Open Research Data Day 18th May

On 18th of May SURF will be organising a Dutch day for Open Research Data. Speakers will include scientists who have benefited from sharing research data, but also key stakeholders and the Dutch national research funder. The session will close with a discussion on what the next steps should be. Who is going to be bold enough to take these steps. This is not limited to funders, but also the role that research libraries, data centres and (very important) publishers can play. And what about the universities of applied sciences, do they have a position in this?

Registration for this afternoon seminar is still open at: http://www.surffoundation.nl/nl/bijeenkomsten/Pages/OpenOnderzoeksDataDag.aspx
(The event is Dutch speaking throughout)

Thoughts on request for information by OSTP

The American whitehouse Office for Scientific and Technology Policy has issued a request for information to discuss options for improving public access to results of federally funded research. Interestingly this is not on whether publically funded research should be publically available, but rather on how this can be achieved.

They ask a large variety of questions which I will not even begin to address one by one. It did start me thinking what my own personal humble opinion could be on this matter. Regarding a policy on open access I would have a number of suggestions: publications should either be directly available in open access or with a delay of no more than six months. A sustantial part of the funding (10%) should be dependent on this public availability. If it is not available for another six months then the funding should also be withheld for these six months. A fee should be reserved for paying for a publication fee if the journal requires this. I do not feel it is necessary for the policy to demand either the green (repository) or the gold (OA journal) road. This is something the market will also adapt to.

It would be valuable to have an overview of all the research results. The funding council could provide an overview of research, not the actual publications but persistent links to the articles offered by either a journal or a repository.

In the request for information they clearly don't ask for policy on data. This would be an interesting next step....

Lecture on Internationalising education

At the annual 'Onderwijsparade' at Utrecht University (back on the 3rd of March) the organisers had invited Marijk van der Wende (CHEPS and VU) to talk about Internationalising Education. You can read an account (in Dutch) at the UU website.
At present Dutch government is focussing strongly on improving international cooperation at all the universities and all the universities are of course following suit. However, for many institutions it would be wise to sit back and first define the goal(s) of the internationalising efforts. Are you out to generate more income through foreign students, are you out to share knowledge and research or are you trying to attract and bind excellent students and researchers from around the globe?
The four approaches she defined were:
- mutual understanding (university as an institute of education)
- skilled migration (university as an employer)
- capacity building (socially engaged university)
- revenue generating (higher ed as an export product)
It was an inspiring lecture, it is a shame the slides aren't on the internet somewhere....