Group items tagged

"The data underlying scientific papers should be accessible to researchers both now and in the future, but how best can we ensure that these data are available? Here we examine the effectiveness of four approaches to data archiving: no stated archiving policy, recommending (but not requiring) archiving, and two versions of mandating data deposition at acceptance. We control for differences between data types by trying to obtain data from papers that use a single, widespread population genetic analysis, STRUCTURE. At one extreme, we found that mandated data archiving policies that require the inclusion of a data availability statement in the manuscript improve the odds of finding the data online almost a thousand-fold compared to having no policy. However, archiving rates at journals with less stringent policies were only very slightly higher than those with no policy at all. At one extreme, we found that mandated data archiving policies that require the inclusion of a data availability statement in the manuscript improve the odds of finding the data online almost a thousand fold compared to having no policy. However, archiving rates at journals with less stringent policies were only very slightly higher than those with no policy at all. We also assessed the effectiveness of asking for data directly from authors and obtained over half of the requested datasets, albeit with about 8 days delay and some disagreement with authors. Given the long term benefits of data accessibility to the academic community, we believe that journal based mandatory data archiving policies and mandatory data availability statements should be more widely adopted."

The report provides recommendations to policy makers in science and scholarly research regarding IPR policy to increase the impact of research and make the outcomes more available

Decision-makers, administrators and research managers should focus on Sections 8 and 9 that capture all relevant issues of OA policy development.

Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of systems and organizations to work together. In this paper, we discuss the premises underlying a novel Policy and Quality Interoperability Framework, taking into account the preliminary outcomes and the recommendations of the Policy and Quality Working Groups that are currently being run by the EU co-funded project Digital Library Interoperability, Best Practices, and Modeling Foundations (DL.org).

One of the advantages of the Harvard open-access policies is that the university's cumulation of rights allows it to negotiate directly with publishers on behalf of covered authors. Such discussions can lead to win-win agreements in which Harvard authors

"Policies for the Natives Designed by the Immigrants?"

STAR METRICS is a federal and university partnership which is developing an empirical framework to measure the outcomes of science investments and demonstrate the benefits of scientific investments to the public. The project is led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the auspices of Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

More than a dozen leading experts give their opinions on where the Internet is headed and where it will be in the next decade in terms of technology, policy, and applications. They cover topics ranging from the Internet of Things to climate change to the digital storage of the future. A summary of the articles is available in the Web extras section. (requires subs, alas)

The OSG/CMU Scientific Software Ecosystem Workshop was held February 16 & 17, 2010 in Los Angeles, supported by the National Science Foundation through grant #0943168. It was an invitation workshop on scientific software development ecosystems, organized by the SciSoft research team at CMU (Jim Herbsleb and James Howison) and the Open Science Grid, hosted by LIGO at CalTech (special thanks to Kent Blackburn). The purpose of the workshop was to learn from each other in order to improve how we produce, share and sustain scientific software in our various fields and to develop positions regarding possible scientific research funding agency policies on software practices.

authors were most likely to share data if they had prior experience sharing or reusing data, if their study was published in an open access journal or a journal with a relatively strong data sharing policy, or if the study was funded by a large number of NIH grants. Authors of studies on cancer and human subjects were least likely to make their datasets available.

Abstract: "UK public policy makers have a growing interest in collaborative research, where academics work with public, private or third sector partners on a joint project which supports the partner's aims. This paper reports on the findings of five case studies, looking at how information is sourced, managed, used and shared within collaborative research projects. It finds that researchers within collaborative projects have similar information management issues as are known to exist within academia more broadly, but that the specific conditions which govern research collaborations mean that interventions to improve or support information management must be carefully tailored."

Abstract "Research libraries have sought to apply their information management expertise to the management of digital research data. This focus has been spurred in part by the policies of two major funding agencies in the United States, which require grant recipients make research outputs, including publications and research data, openly available. As many academic libraries are beginning to offer or are already offering assistance in writing and implementing data management plans, it is important to consider how best to support researchers. Our research examined the current data management requirements of major US funding agencies to better understand data management requirements facing researchers and the implications for libraries offering data management services for researchers."

from the abstract: "assessing the influence of spatial proximity between scientists is crucial to promote efficient collaboration strategies and, ultimately, to improve the quality of science. Here we present a systematic analysis of citation and collaboration streams between cities and countries. By assigning papers to the geographic locations of their authors' affiliations, we construct weighted networks of citations and collaborations. The citation flows as well as the collaboration strengths between cities decrease with the distance between them and follow gravity laws with exponents close to 1. Moreover, for a given number of authors, the diversity of affiliations increases the number of citations, especially when many countries are represented. In addition, the total research impact of a country grows linearly with the amount of national funding for research & development. However, the average impact reveals a peculiar threshold effect: the scientific output of a country may reach an impact larger than the world average only if the country invests more than 120,000 US $ per researcher annually. Our results reveal the overall structure of scientific research by showing the correlation between collaboration, citation, geography and funding, and could provide valuable inputs in shaping the future science policies."

The 34 page report on key challenges and recommendations to NSF on "Digital Research Data Sharing and Management" was released for comment on December 14, 2011. Comments accepted through January 18, 2012.

Abstract: The deluge of scientific research data has excited the general public, as well as the scientific community, with the possibilities for better understanding of scientific problems, from climate to culture. For data to be available, researchers must be willing and able to share them. The policies of governments, funding agencies, journals, and university tenure and promotion committees also influence how, when, and whether research data are shared. Data are complex objects. Their purposes and the methods by which they are produced vary widely across scientific fields, as do the criteria for sharing them. To address these challenges, it is necessary to examine the arguments for sharing data and how those arguments match the motivations and interests of the scientific community and the public. Four arguments are examined: to make the results of publicly funded data available to the public, to enable others to ask new questions of extant data, to advance the state of science, and to reproduce research. Libraries need to consider their role in the face of each of these arguments, and what expertise and systems they require for data curation.

Categories include "Policies, Best Practices and Guidelines," "Roles, Services and Skills" "Directories of Data Repositories" "Metadata Standards" among other resources