[GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge

[Jean-Claude Guédon]

Lovely response, Peter.

And, yes, let us remember the example set by Latin America, and in 
particular by Amelica. They are now the true leaders of open access. 
Incidentally, everyone should read this: 
https://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/347. It is an 
important  article co-authored by Dominique Babini and Humberto Debat.

Jean-Claude Guédon

On 2020-03-31 11:59 a.m., Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 4:21 PM Jean-Claude Guédon 
> <jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca 
> <mailto:jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca>> wrote:
>
>
>     One last note: OA will succeed, despite what Stevan says. Let us
>     shape OA the right way, and certainly not in the way supported by
>     Elsevier: in their view, OA is a "charitable" gesture that is
>     applied only in extreme cases. The reality is that the Great
>     Conversation of science constantly needs it.
>
> We need clear messages. Open by default. Friction costs resources and 
> lives.
>
> I don't think people realise how serious friction is in the modern world.
> If you have to write to an author the friction is absolute.
> If you have to read a licence the friction is absolute.
> If you have to work out where to find the full content is from a 
> landing page the friction is large.
> If you have to parse PDFs or publisher HTML the friction is massive
> If you have to copy text the friction is absolute.
> If you don't know what you are getting , that's friction.
> If you get Dublin-Core or Highwire metadata , it's out of date, 
> undocumented, ambiguous and serious friction.
> If you crawl UK universities for theses that's Infinite friction.
> If you crawl US universities for theses that's even worse than infinite.
>
>
> As an example we are working on design and use of masks for COVID-19 
> and actually supporting their manufacture. The best known one is N95. 
> I immediately go to Wikidata. This disambiguates all other "N95" so we 
> have a precise ontological object which machines can compute in 
> SPARQL. Wikipedia will be as correct and as uptodate as any other 
> authority. That's where the modern knowledge world is. By using 
> Wikidata I reduce almost all friction.
>
> See our tutorial example at:
> https://github.com/petermr/openVirus/blob/master/examples/n95/OVERVIEW.md
> where over 300 papers were analysed in great detail in 5 minutes. 
> Volunteers welcome.
>
> My sources are now:
> EuropePMC, which mirrors PMC and adds to it.
> biorxiv/medrxiv which require me to write serious scrapers so huge 
> friction but our group will try to do it
> Redalyc (Mexico) really excited about this as it's a real example of 
> no fees - that Latin America has pioneered so well. LatA
> HAL (FR) frictionless
>
> In the UK can I use CORE? "Please register to receive an API key ". I 
> don't use services that require APIs so I haven't used CORE. Why is 
> this necessary? I bet it's to do with IP somewhere. Also CORE is 
> non-commercial. So, slightly regretfully, I shan't use CORE.
>
>     The right way to go is OA free for authors and for readers, which
>     means that it must be subsidized. But that is all right because
>     scientific research is subsidized and scientific communication is
>     an integral part of scientific research (and it costs only 1% of
>     the rest of research).
>
>
> Yes. I suggest we humbly approach LatAm and other parts of the Global 
> South where we may learn what the real purpose of publishing is. It's 
> so people can READ things, whereas megapub451 builds systems to stop 
> people reading.
>
> Let's glory the reader. Let's assess scholarship by how many citizens 
> OUTSIDE academia read our work. Because there are a huge number of 
> smart educated people throughout the world who are  - literally - 
> killed  by the present system.
>
> "When I am dead, I hope it may be said. His sins were scarlet, but his 
> books were read." - Hilaire Belloc.
>
> https://github.com/petermr/openVirus - we now have a wiki where you 
> can leave messages (I think)
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> "I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I 
> sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same".
>
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
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