Open Access Engineering Journals

Posted on October 18, 2006 8 Comments

Open Access Engineering Journals

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Categories: Engineering, Open Access, Research, Universities

Sports Science Open Access Journal

Posted on September 21, 2006 No Comments

Sport Science is a Peer-Reviewed Site for Sport Research (open access). An interesting recent publication: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Rowing Faster by Stephen Seiler:

Improvements in rowing technique have increased boat speed by reducing boat yaw, pitch and roll, and by improving the pattern of force application. New tools for real-time measurement and feedback of boat kinematics and force patterns are opening new approaches to training of individual rowers and to selection of rowers for team boats.

They also moderate a email list with items of interest including academic positions in areas such as: Mechanical Engineering, focusing on Biomechanics; Sports Physiologist; Exercise and Sport Science.

Related: Blog posts on open access science – sports engineering and science posts

Categories: Career, Engineering, Open Access, Science, Sports, Students, Universities

Open Access Legislation

Posted on August 28, 2006 5 Comments

25 provosts from top universities jointly released a letter supporting current legislation to require open publication of scientific research. Good.

Open access can also match the missions of scholarly societies and publishers who review, edit, and distribute research to serve the advancement of knowledge. Sharing the fruits of research and scholarship inevitably leads to the creation of more research and scholarship, thus highlighting the need for publishing professionals to manage the selection and review of the highest quality research, both publicly and privately funded. Open access to publications in no way negates the need for well-managed and effective peer review or the need for formal publishing.

via: e3 Information Overload, Rallying Behind Open Access:

The Federal Public Research Access Act would require federal agencies to publish their findings, online and free, within six months of their publication elsewhere.

Related: Britain’s Royal Society Experiments with Open Access by John Hunter:

It seems to me most grants for scientific research should require open publication. I can imagine exceptions, but it seems to me that the expectation should be for open publication, in this day and age, and only allow non-open publication with a good reason.

For public funded research this open access expectation seems obvious. For private foundations in most cases I would think open access publication makes sense also. What business model is used to allow open access is not important, in my opinion. The important factor is open access, how that is accomplished is something that can be experimented with.
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If I were making the decision for a university I would have expectations that we publish openly.

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Categories: Open Access, Research, Science, Universities

Open Access Education Materials

Posted on August 24, 2006 7 Comments

Watch a video of Richard Baraniuk (Rice University professor speaking at TED) discussing Connexions: an open-access education publishing system. The content available through Connexions includes short content modules such as:

What is Engineering??:

Engineering is the endeavor that creates, maintains, develops, and applies technology for societies’ needs and desires.
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One of the first distinctions that must be made is between science and engineering.
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Science is the study of what is and engineering is the creation of can be.

and: Protein Folding, as well as full courses, such as: Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering I and Physics for K-12.

Related: Google technical talk webcasts (including a presentation by Richard Baraniuk at Google) – podcasts of Technical Talks at Google – science podcast posts – Berkeley and MIT courses online

Categories: Education, Engineering, K-12, Open Access, Podcast, Popular, Science, Students, Universities
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Open Access Article Advantage

Posted on July 7, 2006 1 Comment

Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles by Gunther Eysenbach:

While more work remains to be done to evaluate citation patterns over longer periods of time and in different fields and journals, this study provides evidence and new arguments for scientists and granting agencies to invest money into article processing fees to cover the costs of OA publishing. It also provides an incentive for publishers seeking to increase their impact factor to offer an OA option.

I agree with all of that. More study should be done. And scientists and sponsors that want the papers they wrote, or funded, to have maximum influence should invest in OA publishing now.

See previous: Britain’s Royal Society Experiments with Open Access

Categories: Open Access, Research, Science, Universities

Britain’s Royal Society Experiments with Open Access

Posted on June 23, 2006 4 Comments

Good news, the Royal Society tries open access by Stephen Pincock:

Britain’s Royal Society dipped a cautious toe into the waters of open access publishing this week, allowing authors whose papers are accepted by any of its seven journals to pay a fee and have their work made freely available on the web.

It seems to me most grants for scientific research should require open publication. I can imagine exceptions, but it seems to me that the expectation should be for open publication, in this day and age, and only allow non-open publication with a good reason.

For public funded research this open access expectation seems obvious. For private foundations in most cases I would think open access publication makes sense also. What business model is used to allow open access is not important, in my opinion. The important factor is open access, how that is accomplished is something that can be experimented with.
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Categories: Education, Engineering, Open Access, Research, Science, Universities

Promoting Open Science

Posted on July 30, 2016 2 Comments

As I have written many times in the past we need to take back science from the closed-science journals. Historically journals were useful (before the internet). With the advent of the internet (and its spread) instead of maintaining the mission they started with the journals sought to maximize their profit and their own pay and jobs at the expense of sharing scientific knowledge with the world.

Elsevier — my part in its downfall by Timothy Gowers provides another good look at what can be done to promote science, math and engineering by addressing the damage to that goal being done by closed science publishers.

Recently he announced the launch of Discrete Analysis, a new journal that publishes to arXiv.

Disrupting the subscription journals’ business model for the necessary large-scale transformation to open access from the Max Planck Digital Library provides some good ideas for how to promote science in spite of the closed science journals fighting that goal.

There needs to be a shared understanding that the money currently locked in the journal subscription system must be withdrawn and re-purposed for open access publishing services. The current library acquisition budgets are the ultimate reservoir for enabling the transformation without financial or other risks.

Related: The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge – Why Copyright Extension is a Very Bad Idea – Publishers Continue to Fight Open Access to Science (2007) – Harvard Steps Up Defense Against Abusive Journal Publishers (2012)

Categories: Research, Science
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Open Source Ecology: Using Open Engineering to Create Economic Benefit

Posted on February 7, 2013 1 Comment

Open Source Philosophy. from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

I think the video’s message is overly simplistic and unrealistic (great innovations often seem unrealistic so I don’t mind people trying things I don’t think are likely to succeed in the ways they imagine). But I believe in the concepts of using our knowledge to use appropriate technology to make the standard of living better for everyone. Open access to scientific knowledge is important to such efforts and to the economic well being of modern society.

Open Source Ecology provides a modular, DIY (open access), low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. The are recruiting for an Operations Manager, and an Executive Team (based in Kansas City or New York City in the USA).

Related: Pay as You Go Solar in India – Student Engineers Without Borders Project: Learning While Making a Difference in Kenya – Reducing Poverty Through Entrepreneurism

Categories: Engineering, Science
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Fields Medalist Tim Gowers Takes Action To Stop Cooperating with Anti-Open Science Cartel

Posted on January 26, 2012 2 Comments

The Fields medal is know as the Nobel of mathematics. Tim Gowers was awarded the Fields medal in 1998 for contributions to functional analysis, making extensive use of methods from combinatorial theory. Tim Gowers is currently the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He posted recently on his decision to stop supporting (with his actions, such as submitting paper and reviewing papers) the anti-open-science behavior of Elsevier (a particularly aggressive anti-open-science publisher that also has very bad pricing practices).

Elsevier — my part in its downfall

One method that they have for getting away with it is a practice known as “bundling”, where instead of giving libraries the choice of which journals they want to subscribe to, they offer them the choice between a large collection of journals (chosen by them) or nothing at all. So if some Elsevier journals in the “bundle” are indispensable to a library, that library is forced to subscribe at very high subscription rates to a large number of journals, across all the sciences, many of which they do not want. (The journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals is a notorious example of a journal that is regarded as a joke by many mathematicians, but which libraries all round the world must nevertheless subscribe to.) Of course, given that libraries have limited budgets, this often means that they cannot subscribe to journals that they would much rather subscribe to, so it is not just libraries that are harmed, but other publishers, which is of course part of the motivation for the scheme.
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Elsevier supports many of the measures, such as the Research Works Act, that attempt to stop the move to open access. They also supported SOPA and PIPA and lobbied strongly for them.
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I also don’t see any argument at all against refusing to submit papers to Elsevier journals.

So I am not only going to refuse to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on, but I am saying so publicly. I am by no means the first person to do this, but the more of us there are, the more socially acceptable it becomes

Good for him. All we need is for more and more scientists, mathematicians and engineers to support open science with thier actions and open science will be the way things are. It is as simple as that. The outdated business practices of the old journals will die. Either the existing publishers will finally give up on their extremely outdated practices or they will be replaced.

Related: The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge – Merck and Elsevier Publish Phony Peer-Review Journal – The Future of Scholarly Publication (2005) – Science Journal Publishers Stay Stupid (2007) “It is time for the scientific community to give up on these journals and start looking to move to work with new organizations that will encourage scientific communication and advancement”

Categories: Math, Open Access
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The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge

Posted on April 28, 2011 2 Comments

The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge from lessig on Vimeo.

Larry Lessig speaks at CERN about the proper use of copyright and the moral case for open access. As I have written many times, I strongly believe our society is better off when science is open. I believe we now are allowing a few greedy institution (that seek to restrict science for the benefit of their organization) to pay our politicians to damage society for the benefit of a few donors.

Related: The Future of Scholarly Publication – Toward a More Open Scientific Culture – Why Copyright Extension is a Very Bad Idea – Patent Gridlock is Blocking Developing Lifesaving Drugs – Bad Government, Closed Access – John Conyers Against Open Science – Science Commons – Public Library of Science

Categories: Open Access, Science
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Arduino: Open Source Programmable Hardware

Posted on January 7, 2010 3 Comments

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language and the Arduino development environment.

The boards can be built by hand or purchased preassembled; the software can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license, you are free to adapt them to your needs.

See the getting started guide to try for yourself.

Related: Home Engineering: Physical Gmail Notifier – Self Re-assembling Robots –
Lego Mindstorms Robots Solving: Sudoku and Rubik’s Cube – Babbage Difference Engine In Lego

Categories: Engineering, Products, Students, Technology
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