Dutch commit to Open Access March 12, 2010
Posted by sarah in: politics, science . 1 comment so far
The Dutch science research council NWO has set up a 2.5 million euro fund (Dutch) to encourage its scientists to publish their work in open access journals. Under the scheme, any NWO grant holder can apply (English) for up to 5000 euro per project to pay open access publication charges. The incentive programme, which went live at the start of March, is a first step in the council’s broad commitment to open access in science.
In this interview (in Dutch) from November last year, NWO Chairman Jos Engelen, a particle physicist who was Chief Scientific Officer at CERN before taking over at NWO in 2009, indicates that the council may bring in an NIH-type public access policy for its grantholders later on this year. He suggests starting off with what he calls a “Swedish model”, whereby publications have to be made publicly available within 6 months of publication in an academic journal. This could then evolve towards a requirement that results from NWO-funded projects be published directly in open access journals only.
Engelen sounds like an excellent straight-talking Dutchman. He admits that right now there is a trade-off between impact and access, with many high-impact journals still charging for subscriptions – but that a natural consequence of NWO’s support for open access is to mirror this trade-off at the grant proposal level.
I was pleased to read about these developments, which reinforce my experience that the Dutch government has a very sensible and forward-thinking approach to funding science. I can’t find a timeline for implementation and hope these plans all get brought in swiftly.
There’s no deadline for applications to this new fund, money will be allocated to PIs on an ad hoc basis until the money runs out.
Science, statistics and society January 21, 2010
Posted by sarah in: science . 3comments
What are the odds?
On Tuesday I attended Science Cafe in Leiden, a monthly discussion evening on all matters scientific and their role in society. The theme was the way chance, likelihood and statistics are (mis-)used and represented by the media, politicans and the law. Leading the discussion was Arnout Jaspers, columnist for Dutch science magazine Natuurwetenschap & Techniek, with special guest Richard Gill, Professor in Mathematical Statistics at Leiden University. Gill and Jaspers illustrated the potentially far-reaching consequences of bad statistics with two recent stories to hit the headlines: the reopening of the Lucia de Berk case, and the drug suspension of Germany’s most successful winter Olympian, Claudia Pechstein.
The Lay Scientist: Of women and stilettos January 12, 2010
Posted by sarah in: science, women . Add a comment
AA Gill wears his with pride
Go read the post I wrote last night over at the Lay Scientist, in which I get worked up about a pair of shoes sent to me by the Dutch science funding council NWO.
Seriously though, don’t let this feminist faux-pas on NWO’s part put you off applying for this fellowship scheme. It’s a good programme and I wish they’d advertise more widely. The next deadline is on 11 February, for the mid-career Vidi scheme. Read more here.
.Astronomy Day 3: Hack! December 5, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, dotastronomy, me . Add a comment
Hackers in action
One of the things we decided early on in the organisation for .Astronomy is that we wanted to set aside an entire day that was not in any way scheduled. We’d call it a Hack Day and just let people decide for themselves what they wanted to work on. The Lorentz Center is the perfect location for this: plenty of rooms and offices of a variety of sizes, a large common room with on-demand caffeinated and sugary stuff, and decent wifi throughout the building. But I admit that I was a little worried about Hack Day. What if people didn’t get it? What if they just saw this as a midweek day off and didn’t come? What if they expected more organisation? I had no idea if this would work.
DotWelcome! November 29, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, dotastronomy . Add a comment
.Astronomy 2009 is here! Yay. 10 months after submitting our first proposal to the Lorentz Center, and a few thousand emails later, the workshop week has actually arrived. And I’m really excited. There are some excellent talks planned all week, great 101 sessions and of course the Hack Day, for which we managed to get some fun hardware to experiment with.
A press release went out on Friday, check it our here in Dutch. The English version is here on the workshop webpage, and will be distributed widely next week.
I’ll be blogging as much as possible from the meeting, and there will be much more online coverage. Here’s a quick overview.
- The full programme and lots of info can be found on our workshop blog.
- The morning sessions will be streamed online via our own .Astronomy Ustream channel. This page also aggregates tweets about the conference.
- The official twitter feed is at @dotastronomy. If you want to keep up to date, follow us.
- On Twitter, the hashtag for .Astronomy is #dotastro. Tag your relevant tweets with this tag and we’ll be able to follow them. If you’re watching talks online and you want to ask a question, send us a tweet!
- The Flickr group is here. Make sure you send your pics from the conference there.
There are may tweeters and bloggers participating in .Astronomy and we expect the #dotastro feed to be a lively affair. Watch it and update regularly if you want to get the latest. Some blog posts on the conference from partipant bloggers are:
DotAstronomy: PreConference post – Pamela Gay
DotAstronomy 2009 – Rob Simpson
Have I missed any? Let me know!
