OA Week: History of Open Access

This post is part of a series published over the course of OAWeek 2019.

Timeline of scientific output from [1]. Click to enlarge.

This post will walk us through the History of Open Access (with a focus on Open Science) infographic mentioned in our inaugural blog post for this series. Randall Munroe [1] has previously summarized the progression of open science as a function of the scope of scientific output. The events and milestones for the featured historical overview were confirmed by internet search and synthesized from a survey of various tools and publications common in the field. This post characterizes the historical eras according to a developmental biology theme: from the embryo to developmental plasticity to an adult stage of life-history.

History of Open Access (1942-present), color-coded by historical era. Yellow: early, blue: transitional, green: contemporary. Click to enlarge. For a citable version and an alternate display type, please see [2].

1942-1999: Embryonic Ideas and Tools (early). Click to enlarge.

In the early period, there was an emergence of tools, ideas, and attempts to synthesize independent efforts. Early efforts such as the World Data System, MedLine, and Project Gutenberg served as inspiration for later efforts (particularly the development of MedLine into PubMed). Tools such as digital preprints (arXiv) and the internet (HTML, XML) served to provide the infrastructure of open science. Even tools such as Cyc (extraction of scientific rules from data) served to enable greater openness in the practice of science. The end of this era is marked by "Exploring the Development of the Independent, Electronic Scholarly Journal", a survey of open access journals in what coincides with the early internet era.

2000-2008: Institutional Plasticity (transitional). Click to enlarge.

The transitional period (or institutional plasticity) was a time for creating many of the institutions and established norms of the open science community. Many foundational ideas were either established (Creative Commons, digital object identifiers) or came to fruition (Human Genome Project) during this period. It is also of note that at least four declarations of practice were published during this period.

2009-present: A Juvenile No More! (contemporary). Click to enlarge.

The contemporary period has been defined by even more sophisticated tools (Altmetrics), quasi-historical summaries of past work for future development (Reinventing Discovery, The Future of OA), and the discussion of institutional standards at a greater level of specialization (FAIR Principles). This era is also marked by the use of open science to practice collaborative open science (Polymath Project), putting all of the pieces developed in previous eras into place.

NOTES:
[1] Munroe, R. (2013). The Rise of Open Access. Science, 342(6154), 58-59. doi:10.1126/science. 342.6154.58

[2] Alicea, B. (2019). History of Open Access Infographic. Figshare, doi:10.6084/m9.figshare. 9975713

Open Access Week 2019: Introduction

Welcome to OAWeek 2019! This year's features are being published in conjunction with the Orthogonal Research and Education Laboratory, the eLife Ambassadors program, and the associated Data Reuse Initiative.

The first feature for this year is an infographic called the History of Open Access [1]. Our history begins in 1943 with some Philosophy of Science [2], and proceeds through key innovations, publications, and institutions the span the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Below is a preview of the infographic, and will be discussed in more detail on Tuesday the 22nd.

History of Open Access infographic (Omega version).

The second feature is a series of digital badges (microcredentials) on Open Data practice [3]. The first badge in the series walks the learner through several lessons on how to identify, locate, and work with open datasets. The second badge walks the learner through preparing an open data set for publication. This lesson is based on the Mozilla Data Reuse Planning Template which help people adhere to best practices when making data public and shareable. These badges will be released on Thursday the 24th. Then, on Friday the 25th, we will give you the chance to make your own contributions (details to come). So join us for our week of celebrating Open Access!

NOTES:
[1] Figshare, doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.9975713

[2] Robert Merton, The Sociology of Science: theoretical and empirical investigations.

[3] Molloy, J.C. (2011). The Open Knowledge Foundation: Open Data Means Better Science. PLoS Biology, 9(12), e1001195.

Summer of Productivity at OREL

An update on what we did with our Summer at the Orthogonal Research and Education Laboratory. We hosted a study group based on an emerging collaboration to understand how Braitenberg Vehicles can be used as a model to study neural development [1].

We hosted one Google Summer of Code student (Stefan Dvoretskii), and mentored another GSoC student through the OpenWorm Foundation (Vinay Varma). Thanks go to INCF as well for their support. We also hosted the activities of several mentees (Ziyi Gong, Jesse Parent, Ankit Gupta, and Hrishikesh Kulkarni) which is topically diverse and will be featured in future blog posts [2]. Below are three tweets from the OREL Twitter account that show highlights from some of this work (congrats again to Stefan Dvoretskii, Vinay Varma, Jesse Parent, and Hrishikesh Kulkarni for their completed milestones).

Click on image for higher resolution. Click here for links.

 Click on image for higher resolution. Click here for links.

Click on image for higher resolution. Click here for links.

Click on image for higher resolution. Click here for links.

NOTES:

[1] our project repository is located here.

[1] two additional students were hosted through the DevoWorm group: Ujjwal Singh and Asmit Singh, who worked on a project called Digital Bacillaria.

Introducing: DevoWormML

This has been cross-posted to The Node blog.

I am pleased to announce a new collaborative interest initiative called DevoWormML, based on work being done in the DevoWorm group. DevoWormML will meet on a weekly basis, and explore the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to problems in developmental biology. These applications can be geared towards the analysis of imaging data, gaining a better understanding of thought experiments, or anything else relevant to the community.

While "ML" stands for machine learning, participation can include various types of intelligent systems approaches. Our goal is to stimulate interest in new techniques, discover new research domains, and establish new collaborations. Guests are welcome to attend, so if you know an interested colleague, feel free to direct them our way.

Meetings will be Wednesdays at 1pm UTC on Google Meet. Discussions will also take place on the #devowormml channel of OpenWorm Slack (request an invitation). We will discuss organizational details at our first meeting on September 4. If you cannot make this time but are still interested in participating, please contact me. Hope to see you there!

50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

Click to enlarge.

For the 50th Anniversary of the moon landing, here is an infographic of the mission flight path, courtesy of the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum (above). Then explore all Apollo mission landing sites courtesy of Google Moon (below).

Click to enlarge.