In late 2006 or early 2007, I was looking for ways to get students interested in open access. I had started to become versed in the topic myself a few months earlier, after my library announced it planned to cut subscriptions around the same time the Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced for the [...]
Posts under ‘Science’
AcaWiki launches: free summaries of academic papers
As I reported at Open Access News, AcaWiki launched yesterday. The idea is free (gratis, libre), editable (wiki) summaries of academic papers. These summaries might be useful to scan during a literature review or when studying for a class, or they might help make an article comprehensible to a non-specialist (a researcher in another discipline, [...]
The case for plagiarism
There’s been a recent tiffle about alleged plagiarism in the dissertation of a student who is now a university president. In this case, the entire research design is borrowed from an earlier study, which the author acknowledges and cites:
[T]his study replicated [...] a study [...] that had first been conducted at The University of Alabama [...]
Science Next book release in DC
Science Next, an anthology of essays from Science Progress, was released this month by Bellevue Literary Press. The anthology includes my essay on the NIH Public Access Policy, “Public Science”. The Center for American Progress will be hosting a release event for the book in Washington, DC on May 1. I’ll be there. If you’re [...]
Guest post on 1 year of NIH open access
The NIH Public Access Policy took effect on April 7, 2008. I have a guest post at Science Progress looking at the policy after a year in implementation.
Preservation for scholarly blogs
I’ve wondered about preservation for new modes of scholarly communication and ephemera, e.g. scholarly blogs, mailing lists, etc. Others have suggested it recently as well. A cursory Googling finds a few others mulling the question, but not (at first glance) anybody actually doing it.
I don’t do much with preservation, so I plead ignorance. Is anybody [...]
Why not publish data?
I try to avoid writing things that may make me sound stupid, but this post falls in that category.
Recently I was reading about efforts related to data sharing: technological infrastructure, curation, educating researchers, and the like. I was struck by the thought that most of the advocacy for data sharing boils down to an exhortation [...]
On jurisdiction; or, letting copyright trump science
Rep. John Conyers has released his response to the widely-circulated open letter by Lawrence Lessig and Michael Eisen criticizing Conyers’ anti-open access bill, H.R. 801. Eisen, Steven Harnad, and Peter Suber have already responded ably to Conyers’ response. There’s one thing I would add:
[Conyers:] My bill would restore longstanding federal copyright policy in this area. [...]
