Author: Corporate Office

The University of Virginia is set to launch a new platform through which they intend to support a thriving, interdisciplinary collaborative community called OpenGrounds. The underlying tenet of the approach being taken is to provide a catalyst for widespread collaboration, amongst faculty and students, but do so in a way that does not spawn unnecessary permanent centers or establish infrastructure that lasts longer than its original need.

This program, when live, will be aimed at providing a number of resources and forums that will facilitate small and large scale collaboration, but do so in a way that can provide the temporary infrastructure to support such efforts. This is intended to negate the need to establish a new center or program on campus, and therefore reduce the long-term overhead of maintaining such an establishment.

OpenGrounds will be hosting both physical resources, such as meeting spaces and studios, as well as maintaining a list of fellows to act as facilitators for collaborative efforts. The program will also be hosting workshops and providing a platform for individuals to reach out to the surrounding community to increase awareness of an effort or goal and identify new collaborative partners.

While many new initiatives have been undertaken to encourage and transform collaboration, they are often focused on large-scale digital networks or electronic interconnection. The electronic projects being undertaken are important, but it will be exciting to see the developments that a seemingly more locally focused project intended on bringing collaborators physically closer together can bring about.

On February 27th, 2012, Elsevier announced its intention to drop support for the controversial “Research Works Act”, intended on limited public access to federally funded research outputs. Only hours afterwards, the bill’s sponsors in the US House of Representatives declared their end of the bill’s support.

Elsevier’s statement indicates that their support for the bill created the perception that they stood against the availability of free and low-cost methods of publishing and sharing of research findings, and that was in violation of the organization’s efforts to assist scientists in expanding the access to their findings.

Some have stated that a scientist based boycott of the company, centered on the website The Cost of Knowledge, was the impetus for the publisher’s move. The site has gained over 7,500 scientists that have committed to boycotting working with Elsevier in some fashion.

However, one can easily point to the now eased ability for the publisher to partner with research funding sources in providing systems of distribution that more widely benefit all parties involved as a good reason for the move. The company has stated that they intend on amending their pricing and access agreements in an effort to play a constructive and collaborative role in bringing the benefits of science to the wider community.

Looking forward, this will certainly not be the last disagreement as access to interoperable technologies and the widespread growth of technically skilled individuals increasingly affects the way in which science is conducted, administered, and reviewed.

NIH has posted their estimated funding amounts distribution since FY 2008 and projected through FY 2013 here. They have broken the funding down into 233 distinct categories, and include a distinction between ARRA and non-ARRA funding.

It is important to note that the categories are not mutually exclusive, so the same dollar may be counted in more than one category for a particular fiscal year.

This report can be useful to identify trends for a particular area of health research, at least in terms of allocation of funding by NIH. This is particularly true because of the breakout of ARRA related funding, so temporary increases in a particular area can be identified as such. With a relatively granular breakdown, it should be a helpful table of data to take a brief look at.

The US National Science Foundation as announced that they will broadcast their FY 2013 budget request briefing to Congress. The briefing will consist of an overview of NSF’s FY 2013 budget requests and how they align with the current administration’s initiatives. This is the first time that NSF will be webcasting such a briefing.

Following the briefing, the NSF’s assistant directors and office heads will provide briefings pertaining to their specific programs, although no mention has been made as to whether these will be made publicly viewable over a webcast as the director’s briefing will be.

The briefing will take place at 3:30 PM EST on February 13th, 2012. It can be viewed publicly here and will require a browser that can support Adobe Flash Player.

The Association of Research Libraries posted their Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries to assist libraries in handling a variety of common scenarios in which copyrighted material is put to use.

The code is a product of dozens of interviews with research and academic librarians on the topic of dealing with the potential conflicts between copyright law and their internal practices. This is an often potentially dangerous area for librarians since their goals can often be seen as at odds with strict copyright protection laws.

The ARL feels that by setting out a standardize code of practice they will have the opportunity to influence current and future policy on the topic, and can help create an accepted standard of practice amongst a broad base. The code, which can be viewed from here, deals with topics such as digitizing content, providing materials for exhibitions or staff and student use, as well as making content available on the web.

This announcement comes in the midst of the ongoing debate regarding H.R. 3699, titled ‘Research Works Act’, which is a controversial proposed law that would limit the dissemination of research output material that is covered under publishers’ copyright. There have been numerous reactions to the proposed law’s intent, with well structured arguments both for and against the bill.

On February 6th, 2012, the Wellcome Trust announced that it will be accepting applications for its new funding scheme focused on orphan and neglected diseases, the Pathfinder Awards. The overarching goal of the new funding program is to support academic-industry partnerships in the area of orphan and neglected diseases.

These awards are intended to support early-stage applied research and development projects that would otherwise be considered ineligible for the vast majority of the sponsor’s other translational funding schemes.

While there is no widely agreed upon definition for orphan diseases, sometimes referred to as rare diseases, it is generally inclusive of diseases, often genetically caused, that affect less than 0.1% of the population. Neglected diseases may also be rare or orphan diseases, but are also generally characterized as tropical diseases that disproportionately affect low-income populations.

The sponsor will provide up to £ 100,000 for projects up to a maximum of 18 months. Applications for the most immediate round will be accepted through April 2, 2012. The sponsor intends on having four rolling deadlines for every twelve month period.

The sponsor’s aim is to initiate projects that point to promising new products and procedures that can be funded by opportunities focused on more established research goals. The Wellcome Trust is a large sponsor in the biotechnology and health sciences field that is based in the United Kingdom and funds numerous research and related projects around the world.

Most of you are familiar with the concept that research findings are publicized via an industry vetted journal. The standard scheme is to publish in the most prestigious journal possible, perhaps determined by its impact factor, and that by virtue of an article’s venue, the article itself accumulates prestige and relevancy in its field. This tried and true method will be around for a long time to come; it relies on some of the fundamental tenets of scientific publication. Concepts like citation counts and peer-review are valuable for good reasons.

However, there are also numerous other stages for scientists to display their findings, and new types of findings. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to measure the full impact of a scientifically supported argument that is posted on a blog or a creative computer algorithm by traditional methods. A relatively new concept, altmetrics, is attempting to provide an additional piece to the puzzle. Using modern technologies and public APIs, it is an attempt to measure the near-term impact of a particular finding. And it is important to note that it is focused on the research output itself, not the mechanism of its delivery.

This is essentially a new area, with little to no industry standards around it to constrain its measurements. Its intention is not to supplant traditional publication and citation metrics, but rather make an attempt to classify and measure relatively new and essentially unmonitored methods of publication. While traditional methods can often take years to begin measuring the impact of a particular output, altmetrics is intended to begin forming a picture of that within weeks or months.

Seeing that this concept is still in its infancy, I would suggest that it would be a fruitful venture to treat this as an informal, long-term RFI. If discussed via social media, altmetrics may begin taking note automatically. There is also a request for papers posted here.

Late last year it was announced that the US Geological Survey would lose all of the funding for its National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) program. As of the 15th of January, 2012, the website’s database will be taken off-line. The popular service gave researchers a single entry point for finding data that was compiled for multiple government agencies on the topics environmental science, species taxonomy, and disease propagation.

The site’s data is not yet available as a single archive, although they have provided a list of partner organizations, although each one will have to be accessed individually. The website has also posted a list of services that will no longer be available here. The termination of service announcement includes a statement of desire to continue to collaborate with partners, although the USGS provides no indication of what that may look like in the future.