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San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (pdf)
Putting science into the assessment of research
site includes: Original signers – Individuals  ;  Original signers – Organizations ;  News about DORA

“…The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) together with a group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals, recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scientific research are evaluated. The group met in December 2012 during the ASCB Annual Meeting in San Francisco and subsequently circulated a draft declaration among various stakeholders. DORA as it now stands has benefited from input by many of the original signers listed. It is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines. We encourage individuals and organizations who are concerned about the appropriate assessment of scientific research to sign DORA…”

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Scientific insurgents say ‘Journal Impact Factors’ distort science
DORA calls on world science community to cut influence
EurekaAlert
Public release date: 16-May-2013

“…An ad hoc coalition of unlikely insurgents—scientists, journal editors and publishers, scholarly societies, and research funders across many scientific disciplines—today posted an international declaration calling on the world scientific community to eliminate the role of the journal impact factor (JIF) in evaluating research for funding, hiring, promotion, or institutional effectiveness…”

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No shortcuts for research assessment
Stefano Bertuzzi and David G. Drubin
American Society for Cell Biology
Mol. Biol. Cell May 15, 2013
vol. 24 no. 10 1505-1506

“…The Journal Impact Factor (JIF), developed to help librarians make subscription decisions, has de facto been repurposed by researchers, journals, administrators, and funding and hiring committees as a proxy for the quality and importance of research publications. The result of this shortcut is that researchers are judged by where their articles are published rather than by the content of their publications. This is fundamentally wrong…”

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Science editorial:  Impact Factor Distortions
Bruce Alberts, Editor-in-Chief
Science 17 May 2013
Vol. 340 no. 6134 p. 787

DMPTool Webinar series
Related to data curation, data management, and using the DMPTool

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DMPTool Webinar Series 1:   INTRODUCTION TO DMPTOOL

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Image credit: judepics License: CC-BY-NC 2.0

Do you know someone who has “used, applied, or remixed scientific research — published through Open Access — to make a difference in science, medicine, business, technology or society as a whole?” (ASAP)

Nominate them in the Accelerating Science Award Program.

Three top awards of $30,000 each will be presented. Nominations are accepted from May 1 to June 15, 2013 . Winners to be announced in October 2013 during Open Access Week.

Sponsors of ASAP include Google, PLoS, Wellcome Trust, Association of Research Libraries, and SPARC, among others.  Here is a complete list:  http://asap.plos.org/sponsors/

Perhaps you have a success story about open access that you would like to share with others at UC Davis? We would love to hear from you.

Contact:   Amy Studer  |   astuder@lib.ucdavis.edu  |  530-752-1678

Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research

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Public Access to Federally-Supported Research and Development Data and Publications: Two Planning Meetings

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“… 14 February 2013, ‘a bill to provide for Federal agencies to develop public access policies relating to research conducted by employees of that agency or from funds administered by that agency’ (called the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research act, or FASTR)…

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…22 February 2013, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies, directing them to ‘develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government’…

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…requested that the National Research Council (NRC) Division on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE) organize two planning meetings.  The agendas of these two meetings (one focusing on scientific data, and the other on scholarly publications) will primarily comprise time for stakeholder input, with brief introductory addresses by a select few experts and summarizing commentary by equally few rapporteurs…”

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Image credit: ShellyS from http://www.flickr.com/photos/shellysblogger/4137565772/

On April 1st, new open access policies came into effect at Wellcome Trust and Research Councils (RC) UK.

The RCUK Policy on Open Access requires “immediate, unrestricted, online access to peer reviewed and published scholarly research papers, free of any access charges.” The policy extends to “papers published in academic journals or conference proceedings, and which acknowledge Research Council funding.”

Compliance with RCUK Policy is the responsibility of researchers; however, the RCUK determines that a journal is compliant if:

• The journal provides, via its own website, immediate and unrestricted access to the final published version of the paper, which should be made available using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.  The may involve payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) to the publisher.
• The journal consents to deposit of the final Accepted Manuscript in any repository, without restriction on non-commercial re-use and within a defined period.

The April 1, 2013 start date for compliance has prompted responses from publishers about how authors publishing in their journals may comply with the policies.

• Elsevier
• Wiley Journals
• Oxford Journals

SHERPA/FACT beta is a new tool “to help researchers check if the journals in which they wish to publish their results comply with their funder’s requirements for open access to research.”

More information about open access is available from the Open Access Topic Guide.

A special issue of Nature looks at the transformation taking place in scientific publishing.

Nature :  SPECIALS :  The future of publishing

495(7442):409-544 3/28/13

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“After nearly 400 years in the slow-moving world of print, the scientific publishing industry is suddenly being thrust into a fast-paced online world of cloud computing, crowd sourcing and ubiquitous sharing. Long-established practices are being challenged by new ones – most notably, the open-access, author-pays publishing model. In this special issue, Nature takes a close look at the forces now at work in scientific publishing, and how they may play out over the coming decades.”

Topics include open access, open data, scientific publishing, and libraries.
Contributors include Declan Butler, Richard Van Noorden, Richard Monastersky, Jason Priem, and John Wilbanks.

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New DCC (Digital Curation Centre) Resource :

Disciplinary Metadata

This is the newest addition to the DCC’s collection of curation resources

“…While data curators, and increasingly researchers, know that good metadata is key for research data access and re-use, figuring out precisely what metadata to capture and how to capture it is a complex task. Fortunately, many academic disciplines have supported initiatives to formalise the metadata specifications the community deems to be required for data re-use. This page provides links to information about these disciplinary metadata standards, including profiles, tools to implement the standards, and use cases of data repositories currently implementing them…”