PLOS ONE

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A Troubling Result From Publishing Open Access Articles With CC-BY

Christina Hendricks | You're The Teacher | August 31, 2013

For week four of the Why Open? course, we are looking at potential benefits of openness, as well as potential problems with it. There are many, many interesting stories and case studies listed on that part of the course, and I’m still working through looking at them (I’m interested in them all!). Read More »

A World Of Open Access

Alasdair Rae | Under The Radar | November 26, 2013

[Few] people have looked closely at the data on open access; probably because most people are still in debate about the merits and pitfalls of open access itself. The simple fact is that open access publishing is having a major impact on academia and the biggest journal in the world (by volume of papers) is now PLoS ONE, an open access title [...]. Read More »

Capturing Open Access Papers for the Smithsonian Institution

Alvin Hutchinson | Smithsonian Libraries Unbound | September 17, 2013

As noted elsewhere in this blog, the publication record of Smithsonian scholars includes a growing portion of open access (OA) articles. During 2012, nearly 14% of scientific papers authored by Smithsonian scientists were published in OA journals. This is up from 7% in 2008 and it is expected to grow.  Read More »

Copyright As Censorship In Science: Striped Nanoparticle Edition

Maneesh Yadav | QuestionCopyright.org | September 19, 2014

A band of researchers has been tirelessly trying to demonstrate that a body of scientific work which rests on a paper from over 10 years ago is completely wrong. The only problem is, their argument isn't being allowed to stand or fall on its merits — instead, copyright restrictions are interfering with their ability to make their case at all...

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Explorer Allows Public Access to Results Of Sea Monster Search

Jørn Hurum | National Geographic | November 4, 2012

NG Emerging Explorer Jørn Hurum recently returned from an expedition to Spitsbergen Island in the Arctic Circle excavating the remains of ancient marine reptiles worthy of the most fantastic Norse legends. Read about their exciting adventure here on Explorers Journal through their frequent updates from the field. Get the results of the search in the Norwegian Journal of Geology. Read More »

Farmworker Study Ties Drug-Resistant Staph To Animal Antibiotics

Staff Writer | Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) | July 4, 2013

Authors of a paper published online by the open-access journal PLOS ONE reported livestock-associated MRSA and multidrug-resistant staph linked to livestock were present only among workers exposed to industrial livestock operations. Read More »

For Disruption, MOOCs Beat Open-Access Journals, Scholar Says

Megan O'Neill | The Chronicle of Higher Education | October 23, 2013

MOOCs are more disruptive to higher education than open-access megajournals are, in part because of structural protections in the scholarly-publishing world and because some policy makers are pushing massive open online courses as a means to increase productivity, a professor argues in a new article on open-access alternatives in higher education. Read More »

Four PLOS authors receive 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

Through the Breakthrough Prize – initiated and funded in 2012 by Bay Area biotechnology innovators, social media venture capitalists and successful internet entrepreneurs – outstanding scientists working in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics receive recognition, money and a bit of glamour. This year, four of the five scientists awarded a $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences chose to publish some of their work in Open Access journals over the course of their careers. In so doing, Edward S. Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, John Hardy and Svante Pääbo ensure their research is available for distribution, discovery and reuse, introducing opportunities for all scientists to build on their discoveries...

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Goodbye Elsevier, Goodbye Tet Lett Etc

mattoddchem | Intermolecular | January 26, 2012

I’ve decided to stop refereeing for, and publishing in, Elsevier journals. I was just asked to review for Tet Lett again, and sent notice that I’m out: Read More »

Gut Microorganisms Affect Our Physiology

Press Release | University of Exeter | December 29, 2016

Scientists at the University of Exeter Medical School and University of Zaragoza in Spain studied a protein known as TLR2, a critical detector of the microbiota found in the intestine. They found that it regulates levels of serotonin – a neurotransmitter which carries messages to the brain, and is also found in the gut, where it regulates our bowel routines. The research, carried out in cell cultures and verified in mice, provides strong evidence that microbiota can interfere with human physiology by modulating the serotonin transporter activity...

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How Much Will I Be Charged?

Press Release | UCSF | February 26, 2013

It’s a basic, reasonable question: How much will this cost me? For patients in the emergency room, the answer all too often is a mystery. Read More »

How Superbugs Hitch A Ride From Hog Farms Into Your Community

Tom Philpott | Mother Jones | September 13, 2014

Factory-scale farms don't just house hundreds of genetically similar animals in tight quarters over vast cesspools collecting their waste...And when you dose the animals daily with small amounts of antibiotics—a common practice—the bacteria strains in these vast germ reservoirs quite naturally develop the ability to withstand anti-bacterial treatments...

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How to Open Source Your Academic Work in 7 Steps

Open source technology and academia are the perfect match. Find out how to meet tenure requirements while benefiting the whole community. Academic work fits nicely into the open source ethos: The higher the value of what you give away, the greater your academic prestige and earnings. Professors accomplish this by sharing their best ideas for free in journal articles in peer-reviewed literature. This is our currency, without a strong publishing record not only would our ability to progress in our careers degrade, but even our jobs could be lost (and the ability to get any other job). The following seven steps provide the best practices for making an academic's work open source...

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Mainstream Academia Embraces Open Source Hardware

Twenty years ago, even staunch proponents of free and open source software like Richard Stallman questioned the social imperative for free hardware designs. Academics had barely started to consider the concept; the number of papers coming out annually on the topic were less than could be counted on someone's fingers. Not anymore! Not only has the ethical authority of Stallman embraced free hardware and free hardware design, but so has the academic community. Consider the graph below, which shows the number of articles on open source hardware indexed by Google Scholar each year from 2000 to 2017. In the last 17 years, the concept of open source hardware has erupted in ivory towers throughout the world. Now more than 1,000 articles are written on the topic every year.

Making A Case For Open Access

Joseph Esposito | The Scholarly Kitchen | January 5, 2015

Depending on the audience, the case for open access (OA) varies. Opponents of intellectual property, for example, may favor OA simply on principle...

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