Two seemingly-contradictory open data stories crossed my path today.
First, The Scholarly Kitchen notes that Scientific Reports On Track To Become Largest Journal In The World, and one of the reasons may be that the PLOS ONE, the current Largest Journal, requires
authors to make “all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception.” All PLOS manuscripts must include a data availability statement and authors are strongly encouraged to make their data available in a public archive before publication. In contrast, Scientific Reports’ policy merely states that authors should share upon request.
So as recently noted in the New England Journal of Medicine, apparently scientists just really don't wanna be bothered to share the data upon which their publications are based. FFS.
Second up though, the University of Alberta Libraries Announces Availability of Subscription Expenditures Data.
A couple of great quotes from the announcement, "The Libraries supports the freedom of inquiry of our patrons and is dedicated to providing our community with access to information. We are keen to contribute to our community, and the broader open data movement, by allowing all citizens to access, share and reuse data that we produce.” and “While we can’t anticipate how people will make use of this open data set, we are excited to provide access to it in support of continued creativity and innovation within our community”
Was this a burdensome task to make this data available? Rumour around here is that UofA has been working for a couple of years to remove confidentiality clauses from their subscription agreements, so yeah, it was, but it's still worth it! See scientists, that's how to do it.
Which other libraries are making this type of data open, anyone know?
