[Open] Science Sunday – 21.2.10

Long, long, long time ago in a faraway kingdom called the Society for Neuroscience Meeting (if my memory does not fail me), I was approached by a woman carrying a business card from the Public Library of Science. She described to me that they were trying to set up a publishing format whereby all articles would be accessible to anyone for free through the internet. I laughed: “I find it hard to imagine how you will make this happen”, said I. Fast forward to 2010: I am now a proud academic editor for PLoS One, one of the journals from the Public Library of Science. I am honoured to be part of the team, and hope that I will do a good job. And role models for how to go about the job are not lacking: Here is a great example by Björn Brembs.(via Bora Zivkovic). I have to say, that is scientific review awesomeness.

Open Science Data:

I love it when I come across new stuff: It shows that I am still learning. And this week, I found this site: The Panton Principles: Principles for Open Data in Science. (Via Glyn Moody on Open…).

“For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavours, it is crucial that science data be made open.

Many clicks later, I found these very cool sites that will surely be great sources of information and ideas. As I get around digesting their content I am sure you will hear more about them here:

• Open Knowledge Foundation Blog: http://blog.okfn.org/
• Protocol for implementing open access data (Science Commons): http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protocol/
• Neurocommons (also from Science Commons)” http://neurocommons.org/page/Main_Page
• Is it Open Data?: http://www.isitopendata.org/
  • “We aim to make it easy for people – like you – to make enquires of data holders, about the openness of the data they hold — and to record publicly the results of those efforts. We’re especially focused on scientific data but anyone can use this service.

Open Education

For those of you in Auckland, the olpc team is back with their (our?) tester meetings. From the mission statement, the aim of the project is:

“To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

To learn more about the olpc project and the New Zealand testers, visit the olpcnz webpage. If you are interested in joining the group, you can find information here too.

• Auckland meets are fortnightly, and are taking place at 144 Parnell Road (at the Windsor Castle).
• Wellington meets weekly on Saturdays at 10:30 am at Southern Cross, 35 Abel Smith Street
• Christchurch meets Sun: 2pm-7pm Wed: 7pm-11pm, at http://chchspace.nztech.org/