioan­ni­dis of Tufts Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, USA and Uni­ver­sity of Ioan­nina School of Med­i­cine, Greece; and Omar Al-Ubaydli of George Mason Uni­ver­sity — apply prin­ci­ples from the field of eco­nom­ics to present evi­dence con­sis­tent with a distortion.

Accord­ing to these researchers, there is an extreme imbal­ance between the abun­dance of sup­ply and the increas­ingly lim­ited venues for pub­li­ca­tion. The result is that only a small pro­por­tion of all research results are even­tu­ally cho­sen for pub­li­ca­tion, and these results are unrep­re­sen­ta­tive of sci­en­tists’ repeated sam­plings of the real world. The authors argue that there is a moral imper­a­tive to recon­sider how sci­en­tific data are judged and dis­sem­i­nated. The paper is avail­able online at http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050201.

PLoS Med­i­cine is a peer-reviewed, inter­na­tional, open-access jour­nal pub­lished by the Pub­lic Library of Sci­ence (PLoS), a non­profit organ­i­sa­tion. The jour­nal pro­vides an open-access venue for pub­lish­ing impor­tant orig­i­nal research and analy­sis rel­e­vant to human health.”

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter