Category Archives: Uncategorized

Something is seriously wrong with our current values in academia.   The world is changing and the tensions between digital openness and digital possession-for-power-and-gain gets daily stronger. We cannot manage research data unless we manage our values first. In January … Continue reading →

@McDawg (Graham Steel, indefatigable fighter for openness and patients rights has just blogged a powerful story (http://figshare.com/blog/Open_Access_Is_Not_Just_For_Scientists_It%27s_For_Everyone/72 ) of how a teenager has made a medical breakthrough despite the publishing industry’s paywalls. From Jack Thomas Andraka.   “After a close … Continue reading →

I am going through the various sections in my presentation to http://cdrs.columbia.edu/cdrsmain/2013/01/esearch-data-symposium-february-27-2013/ . I’ve got to “Problems in Managing Research Data”. Warning: This section is uncomfortable for some. In rough order (I might swap 1 and 2):   Vested Commercial … Continue reading →

Two weeks ago I wrote to Elsevier’s Director of Universal Access about making research data Openly available. /pmr/2013/02/11/i-request-elsevier-to-make-experimental-data-cc0-and-release-crystallography-from-ccdc-monopoly/ – the title is fairly self explanatory. I have just got her reply which I publish in full below. My request was … Continue reading →

I’m on an EC committee looking at how to make content available for mining. (At least I thought that was the point – it seems it isn’t). “Licences for Europe –A Stakeholder Dialogue” Working Group 4: Text and Data Mining … Continue reading →

Ranganathan is one of the great visionaries of the C20 and 90 years ago created http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_laws_of_library_science. These are as true today. I’ve urged that libraries and academics understand the true points of Ranganathan – they aren’t business rules, they are … Continue reading →

#ami2 is our program for liberating scientific content – by transforming PDFs into semantic documents. People who make important contributions to this – code, data, testing – are awarded little AMIs. Murray Jensen has written critical code for AMI and … Continue reading →

I am developing ideas for my 15-minute presentation at #rds2013 http://cdrs.columbia.edu/cdrsmain/2013/01/esearch-data-symposium-february-27-2013/ . I spent yesterday at a wonderful hackathon run by OKF (Ross Mounce and Rufus Pollock) as part of the worldwide OpenDataDay. http://okfn.org/events/open-data-day-2013/ (Hacking for Health, photo: Ross Mounce) … Continue reading →

I’m actively putting together what I intend to present at #rds2013 – Managing Research Data – on Feb 27th next Wednesday. It’s difficult to present in 15 minutes something whose details need years to work out. And something where there … Continue reading →

The average large STM publisher receives several thousand USD (either in subscriptions or in author processing charges (APC)) to process an article. This huge and unjustified sum contains not only obscene profits (30-40 %) but also gross inefficiencies and often … Continue reading →