Posted: March 20th, 2015 | Author:Sven | Filed under:found on the net, German | Tags:Position Paper, recommendations | Comments Off on “Research Data at your Fingertips”: German Priority Initiative ‘Digital Information’ publishes Position Paper
At the beginning the four page long paper sketches a short vision on how researchers will be able to work with research data in the year 2025. A “quick and easy access to all research data” is part of this vision, also the important task to credit researchers for sharing their research data is mentioned by the authors: “The publication of research data and software enhances the academic reputation.”
The second chapter of the paper deals with the current challenges in managing research data. Especially the situation in organisational structures, different research disciplines, publicly funded information institutions and research organisations is described. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: November 6th, 2014 | Author:Sven | Filed under:found on the net | Tags:Replication, reproducibility | Comments Off on Biomedical Sciences: Journals unite to forster reproducible research
When it comes to the topic of replication, it always is a good idea to consult the webpages of the nature journal. Yesterday, for instance, the journal reported that a group of editors representing more than 30 major journals, representatives from funding agencies as well as scientific leaders discussed principles and guidelines for preclinical biomedical research in June 2014.
The gathering was convened by the US National Institutes of Health, Nature and Science.
In order to provide better oversight of the interpretation of observational data handed in to the journal along with manuscripts, Science established the Statistical Board of Reviewing Editors (SBoRE), which started working on 1st July, 2014.
The board consists of experts in various aspects of statistics and data analysis. Their task is to investigate manuscripts, in order to identify issues which need screening, and to suggest experts from the statistics community to examine that data. Editors, BoRE members (members of the BoRE – Board of Reviewing Editors – conduct a rapid quality check of the manuscripts and propose which of them should be reviewed by technical specialists), and reviewers can decide which manuscripts need additional examination of the data analysis or statistical treatment, which will then be handed in to the SBoRE. Read the rest of this entry »
The open access publisher PLOS (Public Library of Science), the University of California Curation Center at the California Digital Library, and DataONE announced the launch of a new project to develop data-level metrics. The project, titled “Making Data Count: Developing a Data Metrics Pilot” is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US. The project will result in a suite of metrics that track and measure data use.
The need for such a data metrics pilot is obvious: Sharing data is time consuming and researchers need incentives for undertaking the extra work. Metrics for data will provide feedback on data usage, views, and impact that will help encourage researchers to share their data. This project will explore and test the metrics needed to capture activity surrounding research data. Read the rest of this entry »
The Research Data MANTRA course is an open, online training course that provides instruction in good practice in research data management. There are eight interactive learning units on key topics such as data management planning, organising and formatting data, using shared data and licensing your own data, as well as four data handling tutorials with open datasets for use in R, SPSS, NVivo and ArcGIS.
This fourth release of MANTRA has been revised and systematically updated with new content, videos, reading lists, and interactive quizzes. Three of the data handling tutorials have been rewritten and tested for newer software versions too. Read the rest of this entry »
The two economists Klaus Wohlrabe and Daniel Birkmaier (both from the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich) have published a new working paper in which they analyse the impact of open access publishing in economics on citations.
Their sample consists of articles from 2005 from 13 economic journals (including the top five journals). In addition to standard mean comparisons Wohlrabe and Birkmaier also use a negative-binomial regression model with several covariates to control for potential selection effects and quality bias. For their analysis they used citation data from three different databases, namely the Web of Science, RePEc and Google Scholar.
The results they retrieved are very interisting and might light the debate on open access publishing in academia.
Mendeley, a desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers recently announced a collaboration with labfolder – a Berlin-based startup. labfolder is a digital lab notebook which helps scientists to keep their notes and data organized. The linking of these two tools allows the citation and embedding of scientific literature into experimental raw data, and the exporting and sharing of experiment descriptions in Mendeley.
For those interested in labfolder, I embedded the product video below. (Sorry for the advertising. I only mention the collaboration, because it shows that data availability and interlinking data and publications gets increasingly important)
Posted: February 5th, 2014 | Author:Sven | Filed under:found on the net, Opinion | Tags:open access, Open Data, open knowledge | Comments Off on Discussion: “It’s the Neoliberalism, Stupid: Why instrumentalist arguments for Open Access, Open Data, and Open Science are not enough.”
The following blog post is an interesting point of view in the discussion on open science. It originally appeared on Digging Digitally and is reposted under a CC-BY license.
Feel free to comment!
The Open Movement has made impressive strides in the past year, but do these strides stand for reform or are they just symptomatic of the further expansion and entrenchment of neoliberalism? Eric Kansa argues that it is time for the movement to broaden its long-term strategy to tackle the needs for wider reform in the financing and organization of research and education and oppose the all-pervasive trend of universities primarily serving the needs of commerce. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: January 17th, 2014 | Author:Sven | Filed under:found on the net, Report | Tags:Knowledge Exchange | Comments Off on Knowledge Exchange released Discussion paper on Open Knowledge
Knowledge Exchange (KE) – a cooperation of five national funding organisations (DFG, Surf, DEFF, CSC and JISC) – has been founded in 2005 to improve the digital infrastructure for information and communication technology as it relates to the research and university library sectors. Since 2005 KE is very active in multiple areas. These areas are clearly intended to encourage open access to the tools of science and scholarship for the higher education and research communities. They also contribute toward building an integrated e-infrastructure and exploring new developments in the future of publishing. There is a specific focus is on the development of storage, accessibility and quality assurance of digitally published research data. Another area of activity is directed at exploring effective investment in research tools (like interoperability standards; research data; research tools and sustainable business models for Open Access. Read the rest of this entry »
The European Commission (EC) has released a press statement in which the EC claimed that “the global shift towards making research findings available free of charge for readers—so-called ‘open access’ is reaching ‘tipping point’.”
This enthusiastic view of the Commission is based on three studies that that have been funded by the EC:
One study analysed the growth of open access publications, a second evaluated the strategies of funders to enforce open access and the a third addressed open access to scientific data. Read the rest of this entry »
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, the Open Economics Working Group has just finalised the Open Economic Principles. Now it is also possible to endorse these principles online. In an e-mail the working group announces:
The Open Economics Working Group would like to introduce the Open Economics Principles, a Statement on Openness of Economic Data and Code. A year and a half ago the Open Economics project began with a mission of becoming central point of reference and support for those interested in open economic data. In the process of identifying examples and ongoing barriers for opening up data and code for the economics profession, we saw the need to present a statement on the guiding principles of transparency and accountability in economics that would enable replication and scholarly debate as well as access to knowledge as a public good. Read the rest of this entry »
Despite rising temperatures and beginning summer holidays all across Europe, the Open Economics Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation was very active within the last weeks. I would like to single out a few of these activities:
The German project RADIESCHEN / radish (Rahmenbedingungen einer disziplinübergreifenden Forschungsdateninfrastruktur /Framework for an inter-disciplinary research data infrastructure) has published the project’s synthesis in English. The objective of this DFG-funded project was the development of a roadmap and recommendations for a multi-disciplinary research data infrastructure in Germany.
The project team identified requirements for generic components of existing infrastructures and potential for cross-linking of multi-disciplinary components. The resulting analysis is based on a survey of existing and new projects and includes measures for community building. Key aspects of the analysis are the technical components of the infrastructure, the cost model and the investigation of cross-disciplinary topics.
Posted: July 5th, 2013 | Author:Sven | Filed under:found on the net, Research Data | Comments Off on American Economic Association launches Registry for RCTs.
Patrick McNeal reported on openeconomics.net, that the American Economic Association (AEA) has recently launched a registry for randomized controlled trials in economics. Explaing the reasons why the registry has been implemented, the AEA stated:
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are widely used in various fields of economics and other social sciences. As they become more numerous, a central registry on which trials are on-going or complete (or abandoned) becomes important for various reasons: as a source of results for meta-analysis; as a one-stop resource to find out about available survey instruments and data.
nature has published a new special issue on challenges in irreproducible research. The journal addresses the challenges and barriers of reproducibel research:
No research paper can ever be considered to be the final word, and the replication and corroboration of research results is key to the scientific process. In studying complex entities, especially animals and human beings, the complexity of the system and of the techniques can all too easily lead to results that seem robust in the lab, and valid to editors and referees of journals, but which do not stand the test of further studies. Nature has published a series of articles about the worrying extent to which research results have been found wanting in this respect. The editors of Nature and the Nature life sciences research journals have also taken substantive steps to put our own houses in order, in improving the transparency and robustness of what we publish. Journals, research laboratories and institutions and funders all have an interest in tackling issues of irreproducibility. We hope that the articles contained in this collection will help.
All articles within this issue are available free of charge. The table of contents is available here.
The Priority Initiative Digital Information of the Alliance of German Science Organisations has published a position paper on research data and research data infrastructures in February.
When it comes to the topic of replication, it always is a good idea to consult the webpages of the nature journal. Yesterday, for instance, 
In order to provide better oversight of the interpretation of observational data handed in to the journal along with manuscripts, 
The open access publisher 
The 
The two economists Klaus Wohlrabe and Daniel Birkmaier (both from the 
The following blog post is an interesting point of view in the discussion on open science. It originally appeared on 
Knowledge Exchange (
The European Commission (EC) has released a 
As I mentioned in one of my 
Despite rising temperatures and beginning summer holidays all across Europe, the 
The German project 
Patrick McNeal reported on 
