Tag: Open Science

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The White House Openly Supports Openness

On this, the longest day of the year, I offer a short quote:

“Open sharing of research results is a proven strategy for driving positive change.”  

Yep, a typical line for this blog.  But the line doesn’t come from us — no, it comes from the White House, from a press release about their event honoring 13 “Champions of Change” for open science.  (Among those celebrated is Paul Ginsparg, founder of arXiv.org, an enormously important open access repository for physics, math, computer science, and several other sciences.)

First there was the White House’s open access directive.  Then there was its open data policy. Now it’s honoring open science pioneers and making unambiguous statements in support of openness.  Nice to have you as an ally, White House!

white house open science

(Photo credit: rmounce, http://www.flickr.com/photos/79472036@N07/8719095952/)

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Open Access Week Thought of the Day #3

Today’s thought is short and to the point. I’ve been repeating it ever since I first heard it a year ago, and I’m going to keep repeating it — this time, in big, bold letters:

“Closed access means people die.”
—Peter Murray-Rust

Not seeing the connection between closed access and death?  Peter Murray-Rust breaks it down: “Simply, closed access publishers make money by restricting access to information.”  And of course: “More and better information leads to better medicine, better health-care, better environment.” So: “The worse the medicine and healthcare, etc. the more people die.”  Therefore, yep: “Closed access means people die.”  Furthermore: “If we want a closed access publishing system then we have to accept that the price is people’s lives.”

Read more about why Peter Murray-Rust is angry.

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“Doing Science in the Open” @ NYU, Sept. 19, 6:30pm

No need to wait for Open Access Week to attend great events about openness!  Our open access friends at NYU have organized a fantastic-sounding event about open science:

On Monday, September 19 at 6:30pm at NYU’s Bobst Library, Michael Nielsen is giving a talk about open science.  Nielsen is a major figure in the field of quantum computation, and in the past few years he has become one of the most prominent supporters of open science — in fact, he has a book about open science, Reinventing Discovery, coming out in November.  More details about the talk can be found here.  RSVP is required, so be sure to RSVP if you want to attend!

If you’re interested but can’t make it, you can watch a similar talk Nielsen gave at the TEDxWaterloo event last March: