Our friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil was Creative Commons’ Syrian project lead, an open source developer, a teacher, a Wikipedia contributor, and a renowned free culture advocate. He was also a devoted son and husband, and a great friend to many in the global open knowledge community. We were heartbroken and outraged to learn earlier … Read More “Announcing the Bassel Khartabil Memorial Fund”
We are deeply saddened and completely outraged to learn today that our friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil has been executed by the Syrian regime. Bassel was Creative Commons’ Syrian project lead, an open source software programmer, teacher, Wikipedia contributor, and free culture advocate. He was also a devoted son and husband, and a great friend … Read More “Statement on the death of CC friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil”
Last month we announced the Community Activities Fund as part of our ongoing efforts to support the activities of CC communities and beyond. Creative Commons is committed to building and fostering a vibrant global commons through the activities and projects they undertake. Our fund was created in response to direct community requests, and we could … Read More “Announcing the First Round of Grants for the Community Activities Fund”
The CC 4.0 licenses are now translated into Italian The official Italian translation of the Creative Commons 4.0 Licenses and CC0 waiver is now available! Led by CC Italy, the translations also benefited from the collaboration with CC Switzerland. The working group was hosted and coordinated by the Nexa Center for Internet & Society at … Read More “Annuncia la traduzione 4.0 della licenza in Italiano!”
In 2003, PLOS published its first research article and this month we’re proud to announce that we have now published more than 200,000 research articles across our seven Open Access journals. It has been an amazing journey to reach this milestone.
“In only 14 years of existence, PLOS has helped catalyze the rapid growth of the Open Access literature. The 200,000th article is a remarkable milestone for PLOS and for the scientific community that has supported the Open Access movement.”-Veronique Kiermer, PLOS Executive Editor
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank those who have helped rapidly create this large corpus of diverse, Open Access research:
Funders and institutions all over the world who supported publication of this rich body of research under a model that provides unrestriced access to all
PLOS was incorporated in 2001 as an Open Access advocacy organization and became a publisher to prove the value of Open Access, beginning with PLOS Biology in 2003 and PLOS Medicine in 2004 as open alternatives to prestigious subscription journals. In 2005, PLOS launched PLOS Genetics, PLOS Pathogens, and PLOS Computational Biology as proof of concept to show that research communities built around and across specific areas and disciplines could thrive with an Open Access model. In late December 2006, PLOS ONE spearheaded the innovative editorial approach focused on evaluation of research independent of perceived impact; this editorial approach has now been adopted by journals from nearly every scientific publisher. Since its founding, PLOS ONE has published more than 175,000 research articles based on three compelling features: advancing quality science for everyone, moving publication forward in all scientific disciplines, and favoring speed to publication over subjective assessment of significance.
In 2007, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PLOS launched a fourth community journal, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases(NTDs). Together with the journal’s leadership and global community, we now proudly celebrate the 10th Anniversary of PLOS NTDs and the more than 4,500 research articles that contribute to advances in the field.
Open Access continues to gain momentum but there is further work to be done. At PLOS, we are constantly looking for ways to use emerging technology and new ideas to open up scientific communication—to make it faster, more efficient, more connected and more useful. We look forward to the next 200,000 articles and continued involvement with the scientific community.
Over the last three weeks, we at the Global Digital Library have conducted workshops in Nepal and Ethiopia, as a part of the initial phase of our project. These user tests are an important part of our work as they provide us with initial user feedback on prototypes and personas. For both workshops, we have made prototypes based on a great mix if content and tech from different open sources and OER projects including resources from Storyweaver by Pratham Books.
Localization using Storyweaver
Localization and translation will be an important part of our work and as a point of reference, we have tested both our own tool for localization and a tool developed by Storyweaver.
We at the GDL project are in the early stages of developing our platform, but if you want to join the community of translators now, you can start using Storyweaver. Our friends at Storyweaver have developed a great website with stories and books that you can read or translate into you own language.
To prepare our workshops we made this tutorial that also can serve as the first practical introduction for anyone that wants to join our movement of translators, using the Storyweaver platform. Check out this 4-minute video to get you going!
PLOS works to remove barriers to public access of scientific research. Typically, these barriers are considered in terms of copyrights and journal subscriptions, but unfettered access to network infrastructure also contributes to supporting readers’ access to scientific literature. In simple terms, unencumbered dissemination of scientific research depends on a fair Internet. The provision of a fair and open Internet lies in the hands of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and government agencies that regulate these providers. PLOS supports today’s Day of Action in the United States, led by Battle for the Net, aimed at publicizing the issues surrounding Open Internet Rules and their critical role in maintaining Internet freedoms as currently in place.
In February 2015, the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) reclassified broadband providers as common carriers rather than information providers under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, the law that continues to regulate modern communication modes such as the Internet. This gave the FCC authority to ensure that established, large corporations including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon can’t block, slow (throttle) or otherwise interfere with Internet traffic. Innovations in online businesses and services, including those of PLOS, have thrived under Title II regulations. Importantly, these regulations in the US provide each and every user of the Internet a guarantee that ISPs and government regulators treat all data on the Internet the same, without discriminating against or charging differentially by user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment or mode of communication (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality). These protections are known as net neutrality; scientists and those working to support the scientific endeavor rely on net neutrality for unprejudiced access to databases, the literature and information services.
Allowing ISPs to sort traffic based on content, sender and receiver opens the door for corporate and government censorship which would greatly hinder access to scientific information around the globe.
In the US, the current FCC Commissioner wants to weaken these protections and this could have consequences for all scientists, not just those in the US: access to information around the world could become pay to play without these protections. Services provided by publishers such as PLOS and other providers could be restricted for all our users around the world, unless we pay for priority access to our content. This will affect any Internet traffic that routes through the US, from services relying on servers located in the US to requests that are routed through the US. For instance, most of the Domain Name Server (DNS) requests for South America, Central America and the Carribbean are routed by servers located in Florida.
Today, July 12, 2017, is a Day of Action in support of a fair and open Internet. Visitors to the PLOS.org homepage (www.plos.org) and active PLOS staff blogs (The Official PLOS Blog, EveryONE, PLOS Biologue, Speaking of Medicine, PLOS Channels and Collections, PLOS Tech and PLOS Podcasts) will see a message of explanation and letter of support for net neutrality in the form of a pop up window. This message will appear only today, once per site, per device. Visitors to these web pages can choose to either immediately close the pop up by clicking on the x in the upper right or fill in the four boxes to send a message to the FCC in support of its current Open Internet Rules and the efforts to dissuade FCC Chairman Ajit Varadaraj Pai from his plan to roll back these rules. Public comment continues for an additional 60 days following the Day of Action. Form letters or personalized comments may be sent directly from https://www.battleforthenet.com/.
PLOS is purposefully not placing this notice on any journal content or information pages, so that access to our content is not impeded in any way.
The unique morphology of the spiny ant, uncovered with the use of an advanced form of 3D microscopy known as 3D X-ray microtomography, garnered this species a place this year among the Top 10 New Species of 2017. The Top 10 New Species list honors the legacy of Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus, known for his pioneering work on the hierarchical classification of plants and animals that developed beyond genus and species into modern taxonomy. The list is compiled by the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) working with a panel of international scientists as selection committee members.
SUNY-ESF President Quentin Wheeler. (Photos for SUNY-ESF by M.J. Okoniewski)
PLOS spoke with Quentin Wheeler, founding director of IISE and president of the College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, on assessing research impact, the purpose and influence of this list and the impact of climate change on species diversity.
Policies and Purpose
Research reporting these new species is published in a variety of journal types, from subscription to Open Access. When asked if there are considerations of access to research when the members of the international selection committee evaluate nominations, Wheeler states that “the selection committee is encouraged to focus on the organisms rather than where they were published.” This de-emphasis on journal choice is a hallmark of the IISE selection process; work that is posted on a preprint server, rather than published in a peer-reviewed journal, may also be eligible for consideration. “What matters is compliance with the international codes of (botanical and zoological) nomenclature which requires publication that can now include electronic publication. So long as the requirements of the code were met during the previous calendar year, a species is eligible for consideration,” he says.
In an era of continued global extinction of animals, plants and microbes, Wheeler hopes the Top 10 New Species list brings research outcomes to the public that help convey the acute relevance of climate change. “Our goal is to increase awareness of the loss of species in the biodiversity crisis and the important roles played by taxonomy and natural history museums in biodiversity exploration and conservation. The wide media attention gained by the Top 10 (and this year’s PLOS ONE article) has hopefully played a role toward that goal,” he says. While he is not aware of specific policies shaped directly by the list, the hope is that it “keeps the importance of species exploration in the minds of those making such policies.”
Valuing Work, Not Impact Factor
Over the past 10 years of generating this list, one notable detail is that selected work is published in journals with impact factors ranging from less than one to greater than 20. When asked what this says to him and the scientific community about the value and relevance of evaluating a work based on its own merit, rather than on the journal in which it appears, Wheeler is quite direct.
“As a scientist and scholar, I like to think that science is a meritocracy of ideas and that their value derives from the quality of the work and its impact rather than the impact factor of the journal overall. Taxonomy is a very special case that is not at all served well by impact factors as they are today calculated.”
He explains this concept more fully. “First, the best taxonomic work is comprehensive and comparative in the form of lengthy taxonomic revisions and monographs. Such long works are not accepted by most journals with high impact factors. Second, even the best taxonomic work is rarely cited because once species are known they are typically identified by field biologists through secondary literature (field guides, etc.). Even the secondary literature is often omitted from citations by ecologists and others, and the primary literature is only rarely cited outside of other taxonomy papers.” Due to the long-term nature of taxonomy work, “we routinely consult papers from 1758 forward,” says Wheeler. “Thus the true impact of the work is measured over generations which is quite different from most experimental fields where papers are outdated in just a few years.”
Last year two species on the list made their debuts in PLOS ONE: the description of a new Galapagos giant tortoise species and a new genus, species and subfamily of isopod crustacean. Together with this year’s winner and the four PLOS ONE articles describing top species in 2014, this cohort of articles has collectively received over 290,000 views, 3,500 shares and broad media coverage since publication, indicating their influence and interest for taxonomists and the public at large.
Connectivity and Credit
As with other scientific disciplines, innovation and modernization are a must in taxonomy, and Wheeler is in favor of such policy shifts. First, he recommends mandating a “central deposition of all nomenclatural acts, including descriptions of new species” as it now takes several years to track down all new species named in any given year. He also believes “the actual technical description of species should be open access, even in journals that are not. The descriptive material should be intellectual property of humankind and available to everyone.”
Further modernization, according to Wheeler, would establish electronic connectivity between published work and the central repository. “That central repository, likely IPNI for botany and ZooBank for zoology,” he says, “ought to be connected via hyperlink to every scientific name published. Were this done it would be a service to editors by assuring the correct scientific name is being used and spelled correctly. Also by virtue of that link we could electronically track the usage of scientific names and give “impact” measure of the use of the names as credit to the taxonomists.”
PLOS encourages scientists making these discoveries to publish the entire research article, not just the technical data, in fully Open Access journals and repositories to ensure the work has maximum visibility and reach. ORCID iDs can help in linking taxonomy descriptions, datasets, published work and grants to individual researchers for maximum credit and recognition. Those interested in learning more about the biodiversity crisis can watch a brief interview with Quentin Wheeler and those interested in learning more about new species and biodiversity can browse this selection of PLOS articles.
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Quentin Wheeler is founding director of the International Institute for Species Exploration and president of the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, New York. He was previously vice president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University, chair of entomology and director of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium at Cornell University, Head of Entomology at the Natural History Museum in London and Director of the Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation.
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