The World Social Science Report 2010 (and our article) is now published!

The World Social Science Report 2010 is now available online. Our article The Roads to Open Access appears on page 307 in Chapter 8: Disseminating Social Sciences in section 8.2: Diff using and accessing social science knowledge

• Perakakis P, Taylor M, Trachana, V (2010) The roads to Open Access. (Invited Review) UNESCO World Social Science Report 2010, Chapter 8: Disseminating social sciences, 307-309. (published in English, French and Chinese)

We welcome your thoughts and criticisms please.

In search of a Grand Unified (sciento-metric) Theory of Everything…

“Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed” — Albert Einstein, objecting to the placing of observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg’s 1926 lecture at Berlin.

“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research” — Albert Einstein, Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931).

“It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience” — Albert Einstein, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April 1934), pp. 163-169., p. 165.

“If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstance — Albert Einstein, letter to the editor of The Reporter (13 October 1954).

Just as the Relativity Theory inspired some Cubist painters to include the effects of space and time in their work, the search for a Grand Unified Theory of everything in theoretical physics has spilled over into socio-economics. Ratings, rankings, Impact Factors and Hirsch Indices galore are abound in nearly every sphere of evaluation of the individual. But, policy-makers, research-staff hirers and journal editors have all fallen into exactly the trap that Einstein warned us of in 1934. Over-simplification. Ease of application of sciento- and biblio-metrics without regard for, as Einstein said, “intuition and inspiration” (read as “quality”) means that the Grand Unified Scientometric Theory (GUST) of everything is hot air. It leads to decisions based on what it can observe rather than observing what there actually is.

In Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, the understanding of the spacetime continuum comes from an understanding of the topology of mass. Its shape (defined by the spacetime-metric) leads to the emergence of the thing we call Gravity. Just as mass (the topology of the spacetime-metric) is the source of gravity in Relativity, quality “measured” by the biblio-metric is the source of Citation Impact. A correct description of topology leads to correct values of the spacetime-metric and a quantification of Gravity. A correct description of quality leads to correct values of the biblio-metric and a true quantification of Scientific Worth. In Scientometry, quality is the analogy of topology. But Scientific Worth and Citation Impact are not necessarily the same thing.

So why all the fuss and hoo-hah? Now we can understand. The biblio-metric is wrong. While quality should determine the values of the biblio-metric, it doesn’t because the plethora of blbio-metrics being used do not depend on quality. An ojective way of measuring it hasn’t been found yet. Instead, we construct incorrect biblio-metrics, distorted by the adoption of incorrect proxies for quality like the Impact Factor or the Hirsch Index. These then lead to perceived citation impacts for the individual scientist who, as Einstein said, probably wish they had become plumbers.

While I applaud the attempt the effort last month by Nature to discuss scientometry in its special issue Science Metrics, without a quantification of quality, it is all just a GUST of hot air. Scientists and bibliometricians, serious about the issue should begin immediately looking at ways to measure quality. The Free Science Flying Circus tried 5 years ago using neuro-fuzzy neural networks and are still trying:

• Perakakis P, Taylor M, Buela-Casal G (2005) A neuro-fuzzy system to calculate a journal internationality index. Proc CEDI2005, Symp. Fuzzy Logic and Soft Computing, CEDI, 157-163. (3 citations)

Until then, we strongly urge evaluators to refrain from the application of biblio-metrics without understanding the quality of each individual’s submitted work. These measures just dont and wont add up. C.V.s littered with self-citations and inflated impact factors & h-indices due to high citation traffic from Letters to the Editor or Editorial Comments or due to provocations resulting from the publishing of speculative, wrong or unjustified results, are just some of the symptomns. It’s time we go back to basics and look at quality. Quality science creates quality scientists. Bibliometrics has work to do.

Eight universities host a free open access conference online!

On Friday, 14 May, 2010 the students and lecturers from M.I.T. and Northwestern University, in conjunction with Apple Inc. conducted a free, online, video-linked conference on the subject of open access with the participation of 8 universities. They invited colleagues from across the U.S. to explore the way open access is transforming teaching and learning in higher education. Through simultaneous webcasts, external particpants were able to interact online with the presenters and engage in discussions with their peers. The programme of AcademiX 2010 included talks on learning in public, podcasting opportunites for distance learning, commons-based licensing and scholarship, mobile education, innovation in journal publishing, and the student voice of the open access movement. Speakers included Nick Shockey of SPARC, John Wilbanks of Creative Commons and Paul Hammond of Digital Initiatives and others. Videos of the presentations are available for free download to iTunes.

A great idea! Watch this space for upcoming shows by the Free Science Flying Circus….  Who’s up for it?

Northwestern University

US seeks to make science free for all (except authors)!

The notion of open government and open access has taken a firm hold. If that means public-access mandates, so be it. — John Hawley, executive director of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

A interesting new article in Nature highlights the advantages to the tax-payer, the reader and author citation counts but hides the pitfalls associated with hybrid models of open access.

• Declan Butler (2010) US seeks to make science free for all. Nature  464, 822-823. doi:10.1038/464822a.

That the US government is being pressured to make all federally-funded research available in free, publicly accessible repositories is a good sign that the Open Access movement is gaining momentum. While lawmakers are keen to reap the benefits of investment in science, realising that the wide distribution of results produce socioeconomic gains like helping doctors keep up with medical research, they are treating open access as a vote-winning opportunity rather than liberating it from financial barriers. While readers may have free access in the models proposed, journals will simply move their source of profit from subscribers to authors through paid options for open access. This is already a reality even in “popular” open access journal like PLOS where average author fees run into triple figures per article. What sense is there is open access for readers if they will have nothing to read when the authors cant afford to publish their articles? This is why free access online institutional repositories are so important. They free both the readers and the authors from financial access restrictions. Free publishing models have already been proposed and are key to the future of the Open Access movement:

• Perakakis P, Taylor M, Mazza M, Trachana V (2010) Natural selection of academic papers. Scientometrics DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0253-1

We have to realise that Open Access means Free Access or it will not be open – neither to authors, nor to readers.

Dr Michael Taylor

http://patternizer.wordpress.com

The Free Access Glossary has been produced!

After a lot of researching and gathering of contacts, links and definitions, the first draft of our Free Access Glossary has now been produced. It is intended that this alphabetical resource which is half dictionary/half blogroll, will grow in usefulness as more and more authors and contributors take part and make suggestions or additions. We have hyperlinked to Wikipedia to ensure precise definitions of many bibliometrics concepts where possible and we thank their authors for all their hard work. Organisations are linked to directly for ease of use of the glossary-come-portal for those seeking immediate resources and functionality. As its name suggests. this is a free resource and so you can freely copy, modify or distribute it. We ask only that you acknowledge our work in return ok? Welcome to the world of free access. Enjoy!

The Free Science Flying Circus on Twitter!

The Free Science Flying Circus has now been tagged for the OA Tracking Project (the alert service launched last year by Professor Peter Suber) on Twitter! Many thanks to Peter who is the man behind Open Access News.

“Siege of Science” is gathering steam

In line with citation trends, our invited review for the theme issue on the use and abuse of bibliometrics of the Journal of Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, is gathering momentum. As predicted, 18 months after publication, citations to the article are now increasing. Bearing in mind that only 10% of all articles ever published receive more than 1 citation, this is good news for the open access journal. We hope you enjoy the article!

• Taylor M, Perakakis P, Trachana, V (2008) Siege of science. (Invited Review) In: Use and abuse of bibliometrics (Theme Issue). J Ethics Sci Env Pol Vol 8, 13.

“The Roads to Open Access” to appear in the UNESCO World Social Science Report 2010

Following a generous invitation from U.N.E.S.C.O. inviting us to write for the World Social Science Report 2010, our article is now in press and will be translated in French and Chinese!

• Perakakis P, Taylor M, Trachana, V (2010) The roads to open access. (Invited Review) UNESCO World Social Science Report 2010, Chapter 8: Disseminating social sciences, 307-309. (In press) (to be published in English, French and Chinese)

“Natural Selection of Academic Papers” published!

After great expectations and great rejections from the big guns Science and Nature, it’s finally published. Our latest article hit the newstands carrying the excellent and highly-cited journal Scientometrics this week! We are hoping the global publishing model we are proposing will cause quite a stir!

• Perakakis P, Taylor M, Mazza M, Trachana V (2010) Natural selection of academic papers. Scientometrics DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0253-1

Genesis 29-06-2010

In the beginning there were three. A biologist, a psychologist and a mathematician. But even they couldn’t do it in 7 days. Not even 5 years. But suddenly in a blinding flash, finally the blog is born. The date: 29 June 2010. It’s The Holy Citation, The Life of Brain and The Meaning of Strife. It’s publish or perish. It’s for us. It’s for you. The author, the reader, the casual downloader of academic doublespeak, the open sourcerer and the sharer of knowledge. Write what you like and in any language you like. From the farthest reaches of this web that glues us together in this world-wide accountan-sea there’s always the Google Translator. No Crimson Permanent Assurance journal corporation can stop this pirate ship. And it wont fall off the edge of the world. Science will tower like a skyscraper once again. It will be freed from the impact-factor counting clerks and the journal rejectors. Join the circus, author away and let’s get this show on the road.