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The UK Royal Society is a fellowship of the world's most brilliant scientists. Founded in 1660, its members have included Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. Distinguished thinkers Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking and Tim Berners-Lee are current members of the society. It is arguably the most prestigious scientific community in the world. And so it is of note how strident it is about the importance of open data for the advancement of science.

Researchers can find and read papers online, rather than having to manually track down print copies.  Machines  (computers) can index the papers and extract the details (titles,  keywords etc.) in order to alert scientists to relevant material.  In addition, computers can extract factual data and meaning by "mining" the content, opening  up the possibility that machines could be used to make connections (and  even scientific discoveries) that might otherwise remain invisible to  researchers. However,  it is not generally possible today for computers to mine the content in papers due to constraints imposed by publishers.  While Open Access (OA) is improving the ability for researchers to read papers (by removing  access barriers), still only around 20% of scholarly papers are OA. The  remainder are locked  behind paywalls. As per the vast majority of subscription contracts, Subscribers may read paywalled papers, but they may not mine them. Content  mining is the way that modern technology locates digital information. Because digitized scientific information comes from hundreds of  thousands of different sources in today's globally connected scientific  community [2] and because current data sets can be measured in  terabytes,[1] it is often no longer possible to simply read a scholarly  summary in order to make scientifically significant use of such  information.[3]  A researcher must be able to copy information,  recombine it with other data and otherwise "re-use" it so as to produce  truly helpful results.  Not only is it a deductive tool to analyze  research data, it is how search engines operate to allow discovery of content. To prevent mining is therefore to force scientists into blind  alleys and silos where only limited knowledge is accessible.  Science  does not progress if it cannot incorporate the most recent findings and  move forward from there.

Software is just the beginning … open source is doing for mass innovation what the assembly line did for mass production. Get ready for the era when collaboration replaces the corporation.

he government of the province of Quebec today released the Gautrin Report, which covers Web 2.0 and government transformation related to technology.  It includes ideas such as a provincial open data site and improved internal collaboration for government employees.  In the press conference I also heard mention of a dashboard for government IT projects (with reference to the dashboard created by the US CIO).

La science est-elle le dernier bastion de la recherche individuelle ou devient-elle aussi l'enjeu des nouvelles technologies de la communication ? Doit-elle s'ouvrir aux perspectives de l'intelligence collective et adopter à son tour le "web 2.0″ ? C'était un peu l'enjeu des questions posées mercredi 23 novembre à la faculté d'Orsay lors d'un séminaire du centre d'Alembert où sont intervenus François Taddei (@FrancoisTaddei) chercheur à l'Inserm, directeur du Centre pour la recherche et l'interdisciplinarité et responsable de l'initiative Universités X.0, et Thomas Landrain (@t_landrain), doctorant à l'Institut en biologie synthétique et cofondateur du biohackerspace de la Paillasse.

Revues.org est une plateforme de revues et collections de livres en sciences humaines et sociales, ouverte aux collections désireuses de publier en ligne du texte intégral. Revues.org construit un espace dédié à la valorisation de la recherche, publiant en libre accès des dizaines de milliers de documents scientifiques. La plateforme a pour mission de promouvoir l'édition électronique scientifique, dans le respect de l'équilibre économique des publications. Revues.org garantit aux revues et collections de livres une autonomie éditoriale et leur offre des perspectives d'innovation adaptée au numérique. Revues.org est une plateforme d'OpenEdition, portail de ressources électroniques en sciences humaines et sociales. Revues.org est développé par le Centre pour l'édition électronique ouverte (Cléo - UMS 3287) Le Cléo est une unité associant le CNRS, l'Université d'Aix-Marseille, l'EHESS et l'Université d'Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse.

"Drawing on an entirely new set of original research conducted with countless collaborators in fields such as healthcare, science, education, energy, government and the media, we tell the stories of some of the world's most dynamic innovators, from a global citizen's movement working to reverse the tide of disruptive climate change to for-profit startups that are turning industries ranging from music to transportation on their head. We argue that collaborative innovation is not only transforming our economy but all of society and its many institutions. Now the onus is now on each of us to lead the transformation in our households, communities and workplaces. After all, the potential for new models of collaboration does not end with the production of software, media, entertainment and culture. Why not open source government, education, science, the production of energy, and even health care?"

"Health care costs rise as doctors try batches of treatments that don't work in search of one that does. Meanwhile, drug companies spend billions on developing each drug and increasingly end up with nothing to show for their pains. This is the alarming state of medical science today. Shahid Shah, device developer and system integrator, sees a different paradigm emerging. In this interview at the Open Source convention, Shah talks about how technologies and new ways of working can open up medical research."

The 2012 Civic Media Conference featured two full days of conversations about (what else?) the future of civic media and democracy. One conversation is particularly worth calling out and sharing with the Govfresh audience: a panel assessing what's gone wrong and what's gone right with open government in the United States over the past three years. The discussion was moderated by Susan Crawford, currently of the Harvard Law School and Kennedy School (and formerly a special advisor at the White House) and featured Mike Norman of Wefunder.com, Mark Headd of Code for America and Chris Vein, Deputy United States Chief Technology Officer for Government Innovation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. I've embedded the video below:

"mong the tens of thousands of people signed up for the University of Toronto's online computer science course Learn to Program: The Fundamentals, there are a lot of unconventional students. There are 30-somethings who never went to university and never earned a degree, and are searching for skills that might lead to a job. There is an octogenarian with a curious streak and a stable of retirees looking for a chance to buck the stereotypes of a generation that grew up without computers. And there is a student from Malaysia."

We've long noted the need for data science types who can bridge between us. And now, to my utter delight, a new lab is emerging to complement our lab. The folks who are going to serve as the founding members of the new NYC lab are computer scientists, physicists, experimental economists, and data scientists. Many of them are interested in social network analysis and big data problems but - or shall I say crucially - they all see the value in collaborating with ethnographers. In other words, we're building a cross-lab team that'll create new possible interdisciplinary collaborations that make my heart go pitter patter. The new lab will become the thirteenth Microsoft Research office worldwide, but it is being heralded as a particularly significant addition, according to researchers who will work directly with the New York team. Danah Boyd, a member of Social Media Collective at Microsoft's New England site, says that new the new lab will complement the organisation's existing structure and help provide a bridge with her lab for future research:

BM Research - Africa will have its first location in Nairobi, Kenya in collaboration between the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) through the Kenya ICT Board. It will conduct basic and applied research focused on solving problems relevant to Africa and contribute to the building of a science and technology base for the continent.   "IBM's commitment to undertake the proposed research agenda will contribute greatly to our national priorities as part of Kenya's Vision 2030," said His Excellency Honorable Mwai Kibaki, President of Kenya. "We look forward to delivering world-class research and innovation as part of IBM's Smarter Planet initiative and playing an important role as an IT leader on the African continent." 

Nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncer le lancement du dossier de juin « culture papier, culture numérique », qui rassemble les contributions d'un certain nombre d'acteurs majeurs et d'observateurs privilégiés de cette mutation majeure qui affecte notre société. Ce n'est pas une problématique neuve pour la revue. Nous avions déjà par le passé consacré une semaine thématique à ce thème et dans le cadre de ses ateliers, un groupe de recherche se réunit sur ces thèmes (consulter le premier compte-rendu). Nous sommes cependant loin d'avoir épuisé en quoique ce soit ce thème, et au contraire, le sentiment qui s'en dégage est plutôt l'impression d'avoir ouvert des pistes.

Les coûts des abonnements aux revues scientifiques sont prohibitifs. Ceci n'est pas moralement acceptables lorsque les recherches sont financées par des fonds publics et que les auteurs ainsi que les pairs qui revoient les articles ne sont pas payés. Les organismes subventionnaires, les chercheurs et le public exigent  de plus en plus des contenus ouverts: les moyens offerts par le web pour collaborer à la réalisation de contenus et à leur diffusion justifient de moins en moins l'usage d'entreprises privées. 

We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called "providers") to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals. Harvard's annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget. Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles.

Used by millions for research, teaching, and learning. With more than a thousand academic journals and over 1 million images, letters, and other primary sources, JSTOR is one of the world's most trusted sources for academic content. JSTOR connects libraries, researchers, teachers, and students around the world with vital scholarly content in more than 50 disciplines.

Le libre accès aux résultats de recherche stimulera la capacité d'innovation en Europe. La Commission européenne a présenté le 17 juillet 2012 des mesures visant à rendre plus accessibles les informations scientifiques produites en Europe. Les publications et les données scientifiques issues de la recherche financée par des fonds publics seront accessibles plus rapidement à un plus large public, ce qui permettra aux chercheurs et aux entreprises de les exploiter plus facilement. Grâce à ce coup de fouet pour la capacité d'innovation en Europe, les découvertes scientifiques se traduiront plus rapidement en avantages pour la population. L'Europe obtiendra ainsi un meilleur retour sur son investissement de 87 milliards € par an dans la R&D. Ces mesures complètent la communication de la Commission sur la réalisation de l'Espace européen de la recherche (EER), adoptée également aujourd'hui.