By Graham Steel
Last month, after the UKSG Conference in Bournemouth, see this recent figshare post, the UK witnessed another interesting Conference entitled Rigour & Openness in 21st Century Science. The two day event took place in and around the Lindemann Lecture Theatre in Oxford. It also featured a Debate entitled Evolution or Revolution in Science Communication? which took place in the Oxford Union at the end of day one. The Conference was a follow on from one in 2012, the video of which can be found here which we touched upon in this post last year.
The Conference Programme can be downloaded here (PDF) and Andrew Miller has created this Storify of the event and Ino Agrafioti created this one. A full list of the speakers/attendees can be accessed here, a number of official photographs are housed here and video content can be found here.
The event was opened in terms of a Keynote by Sir Mark Wallport who after ten years, recently stepped down as the Director of the Wellcome Trust to take up the post of Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government. slides
Following the Keynote, the first session Rigour and Open Access featured
Following lunch, the second session was entitled Citizen Science and included the following speakers
The final session of day one was Beyond Traditional Articles and featured
For the evening\u2019s Debate, Attendees took the short walk to the Oxford Union Debating Chamber.
The debating teams. From left to right: EVOLUTION: David Tempest (Elsevier), Graham Taylor (ex Publishers\u2019 Association), Jason Wilde (Nature) and Cameron Neylon (PLOS). CHAIR: Simon Benjamin. REVOLUTION: Mike Taylor (University of Bristol), Jason Hoyt (PeerJ), Amelia Andersdotter (Swedish Pirate Party MEP) and Paul Wicks (PatientsLikeMe). Image/layout source.
To paraphrase from Mike Taylor\u2019s post about the Debate:
\u201cThe great thing is, doing better is not a hypothetical. BMC and PLOS have led the way over the last few years. Now we have PeerJ, which arrived from nowhere \u2013 not only with no assets, but crucially with no baggage. That\u2019s tremendously liberating. It allowed three programmers to build their software infrastructure from the ground up in eight months. It\u2019s universally considered much better than anything any of the old publishers have. And it gives you publications that are born digital, unlimited in length, full colour, and free to the world. And it does it for $99\u2014not per paper, but per author, for life. Ninety-nine dollars!\u201d
Note that Mike has since posted a further more detailed one.
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In an unrelated development, as per this PeerJ post (16th April 2013) PeerJ Supports Undergraduate Authors
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\u201c...Therefore, today we are pleased to announce a new initiative for undergraduate co-authors on papers submitted to PeerJ. Specifically, authors who were undergraduates when the research was conducted will be able to publish in PeerJ for free (with the caveats that the submission should also have senior author(s) who have a normal Membership status and assuming the submission passes peer review as normal). We will run this program as a pilot through 2013.
To take advantage of this offer, submitting authors should mention their undergraduate status when making their PeerJ Submission\u201d.
Open Data was the first session of day two and included
Following a session Show and Tell, the closing sessions were
Alternative Peer Review
Open Innovation
After a short break, the event concluded in the Lindemann Lecture Theatre with a Closing Keynote by David Willetts, UK Minister of State for Universities and Science.
And last but most certainly not least, a big thanks to
ORGANISING COMMITTEE:
With many thanks too to Clem Harris at the OeRC and to Pete and the filming crew who facilitated the event.
As always, feedback, comments, suggestions and ideas are welcomed. Please get in touch at info@figshare.com or via twitter, facebook or google+.
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