Nature's fauxpen access leaves me very sad and very angry.
Two days ago Nature/Macmillan (heareafter "Nature") announced a new form of "access" (or better "barrier") to scientific scholarship - "SciShare". It's utterly unacceptable in several ways and Michael...
View ArticleWhy ReadCube is DRMed and unacceptable for science.
My great collaborator Henry Rzepa has read the last post and delved into Macmillan's ReadCube and found it to be totally flawed and unacceptable...
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Scholarly publishing is an Inhuman Machine, Out of Control, Enclosing the...
TL;DR Scholarly publishing is an Inhuman Machine, Out of Control. It is pillaging the digital commons. I've spent the last 2 days lying awake trying to get my thoughts in order about Macmillan's use of...
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The Publisher-Academic Complex; "put your bodies upon the gears"
[term: tcPublisher - = traditional Closed Publisher such as Elsevier or Nature Publishing Group. oaPublisher, exemplified by PLoS, eLIfe, etc.] In his final address to the nation, in 1961, President...
View ArticleContent Mining; thoughts from den Haag - can we aspire to universal knowledge?
I'm in den Haag (The Hague) for a meeting run by LIBER - the association of European Research Libraries - about Content Mining. Content Mining is often called TDM - Text and Data Mining - but it also...
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Elsevier's Bumpy Road; Unacceptable licence metadata on "Open Access"
I am looking for Open Access articles to mine and since I have recently become an astrophysicist I started with http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1384107614000426 Can I mine it? "Open...
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How publishers destroy science: Elsevier's XML, API and the disappearing...
TL;DR Elsevier typsetting turns double bonds into garbage. Those of you who follow this blog will know that I contend that publishers corrupt manuscripts and thereby destroy science. Those of you who...
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Wiley's "Free to read" actually means "pay 35 USD"
I got the above unwanted Twitter from Wiley (I have checked as far as possible that it's genuine). It seems to be Wiley advertising a free to read article. I have pasted the message so you can try...
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32-year old Elsevier paper could have averted Ebola but Liberians would have...
I am very angry with the publishing industry. Last week the NY Times reported that the Ministry of Health in Liberia had discovered a 30-year old paper that, if they had known about it, might have...
View ArticleIs Figshare Open? "it is not just about open or closed, it is about control"
[Quote in title is from Mark Hahnel, see below] I have been meaning to write on this theme for some time, and more generally on the increasing influence of DigitalScience's growing influence in parts...
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Wikipedia and Wikidata. Massive Open resources for Science.
I think Wikipedia is a wonderful creation of the XXIst Century, the Digital Enlightenment. It has arisen out of the massive cultural change enabled by digital freedom - the technical ability for over...
View ArticleShould Wikipedia work with Elsevier?
This story has erupted in the last 2 days - if it had been earlier I would have covered it at my talk to Wikipedia Science]. TL;DR. Elsevier has granted accounts to 45 top editors at Wikipedia so they...
View ArticleContent-mining; Rights versus Licences
[I intend to follow with several more detailed posts.] Last week was a critical point for those who regard the scholarly literature as a public good, rather than a business. Those who care must now...
View ArticleContent-mining; Why do Publishers insist on APIs and forbid screen scraping?
[I published a general blog about the impasse between digital scholars and the Toll-Access publishers http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2015/11/22/content-mining-rights-versus-licences/ . This is the...
View ArticleContentMining: My Video to Shuttleworth about our proposed next year
I have had two very generous years of funding from the Shuttleworth Foundation to develop TheContentMine. Funding is in yearly chunks and each Fellow must reapply if s/he wants another year (up to 3)....
View ArticleI urge my MEPs to reform European Copyright - please do the same
I have written to my members of The European Parliament to argue for reform of Copyright to allow Text and Data Mining (TDM, "ContentMining") for commercial and non-commercial purposes. This issue has...
View ArticleOpen Letter to EC Carlos @Moedas on Open Science and ContentMining (TDM)
Open Letter to EC Carlos @Moedas on Open Science and ContentMining (TDM) Dear Commissioner Moedas, I am an academic at the University of Cambridge UK determined to see published scientific knowledge...
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Elsevier still charge for papers on Zika
II thouhj I thought that all major publishers had agreed to make papers on Zika available for free as a public service. But I was wrong. Elsevier are charging people. Admittedly I haven't read this...
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A commentary on Sci-hub: 2/n. Why it matters to me and ContentMine
In my previous post , catalyzed by Sci-Hub, https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2016/04/30/a-commentary-on-sci-hub-1-scholarly-publishing-is-broken/ I argued that scholarly publishing is completely broken....
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