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Data and the NFL January 31st, 2013

A Map Of NFL Team Allegiance created Facebook Data Science Team Facebook showing exactly where the fans are.


Please join this Thursday: The Data Studio Presents Navigating OpenStreetMap with Joe Larson on Jan. 31 at 11am-12pm, Library Data Studio Room 111C

Joe Larson is a GIS specialist with Cal Fire. He will explain how the agency uses OpenStreetMap (OSM), an open access geographic information system (GIS) resource, to create detailed maps of the local community that include various assets and structures. OSM also includes mobile applications that allow users to contribute data, and both have wide teaching applications. The Jan. 31 event will run 11 a.m. to noon in the Data Studio (Room 111C). Faculty, students and community members are welcome.


Finding GIS Data January 14th, 2013

Need help finding GIS data? Come by our GIS reference hours M-Th see research guide for more information: http://libguides.calpoly.edu/gis


The Data Studio Presents Military Applications of GIS with Mark Belrose on Jan. 24:

Mark Belrose is the Chief of the Western Range National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Support Branch at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The NGA is the nation’s primary source of geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT. As a Department of Defense combat support agency and a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency collects remotely sensed data, physical geography, land cover and cultural data around the world. This data helps its mission partners visualize the world, support the safe navigation of land, air and sea, and provide timely, relevant and accurate geospatial intelligence to support the U.S. in national defense and during natural disasters. Join us at the Kennedy Library on Thursday, January 24 from 11:00am-12pm in the Data Studio (111C). Faculty, students and community members are welcome. For more information: http://libguides.calpoly.edu/datastudio.

The Data Studio Presents Navigating OpenStreetMap with Joe Larson on Jan. 31:
Joe Larson is a GIS Specialist with CAL FIRE. He will explain how CAL FIRE uses OpenStreetMap (OSM), an open access geographic information system (GIS) resource, to create detailed maps of the local community that include various assets and structures. OSM also includes mobile applications that allow users to contribute data and both have wide teaching applications. Join us at the Kennedy Library on Thursday, January 31 from 11:00am-12pm in the Data Studio (111C). Faculty, students and community members are welcome. For more information: http://libguides.calpoly.edu/datastudio.


Open Access — Explained! November 6th, 2012

Here is a great video in collaboration with PhD Comics to give an overview of the essence of Open Access issues and why OA is important.

The video entitled “Open Access Explained!” is the perfect resource to give a glimpse into the many reasons why Open Access to research is important for students, researchers, and so many other stakeholders.


ORCID Launches October 17th, 2012

ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID initiative, has launched today and can now be used by researchers to create a profile and ID for themselves. http://about.orcid.org/ . More details can be found here: http://about.orcid.org/news/2012/10/16/orcid-launches-registry .


Colleagues…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19744135


Here is a interesting paper a colleague shared with me…

Peer-review in a world with rational scientists: Toward selection of the average:

Abastract: One of the virtues of peer review is that it provides a self-regulating selection mechanism for scientific work, papers and projects. Peer review as a selection mechanism is hard to evaluate in terms of its efficiency. Serious efforts to understand its strengths and weaknesses have not yet lead to clear answers. In theory peer review works if the involved parties (editors and referees) conform to a set of requirements, such as love for high quality science, objectiveness, and absence of biases, nepotism, friend and clique networks, selfishness, etc. If these requirements are violated, what is the effect on the selection of high quality work? We study this question with a simple agent based model. In particular we are interested in the effects of rational referees, who might not have any incentive to see high quality work other than their own published or promoted. We find that a small fraction of incorrect (selfish or rational) referees can drastically reduce the quality of the published (accepted) scientific standard. We quantify the fraction for which peer review will no longer select better than pure chance. Decline of quality of accepted scientific work is shown as a function of the fraction of rational and unqualified referees. We show how a simple quality-increasing policy of e.g. a journal can lead to a loss in overall scientific quality, and how mutual support-networks of authors and referees deteriorate the system.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 12, 2012

CONTACT: Andrea Higginbotham, SPARC, andrea@arl.org ; 202-296-2296
Amy Weil, Open Society Foundations, aweil@sorosny.org ; 212-548-0381

Scientists, Foundations, Libraries, Universities, and Advocates Unite and Issue New Recommendations to Make Research Freely Available to All Online

WASHINGTON — In response to the growing demand to make research free and available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection, a diverse coalition today issued new guidelines ( http:// www.soros.org/openaccess/boai-10-recommendations ) that could usher in huge advances in the sciences, medicine, and health.

The recommendations were developed by leaders of the Open Access movement ( http://www.soros.org/openaccess/participants ), which has worked for the past decade to provide the public with unrestricted, free access to scholarly research—much of which is publicly funded. Making the research publicly available to everyone—free of charge and without most copyright and licensing restrictions—will accelerate scientific research efforts and allow authors to reach a larger number of readers.

“The reasons to remove restrictions as far as possible are to share knowledge and accelerate research. Knowledge has always been a public good in a theoretical sense. Open Access makes it a public good in practice,” said professor Peter Suber, director of the Open Access Project at Harvard University and a senior researcher at SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).

The Open Access recommendations include the development of Open Access policies in institutions of higher education and in funding agencies, the open licensing of scholarly works, the development of infrastructure such as Open Access repositories and creating standards of professional conduct for Open Access publishing. The recommendations also establish a new goal of achieving Open Access as the default method for distributing new peer-reviewed research in every field and in every country within ten years’ time.

“Science and scholarship are activities funded from the public purse because society believes they will lead to a better future in terms of our health, environment, and culture,” said Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC. “Anything that maximises the efficacy and efficiency of research benefits every one of us. Open Access is a major tool in that quest. These new recommendations will underpin future developments in communicating the results of research over the next decade.”

Today, Open Access is increasingly recognized as a right rather than an abstract ideal. The case for rapid implementation of Open Access continues to grow. Open Access benefits research and researchers; increases the return to taxpayers on their investment in research; and amplifies the social value of research, funding agencies, and research institutions.

The Open Access recommendations are the result of a meeting hosted earlier this year by the Open Society Foundations, on the tenth anniversary of the landmark Budapest Open Access Initiative ( http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read ), which first defined Open Access.

“Foundations rarely have the good fortune to be actively present at the birth of a world-wide movement that fundamentally changes the rules of the game and provides immediate benefit to the world,” said István Rév, director of the Open Society Archives and a member of the Open Society Foundations Global Board. “This is what happened when the Open Society Foundations initiated a meeting at the end of 2001 that gave birth to the Open Access movement.”