Thank you Jennifer, Simon Worthington (TiB, Hanover) and I have started a FORCE11 working group on Open Climate Knowledge where we are building systems to scrape the worlds scholarly knowledge (including those not indexed by commercial publishers) . This has been pre-empted by COVID-19 so we have turned the code to extracting knowledge on viral epidemics (not just COVID). http://github.com/petermr/openVirus Andy Jackson has indexed 100,000 theses in BL (EThOS), and Clyde Davies is half way through indexing 4.7 million abstracts in Dir Open Access Journals (DOAJ) Everything is volunteer and Open. The technology is completely general and can be re-used on any open access sources. Since indexes are not owned by authors, we can distribute indexes under the UK law.
Scholarly infrastructure is under threat. The threat of monoculture developed not for our benefit, but the income and control of megapublishers. If we do not provide alternatives we will do scholarship under the "snoop and control" of companies we pay huge amounts to. The way to challenge this is to build better infrastructure which is under our control, not corporations. Did you know that over 90% of the literature on face-masks is behind paywalls? That the key 1982 paper predicting Ebola in Liberia is STILL paywalled? That Elsevier is withdrawing its free COVID tools in October 2020 (https://www.elsevier.com/connect/coronavirus-information-center) almost certainly before the end of the epidemic? We have to build our own infrastructure instead of pouring increasingly scarce money into publishers. If it can index the BL theses, then it can index others. Do you have an underused repository that is machine unfriendly? Would it benefit from semantic indexing using Wikidata? We have 7 wonderful volunteers from undergraduate / Masters students in India. Can you find some similar volunteers? On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 2:27 PM Jennifer Gibson <j.gib...@elifesciences.org> wrote: > (Apologies for cross-posting. Please spread the word!) > > Please join us for the next Open-source Community Call, hosted in > partnership by FORCE11, Dryad and eLife. These calls are an informal way to > share and discuss efforts that promote open approaches to research > communication, from dissemination of new results (as datasets, code or > text) to discovery and evaluation. The focus is on emerging projects and > significant updates for ongoing ones. Come out and get the latest. > > The next call will be Monday, June 29, 2020 > 8am Pacific, 1pm Eastern, and 4pm British Summer Time > Registration is free, but required. > > Register here: > https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Bujp0KMORp6SQrrIczkJAg > > The agenda is open and there's space for more presenters. Learn more at > https://www.force11.org/article/register-attend-next-open-source-community-call-june-29 > > Thank you! > > -- > > ------------------------------ > > Jennifer Gibson (née McLennan) > Head of Open Research Communication > > > > elifesciences.org > > eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd is a limited liability non-profit > non-stock corporation incorporated in the State of Delaware, USA, with > company number 5030732, and is registered in the UK with company number > FC030576 and branch number BR015634 at the address Westbrook Centre, Milton > Road, Cambridge, CB4 1YG. > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > -- "I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same". Peter Murray-Rust Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069
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