On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 6:39 AM Richard Poynder <richard.poyn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> “Designing a system that fosters bibliodiversity, while also supporting > research at the international level is extremely challenging. It means > achieving a careful balance between unity and diversity; international and > local; and careful coordination across different stakeholder communities > and regions in order to avoid a fragmented ecosystem.” > > > > That seems to me to be a key paragraph in this document. And the pandemic > — which requires that information is shared very quickly and broadly, and > across borders — does certainly highlight the fact that the current > scholarly communication system leaves a lot to be desired. > > > First , thanks for raising this and also quoting me. I am going to be challenging as these are challenging times. I play the role of a socratic gadly and I will upset people. I'm taking the view of the citizen in the street - in the Global South - who wants answers from academic knowledge. Not in 5 years time, not next month, NOW. If the repository system cannot address the needs of citizens in a time of urgency then it has failed the citizen. If it's creating an academia-only product then citizens can rightfully challenge it. So, if you are still reading I call on the repository system to start supporting the need for universal knowledge. Everywhere. And I'm going to set a timescale. To create a universal interface to the worlds repositories by the end of JUNE 2020 (2020-06-30) That is what emergencies demand. Now most of you will be dismissing this as rubbish. But it's possible. My colleague Rick Smith-Unna, when a graduate student at Cambridge, and contracting to ContentMine, in 2015 wrote a wrapper for EuropePMC repository to systematic download articles in bulk (500 in a minute). It transforms the way that citizens can use the system. It probably took him about 2 weeks. He's a genius but there are geniuses out there who want to help. The goal of the repository system in the COVID age must put citizens at the centre. I've had a request from a Spanish forensic scientist to answer the question: "to collect as many scientific articles as possible regarding the persistence of Covid-19 in different surfaces and materials that are commonly studied in a forensic setting, such as samples obtained form autopsies (skin, bones and body fluids), porous and non-porous surfaces and textiles. " I have no doubt that many useful articles are contained in the world's repository system. It should be able to help with that, now. And without specialist intermediaries. Since you ask for action, which I agree, IMO the first action should be to build systems that work. Within 2 months. Not perfectly, not universal but work. Rick built a wrapper for EuropePMC which with only one or two others (HAL and some other national repos) is the only repository that can support a global system. I don't use CORE because I have to surrender my details to get an API. I have tried to use US repos of theses and couldn't get past the rage of landing pagfes and controls. Biorxiv doesn't yet have an API so I've built an interface in the last two weeks. It's clunky but I can download 600 papers on COVID in an hour, automatically. If the same was done globally, with a single point of entry, then we'd have a modern knowledge system. So how to do it? * set a goal and timescale as I have done * get the worlds brightest grad students (probably 3rd year as they already know all the problems of scholarly literature) to work with your tech people and bibliography people to build a rapid prototype for mass download of raw text from your repo. The grad students are the most important part of this. and then just go ahead, starting today. And my daily call, if anyone wants to help us extract knowledge about COVID automatically, please join our https://github.com/petermr/openVirus I am disappointed that I'v had no response from readers of this list. P. -- "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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