It’s almost over. The year that shall not be named will soon end with a collective sigh and a half-hearted wave from humanity. However, before we stumble into what one can only hope will be a less disastrous year, we’re determined to spread some joy and share our gratitude. We’re grateful for every image, video, … Read More “Spreading Joy and Giving Gratitude: A Toast to This Year’s Silver Linings”
Dear Mr. President-elect, First, I’d like to offer my sincere congratulations to you and to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. This has been such a difficult year for so many around the world, and in this time of extreme polarization it is encouraging to hear you both talk about bringing people together to meet our common … Read More “An Open Letter to President-elect Biden”
Last month, cOAlition S released its Rights Retention Strategy to safeguard researchers’ intellectual ownership rights and suppress unreasonable embargo periods—Creative Commons (CC) keenly supports this initiative. Modernizing an outdated academic publishing system Under a traditional publishing model, researchers who want to publish their articles in a journal typically need to assign or exclusively license their … Read More “Why cOAlition S’ Rights Retention Strategy Protects Researchers”
It’s July 20, 1969. Along with 600 million people, nine-year-old Chris Hadfield is glued to his television—watching intently as American astronaut Neil Armstrong glides down the ladder of the Lunar Module, and in one swift pounce, touches the dust of a familiar yet alien world. His words forever immortalized, “That’s one small step for man, … Read More “From Historic Images to Galactic Datasets: A Look at NASA’s Mission to Be Open”
Thousands of strangers working together, almost entirely online, to effectively solve an urgent, global challenge is remarkable—and it’s happening, right now. Recently, we published a post titled, “Open-Source Medical Hardware: What You Should Know and What You Can Do” examining the collaborative efforts by volunteer groups, universities, and research centers to solve the medical supply … Read More “Just One Giant Lab Co-Founder Leo Blondel on the Power of Community and Open Source During COVID-19”
In response to the global health emergency caused by COVID-19, we’ve seen an array of organizations, publications, and governments make COVID-19 related research open access. For example, the U.S. National Library of Medicine recently released the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19)—a machine-readable coronavirus literature collection with over 29,000 articles available for text and data mining … Read More “Dr. Lucie Guibault on What Scientists Should Know About Open Access”
Over the weekend, news emerged that upset even the most ardent skeptics of open access. Under the headline, “Trump vs Berlin” the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that President Trump offered $1 billion USD to the German biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure their COVID-19 vaccine “only for the United States.” In response, Jens Spahn, the … Read More “Now Is the Time for Open Access Policies—Here’s Why”
While the EU copyright reform teeters on the edge of turning into a complete disaster, last week the European Commission published a proposal for a revision of the Directive on the reuse of public sector information (PSI Directive), and a recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information. Both of these documents are … Read More “European Commission forging ahead to boost public sector information and open science”
In June we asked the European Parliament to redouble their efforts to make much-needed improvements to the EU copyright reform. We called on the Parliament to spearhead crucial changes that promote creativity and business opportunities, enable research and education, and protect user rights in the digital market. Despite this strong ask, the direction of the … Read More “European Parliament Must Protect Scientific Research”
On April 22, 2017 (Earth Day) tens of thousands of people will join the March for Science and stand together “to acknowledge and voice the critical role that science plays in each of our lives.” Marches will take place in Washington, D.C. and over 500 other cities. The mission of the March for Science is … Read More “March for Science on Earth Day”
