Open science – Panton principles for sharing scientific data

Glyn Moody (from open… blog) covered the creation of a set of Panton Principles for open science data. The principles advise how scientific data should be used and shared in order for the scientific process to function effectively. I have covered open science before here. Check out Glyn’s whole post on open… here.

University of Ottawa announces open access policy

The University of Ottawa took bold steps towards opening up its wealth of academic knowledge to the world today, announcing a new open access policy that is the first of its kind among Canadian universities. Ottawa U will now join the ranks of highly-respected schools such as Berkeley, Cornell, MIT and Harvard.

From the Ottawa U Website, an explanation of what open access will mean:

• a commitment to make the University’s scholarly publications available online at no charge through the University’s repository, uO Research;

• an author fund to help researchers defray open access fees charged by publishers;

• a fund to support the creation of digital educational materials organized as courses and available to everyone online at no charge ;

• support for the University of Ottawa Press’s commitment to publishing a collection of open access books; and

• a research grant to support further research on the open access movement.

I have talked about the merits of open access before and I hope other Canadian schools soon follow suit. For the full press release from the University of Ottawa, go here.