Oxford, Cambridge & Harvard lead new standards for bio data sets
February 1, 2012
Led by researchers at University of Oxford (UK) and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) at Harvard University, (USA), more than 50 collaborators known at over 30 scientific organizations around the globe have agreed on a common standard for integrating biological data sets. These ISA Commons standards were presented in the Commentary, Towards interoperable bioscience data, Nature Genetics 44, 2 (2012).
This will make it possible to consistently describe the enormous and radically different databases that are compiled in the biosciences in fields ranging from genetics to stem cell science, to environmental studies.
“We are now working together to provide the means to manage enormous quantities of otherwise incompatible data, ranging from the biomedical to the environmental,” says Dr. Susanna-Assunta Sansone, the BBSRC-funded Team Leader of the project and iCommons Ltd Board member, based the University of Oxford’s e-Research Centre.
A commentary, published on Friday (27 February) in the in the journal Nature Genetics describes an ecosystem of standard-compliant data curation and sharing solutions and the establishment of its on-line presence, the ISA Commons. The commentary is signed by all the collaborators.
“An example of how this works at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute is that we can now find a relationship between experiments involving normal blood stem cells in fish and cancers in children”, says Winston Hide, director of HSCI’s new Center for Stem Cell Bioinformatics, and an associate Professor of Bioinformatics at the Harvard School of Public Health.
“One of the things that I find most empowering about this effort is that now small research groups can begin to store laboratory data using this framework, complying with community standards, without their own dedicated bioinformatics support. It is a bit like Facebook allowing everyone to create their own website pages – suddenly you don’t need to be an expert in computing to get your data out to the rest of the world”, says Jules Griffin, of the University of Cambridge.
See also the Editorial, It’s not about the data, in the same issue.
UK Parliament issues report on Open Access to Scientific Information
January 27, 2012
The Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology released PostNote 397 concerning recommendations to promote wider sharing of research information. It identifies challengesas well as benefits to providing OA to publications and research data, highlights cross-cutting issues, and delivers such recommendations as:
- Open Access (OA) to scientific publications could provide more effective dissemination of research and thus increase its impact.
- The costs and benefits of different models of providing OA to publications need to be considered if a comprehensive shift to OA is to be financially sustainable.
- OA to research data could enable others to validate findings and re-use data to advanceknowledge and promote innovation.
- Sharing data openly requires effective data management and archiving. It also presents challenges relating to protecting intellectual property and privacy.
- Expanding access to scientific information requires researchers, librarians, higher education institutions, funding agencies and publishers, to continue to work together.
The full report is available here.
COMMUNIA responds to PSI Directive proposals
January 22, 2012
The COMMUNIA International Association submitted its second policy paper, this in reaction to the European Commission’s proposal to amend the Directive on re-use of public sector information (2003/98/EC).
COMMUNIA is supportive of the Commission’s suggested changes to the PSI Directive — most notably the decision to include cultural heritage institutions into the scope of the amended Directive. The paper draws attention to two issues where the proposal to amend the Directive should be improved. The first one recommends more consistent permissioning terms for use of public sector information that falls within the scope of the Directive and the second urges the inclusion of public domain content that is held by libraries, museums and archives.
iCommons Ltd is a member of COMMUNIA.
SCRIPTed moves to new host
January 16, 2012
SCRIPTed, the open access Journal of Law, Technology & Society published by the SCRIPT Centre in Edinburgh has announced a move to its own servers where it will become one of the first WordPress-based journals. The back catalog will be transferred to the new site during the next few months.
Founded by Professors Lilian Edwards and Graeme Laurie, the journal is an online, international, interdisciplinary and multi-lingual journal of peer-reviewed articles, analysis pieces, case and legislation critiques, as well as commentaries, reports, and book reviews pertaining to law, society, and technologies in the broadest sense.
SCRIPTed draws on a thriving postgraduate community of students from around the world and benefits from the close ties of that community with the Faculty of Law. The Editorial Board is assisted by an Advisory Board of internationally-renowned experts drawn from the disciplines of intellectual property, information technology, medical law, artificial intelligence, communications law and E-commerce.
Further assistance for authors and artists can be found in the Submission Guidelines.
Searching for free content with Let’s CC
January 6, 2012
Jay Yoon and the team at CC Korea have produced a new search engine to locate open content, Let’s CC at http://eng.letscc.net .
Let’s CC offers quick and easy access to search services provided by some companies from one single page like search.creativecommons.org. It makes use of the APIs provided by Fiickr, Jamendo, ccMixter, Youtube and Slideshare, so you can find CC-licensed images, sounds, videos and docs at once with just one click. Users can also save favorite contents, add tags to them, search them and check favorite contents of all users. Let’s CC also allows users to display favorites located the top of search results so as to find more relevant contents easily.
Feedback is welcome at creative@cckorea.org .
