Yesterday, the US National Academies announced publication of a new report called “Open Science by Design: Realizing a Vision for the 21st Century”. This is a broad-ranging report about how the practice and communication of science is changing in the digital world. You can find the link to the report, a summary, background on the committee and the process that produced the report, and a link to the webcast (including a transcript) here:
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/brdi/open_science_enterprise/index.htm
(Disclosure: this report was done by the Board on Research Data and Information at the Academies; I am a former co-chair of this, though I wasn’t involved in the development of this report.)
There have also been a series of interesting reports coming out of Europe recently, emphasizing the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) Principles for research data (which are also heavily emphasized in the US report above). These principles sound simple, but how to actually accomplish them is a formidable research problem.
The European Commission Expert Group on Fair Data has issued an interim report and action plan; these can be found respectively at
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1285272
and
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1285290
The Expert Group is conducting a Consultation till August 5 and has invited comment on these documents. See http://www.codata.org/working-groups/fair-data-expert-group
for further information and background on the Expert Group.
In the UK, the JISC have recently issued a report “FAIR in Practice” which can be found here
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1245567
and there is a useful blog posting here
In the Netherlands, SURF has also produced a report “FAIR Data Advanced Use Cases” which is at
http://zenodo.org/record/1250535#.W0cm7yiWyUk
And finally, LIBER (the European Research Library Network) has issued the “LIBER Open Science Roadmap” in conjunction with its recent annual meeting. See
https://zenodo.org/record/1303002#.WzsCdtUzaM8
LIBER’s web page at
https://libereurope.eu/blog/2018/07/03/liber-launches-open-science-roadmap/
has some additional useful background.
Happy Summer reading!
Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI