Preservation of and open access to digital scientific resources are essential to global research, yet the challenges in storing and maintaining access to these collections are substantial. China faces major hurdles in this regard. A workshop held in June 2004 in Beijing convened scientific information managers, digital archiving experts, national science policy and funding officials, and representatives of development organizations to explore the scientific and technical, legal and policy, institutional and economic, and management aspects of creating sustainable and accessible archives of digital health and environmental data in China.
UNESCO issued this publication to demystify the concept of open access (OA) and to provide concrete steps on putting relevant policies in place. Its focus is on scientific research from peer-reviewed journal articles. Building capacities in Member States for Open Access is a necessary but not sufficient condition for promotion of the concept. Creating an enabling policy environment for OA is therefore a priority. This publication will serve the needs of OA policy development at the government, institutional and funding agency level. The overall objective of the Policy Guidelines is to promote Open Access in Member States by facilitating understanding of all relevant issues related to Open Access. The guidelines are not prescriptive in nature, but are suggestive to facilitate knowledge-based decision-making to adopt OA policies and strengthen national research systems.
As digital technologies are expanding the power and reach of research, they are also raising complex issues. These include complications in ensuring the validity of research data; standards that do not keep pace with the high rate of innovation; restrictions on data sharing that reduce the ability of researchers to verify results and build on previous research; and huge increases in the amount of data being generated, creating severe challenges in preserving that data for long-term use. Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age examines the consequences of the changes affecting research data with respect to three issues - integrity, accessibility, and stewardship-and finds a need for a new approach to the design and the management of research projects. The report recommends that all researchers receive appropriate training in the management of research data, and calls on researchers to make all research data, methods, and other information underlying results publicly accessible in a timely manner. The book also sees the stewardship of research data as a critical long-term task for the research enterprise and its stakeholders. Individual researchers, research institutions, research sponsors, professional societies, and journals involved in scientific, engineering, and medical research will find this book an essential guide to the principles affecting research data in the digital age.
As digital technologies are expanding the power and reach of research, they are also raising complex issues. These include complications in ensuring the validity of research data; standards that do not keep pace with the high rate of innovation; restrictions on data sharing that reduce the ability of researchers to verify results and build on previous research; and huge increases in the amount of data being generated, creating severe challenges in preserving that data for long-term use. Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age examines the consequences of the changes affecting research data with respect to three issues - integrity, accessibility, and stewardship-and finds a need for a new approach to the design and the management of research projects. The report recommends that all researchers receive appropriate training in the management of research data, and calls on researchers to make all research data, methods, and other information underlying results publicly accessible in a timely manner. The book also sees the stewardship of research data as a critical long-term task for the research enterprise and its stakeholders. Individual researchers, research institutions, research sponsors, professional societies, and journals involved in scientific, engineering, and medical research will find this book an essential guide to the principles affecting research data in the digital age.
This book provides an overview of key legal issues facing e-Research: data exchange and data management, collaborative endeavour, the role and operation of privacy law, and commercialisation.
An increase in global access to goods and knowledge is transforming world-class science and technology (S&T) by bringing it within the capability of an unprecedented number of global parties who must compete for resources, markets, and talent. In particular, globalization has facilitated the success of formal S&T plans in many developing countries, where traditional limitations can now be overcome through the accumulation and global trade of a wide variety of goods, skills, and knowledge. As a result, centers for technological research and development (R&D) are now globally dispersed, setting the stage for greater uncertainty in the political, economic, and security arenas. These changes will have a potentially enormous impact for the U.S. national security policy, which for the past half century was premised on U.S. economic and technological dominance. As the U.S. monopoly on talent and innovation wanes, arms export regulations and restrictions on visas for foreign S&T workers are becoming less useful as security strategies. The acute level of S&T competition among leading countries in the world today suggests that countries that fail to exploit new technologies or that lose the capability for proprietary use of their own new technologies will find their existing industries uncompetitive or obsolete. The increased access to information has transformed the 1950s' paradigm of "control and isolation" of information for innovation control into the current one of "engagement and partnerships" between innovators for innovation creation. Current and future strategies for S&T development need to be considered in light of these new realities. This book analyzes the S&T strategies of Japan, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Singapore (JBRICS), six countries that have either undergone or are undergoing remarkable growth in their S&T capabilities for the purpose of identifying unique national features and how they are utilized in the evolving global S&T environment.
Public science is critical to the economy and to society. However, much of the beneficial impact of scientific research only occurs when scientific knowledge is disseminated broadly and is used by others. This book examines the emerging policy, law and practice of facilitating open access to scientific research data. One particular focus is to examine the open data policies recently introduced by research funders and publishers, and the potential in these for driving the practice of open scientific data into the future. This study identifies five major stumbling blocks to sustainable open scientific data. Firstly, it is the prevailing mindset that facilitating open access to data is analogous to facilitating open access to publications and, therefore, research data can easily be shared, with research funders and librarians effectively leading the process. Secondly, it is the unclear meaning of the term data which causes confusion among stakeholders. Thirdly, it is the misunderstood incentives for data sharing and the additional inputs required from researchers. Fourthly, data privacy—an issue that only applies to selected research datasets, and yet appears to dominate the discussion about open research data. Finally, there is a copyright law, which poses challenges at different stages of data release and reuse. In this book, it is argued that the above problems can be addressed using a staged model for open scientific data. I draw specifically on the practice with open scientific data at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and the practice of sharing clinical trial data to argue that open data can be shared at various stages of processing and diversification. This model is supplemented by recommendations proposing changes to existing open data mandates and the introduction of a text and data mining exemption into Australian copyright law.
In a healthcare system that is rapidly changing, Global Healthcare Issues and Policies presents students with up-to-date information on topics such as culture, religion and health; health research; ethics and health; reproductive health; infectious diseases; chronic diseases; nutrition; mental health; environmental health; aging; ambulatory care; economics and health care; health care insurance; and more. Each chapter includes objectives, key terms, cultural, religious, economic and political influences on chapter topics, case studies, review questions, and current research.
Citizen science, the active participation of the public in scientific research projects, is a rapidly expanding field in open science and open innovation. It provides an integrated model of public knowledge production and engagement with science. As a growing worldwide phenomenon, it is invigorated by evolving new technologies that connect people easily and effectively with the scientific community. Catalysed by citizens’ wishes to be actively involved in scientific processes, as a result of recent societal trends, it also offers contributions to the rise in tertiary education. In addition, citizen science provides a valuable tool for citizens to play a more active role in sustainable development. This book identifies and explains the role of citizen science within innovation in science and society, and as a vibrant and productive science-policy interface. The scope of this volume is global, geared towards identifying solutions and lessons to be applied across science, practice and policy. The chapters consider the role of citizen science in the context of the wider agenda of open science and open innovation, and discuss progress towards responsible research and innovation, two of the most critical aspects of science today.
This book shows how the vision for open access to scientific data can be more readily achieved through a staged model that research funders, policy makers, scientists, and research organizations can adopt in their practice. Drawing on her own experiences with data processing, on early findings with open scientific data at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), and from case studies of shared clinical trial data, the author updates our understanding of research data - what it is; how it dynamically evolves across different scientific disciplines and across various stages of research practice; and how it can, and indeed should, be shared at any of those stages. The result is a flexible and pragmatic path for implementing open scientific data.
