---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arul George Scaria
Date: Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 8:17 PM
Subject: Open Science Newsletter: Issue 1 (July- August, 2016)
To: openscienceteam2016@googlegroups.com
Cc: Rishika Rangarajan , Kuhuk Jain <
kuhuk.jain13@nludelhi.ac.in>, Anushka Sachdev <
anushka.sachdev13@nludelhi.ac.in>, openscience.in@gmail.com
Dear all,
I am really happy to share with you a new *email newsletter, *focusing on
open movements within and outside India. Many of you have been kindly
sharing many interesting news links/ articles with me and I thought that we
could evolve a common platform for broader sharing of interesting/
contemporary news in the areas of open science, open access, open data,
open educational resources and related IP issues. This monthly newsletter
is a small attempt to create a space for sharing and we will be using the
crowd sourcing approach for collecting information for this newsletter. The
crowd sourcing approach may also ensure openness and sustainability of this
newsletter in the long run. So whenever you see any interesting
developments relating to the open movements, please do send those links to
openscience.in@gmail.com also. Needless to say, proper acknowledgments will
be given to all the contributors.
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who is interested.
Subscription for this newsletter is open to all and anyone can subscribe to
this newsletter by sending an email to openscience.in@gmail.com with just
the subject line "Subscribe". Future issues of this newsletter will be
coming from that email ID and if you do not wish to receive this
newsletter, just reply to this email with "No".
I take this opportunity to also thank all the open science project team
members at CIIPC http://www.ciipc.org, particularly Anushka, Kuhuk and
Rishika, for making this newsletter a reality! This may not be the most
perfect newsletter. But with your critical comments and suggestions, I do
hope that we will be able to collectively improve the quality of this
newsletter.
best regards,
arul
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Open Science India
Date: 7 September 2016 at 19:34
Subject: Open Science Newsletter: Issue 1 (July- August, 2016)
To: arul.scaria@nludelhi.ac.in
Newsletter: Issue 1 (July- August, 2016)
Open Science
NASA makes its scientific research and data available for public access
https://www.nasa.gov/open/researchaccess/pubspace
All the NASA funded research articles and research data will be made
available for public access through its online archive PubSpace within one
year of publication. However, the policy exempts patents and any material
governed by personal privacy, proprietary, or security laws from inclusion
in the database. More information can be found here
http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-made-all-the-scientific-research-it-fu....
The detailed Policy can be found here
http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2014/12/05/NASA_Plan_for_increasi...
.
“Reclaim Invention” project launched against patent trolls
https://creativecommons.org/2016/08/18/reclaim-invention-benefit-everyone/
Reclaim invention is a project aimed to promote sharing of knowledge within
state universities. This project involves preventing universities from
selling inventions to patent trolls through a legislation. This legislation
requires university technology transfer offices to adopt a policy
committing them to manage patent assets in the public interest and voids
any agreement to license or transfer a patent to a patent assertion entity.
Details of the project can be found here
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/reclaim-invention. The draft legislation
can be found here
https://www.eff.org/files/2016/08/12/reclaiminventionact-09.txt.
Excel errors discovered in research papers due to open access
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-al
arming-number-of-scientific-papers-contain-excel-errors
An analysis published in the Genome Biology journal shows that 1 out of 5
scientific papers in the field of genetics contain errors in their gene
lists that were attributable to automatic conversions of gene names to
things like calendar dates or random numbers by Excel. The papers analysed
for this purpose include publications in journals like Nature, Science and
PLoS One. Such problems were identified only because these papers were in
open access and it is suggested to use R and Python to curb these errors.
Open Access
Tamil Nadu adopts Creative Commons license
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2
016-08-18/News_and_notes
The Tamil Nadu government has issued an order
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GoTN_Tamil_Development_Departments_o...
mandating release through creative commons license, certain works published
or collected by different government departments and Tamil University. The
order includes within its ambit books published by various departments and
information from palm leaves, stone carvings and films which are collected
by members of various government departments. A rough translation of the
order can be accessed here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F9--s5Eh7auCbH__zUfmXR9ZlrVjtDvo2UlDztfx...
.
Open Data
The US government releases the federal source code policy
https://creativecommons.org/2016/08/16/u-s-moves-ahead-limit
ed-code-sharing-policy/
The US government has released a federal source code policy
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2016/m_16_21.pd...
to improve access to software codes developed by or for the federal
government. The policy mandates release of 20% of custom developed code as
Open Source Software (OSS). A critique of the policy can be found here.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/white-house-source-code-policy-should-...
Concordant on Open Research
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/160728/
Four of the UK’s leading research organisations have proposed certain
common principles for working with research data. This is intended to
ensure that research data gathered and generated by members of the UK
research community is made openly available for use by others wherever
possible.
New text and data mining copyright exception for researchers to be
introduced in EU
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2016/august/eu-planning-t
o-introduce-new-text-and-data-mining-copyright-exception-
for-research-bodies/
According to the proposals under consideration by EU policy makers, a
mandatory text and data mining exception to copyright law might be included
in the new EU legislation. Through this process, the Commission is aiming
to reduce the transaction costs and legal uncertainties that many
researchers face for carrying out text and data mining on content they have
lawful access to. In 2014, the UK had introduced a similar exception and
the UK legislation can be found here
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/1372/contents/made.
Oil and gas industry ready to join the open source world
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/08/25/oil-companies-joining-ope
n-source-world-by-sharing-data
Landmark, a technology unit of the energy services company Halliburton, has
decided to unveil a cloud-computing platform that will allow companies to
collaborate on developing software to process massive volumes of data they
collect on the oil and gas industry. The aim is to provide open access to
the code on which the platform is based, which would further allow faster
analysis of the data. Analysis of such data has been helping gas companies
identify plant problems, avoid shut-downs and also to come up with new ways to
extract more oil and gas at lower costs. A document explaining the
DecisionSpace data server software can be found here
https://www.landmark.solutions/Portals/0/LMSDocs/Datasheets/Decisionspace-da...
Chicago’s first step towards building a smarter, better city with Array of
Things
https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2016/08/29/chicago-becomes
-first-city-launch-array-things
The Array of Things http://arrayofthings.github.io/ is an urban sensing
project that will entail installation of modular sensor boxes around
Chicago to serve as a “fitness tracker” by collecting real-time data on the
city’s environment, infrastructure, and activity for research and public
use. This data will be published openly and free of cost through the Chicago
Data Portal https://data.cityofchicago.org/ so that people can use
it to understand
their communities and neighborhoods better.
U.S. Police department releases policing data
http://www.ksla.com/story/32851150/nopd-releases-use-of-force-data
Anyone can now have access to New Orleans Police Department’s new policing
data on its website
https://public.tableau.com/profile/nola#%21/vizhome/NOPD_UseOfForceIncidents...,
24 hours after the incident, for things like, calls for service, stop and
search, and use of force. This is a new initiative for improving
transparency.
Japan moving towards a ‘smarter city’ with the ‘open data’ project
http://readwrite.com/2016/08/29/europe-japan-team-boost-smar
t-cities-open-data-project/
Japan has collaborated with EU to take smart cities to the next level with
a cloud-based open data platform that will be used as a key foundation that
smart cities can be built on. This platform will link big data, Internet of
Things (IoT), and cloud computing with Linked Open Data and open government
data thereby allowing cities and private firms to develop new applications
and services for the public and businesses. More information can be found
here
http://readwrite.com/2016/08/29/europe-japan-team-boost-smart-cities-open-da....
Open Educational Resources
Prison education through open educational resources
https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/09/01/non-profit-
pilots-delivery-of-offline-oer-for-prisoner-education.aspx
"The incarcerated populations in the United States are not being given
adequate 21st century skills they need to re-enter society. By leveraging
current open-source collections of content and unique offline technologies,
we're bringing educational opportunities into a place that was off limits
just a few short years ago."
World Possible http://worldpossible.org/vision.html, a non-profit
organisation, plans to use offline digital content for education of
prisoners. This prison education technology pilot program will expand the
use of RACHEL-Plus, a technology that combines a collection of websites
such as Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/, Wikipedia
https://www.wikipedia.org/, CK-12 http://www.ck12.org/, GCF
learnFree.org http://www.gcflearnfree.org/, etc to provide education to
the prisoners for free.
Student Editors: Anushka Sachdev and Kuhuk Jain
Editors: Arul George Scaria and Rishika Rangarajan
Our special thanks to Karishma Shrivastava and all other members of the
Open Science Project Team at the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual
Property and Competition http://www.ciipc.org (CIIPC) for their excellent
inputs for this issue. To ensure openness and sustainability in the long
run, we would like this newsletter to be a crowd sourced platform of
interesting news on diverse open movements. So if you find any interesting
news in the area of open science, open data, open access, open educational
resources, open source software or open labs, please send those links to
openscience.in@gmail.com. Proper acknowledgments will be given to all the
contributors.
We also welcome your suggestions and comments on this issue. You may send
them to openscience.in@gmail.com
--
Arul George Scaria, Ph.D. [International Max Planck Research School for
Competition and Innovation, Munich]
Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director - Centre for Innovation,
Intellectual Property and Competition (CIIPC)
National Law University, Delhi,
Sector 14 Dwarka,
New Delhi 110078,
India.
Email: arul.scaria@nludelhi.ac.in; arulgs@gmail.com
Tel:+91 85 2726 2232
http://www.nludelhi.ac.in/pep-fac-new-pro.aspx?Id=46
http://copyx.org/affiliate-faculty/arul-george-scaria/
SSRN Author Page: http://ssrn.com/author=1173057
--
Arun
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4398-4658
http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-9925-2009