IAALD Webinar: Creating Websites on the Fly, June 24

IAALD is continuing with its successful webinars series. The upcoming webinar on June 24, "Decentralizing online publishing in your organization: Creating websites on the fly using Wordpress and Google", will be presented by Peter Shelton from IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute).

Please join us for a brief introduction on using Wordpress and Google Sites for project websites, online newsletters, group spaces, event blogs and other innovative applications. We also will discuss policies and practices for creating, launching and managing these sites and show how they can boost your organization's online presence.

These tutorials are designed to showcase web tools and applications and how they are used to support your work and it is our hope that participants will come ready to explore and discuss these topics with their colleagues in further detail.

Presenter: Peter Shelton, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Date: Friday, June 24, 2011

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT check your time zone here

System Requirements
Pc-based attendees
Required: Windnows 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

MacIntosh-based attendees
Required: Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger) or newer

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/870299622

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Up to now all IAALD webinars have been free for everyone, but in the future non-IAALD members will most likely be asked to pay a small fee for attending.

Online guide to scientific writing

Supported by the Commonwealth Forestry Association, this guide aims to help authors get their manuscripts published in recognized journals. It has been put together by the Editor of the International Forestry Review and draws on work carried out by Fahamu, the Journal of Environmental Management, and the Tropical Agriculture Association.

Access to Research for Development and Innovation - WIPO supports free journal access

The United Nations has partnered with the scientific publishing industry to provide research institutions in least developed countries free access to online journals, the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced at the launch of the scheme in Geneva.

The new UN-brokered programme, Access to Research for Development and Innovation (aRDi), will allow industrial property offices, universities and research institutes to subscribe free of charge to prominent science and technology publications including the American Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences, Oxford University Press and Royal Society of Chemistry, among others.

Read full article.

How journal articles may come to be published

"Cell Press and Elsevier have launched a project called Article of the Future that is an ongoing collaboration with the scientific community to redefine how the scientific article is presented online.

The project's goal is to take full advantage of online capabilities, allowing readers individualized entry points and routes through the content, while using the latest advances in visualization techniques. We have developed prototypes for two articles from Cell to demonstrate initial concepts and get feedback from the scientific community."

What do we think? Seems to be more about presentation and the introduction of other types and forms of results (podcasts, video). Doesn't seem to suggest any opening up of all or some parts of the content.

Communicating swine flu research - Evidence for open access models?

Through Twitter, just came across fascinating blog post from leading science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer...

In his posting, he describes his positive experiences trying to obtain information on swine flu science.

Concluding that "the patient process of old-fashioned science publishing may have to be upgraded", he show how scientists working on the virus created an open wiki (thanks to them for the image on this posting) to share information - "So everyone who wanted to peruse their analysis could see how it developed as more data emerged and as they used different methods to analyze it."

After this open process, it seems the results were published (today 11 June) in Nature - with a Creative Commons license.

Of course, this openness may be due to the urgent nature of the problem. But it does show a different - and open - way to do science. This model combines open 'social' media like wikis and blogs with publishing in a traditional peer-reviewed journal, and the use of creative commons licenses to maximise access to the results.

It sounds like several of the promising pathways CIARD aims to pull together to make agricultural research outputs more accessible!

IRRI science more accessible with open licenses and social media

The April-June 2009 issue Rice Today contains a great article about rice science in the digital age.

The story essentially introduces some of the pathways used by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to maximise the accessibility of its research outputs. These include adoption of a creative commons licence and publishing on several platforms - Google Books, Flickr, and YouTube.

A related presentation by IRRI's Gene Hettel - 'Adopting and Utilizing Creative Commons to Facilitate the Dissemination of Rice Knowledge and Technology' - gives a vivid insight into IRRI's CC approach to licensing and shows examples from the different platforms.

The presentation concludes: "Creative Commons: the 'pot of gold' for users of rice information around the world!"

nb: some other presentations to the 'Symposium on Common Use Licensing of Publicly Funded Scientific Data and Publications' are on slideshare.

Alternative research publishing models

The UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) recently published a report examining the "institutional, budgetary and wider economic implications of three of the major emerging models for scholarly publishing (i.e. subscription publishing, open access publishing and self-archiving)."

It provides fascinating insights into the total costs of scholarly publishing along the whole process - something like £5.4 billion in the UK during 2007. The authors also give us much food for thought on the implications of their research for different stakeholders in the process - researchers, funders, libraries, publishers, etc.

The overall conclusion: "Preliminary analysis of the potential benefits of more open access to research findings suggests that returns to research can also be substantial, and that different scholarly publishing models can make a material difference to the returns realised, as well as the costs faced."

What do they recommend?

"There is evidence to support a move towards more open access to research findings,..."

Barriers to "transitioning to more cost-effective scholarly publishing models" need to be reduced, by, for instance:

• finding ways to reward scholarly communication innovation rather than more traditional publishing forms;
  
• ensuring that funds are available to support publisher fees;
  
• encouraging self-archiving;
  
• supporting advocacy on alternative publishing models.
  

The authors suggest that "open access self-archiving, either in parallel with subscription publishing or with overlay services, may be more cost-effective, although more information is required on repository costs and the potential benefits of greater integration of publications with other forms of research output, their integration into learning materials, and the curation and sharing of research data. Hence, there is scope to focus greater attention on the development of repositories."

The report ends arguing that "international developments are of great importance in realising the benefits of more open access and much can be achieved by international efforts towards sharing the gains." An important extra justification for CIARD!

Science blogging to publish research?

The September 18 issue of 'The Economist' has a short article on user-generated science.

It looks at emerging web 2.0 tools in science, particularly blogging, that may lead to news ways to publish and communicate science and research. It concludes that there's much action and progress in the science blogosphere, but: "in order that blogging can become a respected academic medium it needs to be recognised by the upper echelons of the scientific establishment."

It links to Nature Network - a 'professional networking website for scientists around the world', where you can find a information about the recent Science Blogging 2008 conference in London.

The conference ended with a call to get senior scientists blogging. This may be a good step towards recognition that publishing is about more than just academic articles...

Digital publishing for small organizations

Simon Wilkinson and Jean Collins recently authored a set of excellent guidelines on digital publishing for small organizations.

Published by the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, the guidelines tackle the need to disseminate and share the results of [fisheries] research, especially where reliable, high speed and cost-effective Internet access is limited.

The guidelines are based on the years of experience of the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA) and its partners. The approach is practical in orientation, covering topics including: (a) planning, building and maintaining a sustainable digital publishing system, focusing on a common scenario of setting up a Web site as a digital publishing platform; (b) producing user-friendly digital publications and making them accessible; (c) some recent international developments in digital publishing; and (d) recommended software tools and technical resources for further reading.

Tags: agricultural information fisheries research publishing