Postings from Mulago Hill
Julia Royall, Chief, International Programs, National Library of Medicine, NIH, Fulbright Scholar to Uganda 2007-2008

Several student groups have issued a statement to jointly back the open access movement in which scholarly research is shared online and free. The student statement argues for open access as the best way to share knowledge. "Scholarly knowledge is part of the common wealth of humanity," says the statement. "Unfortunately, not everyone has access to the scholarly literature, despite advances in communications technology." The statement was endorsed by the American Medical Student Association, Student PIRGs, Students for Free Culture, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, the California Institute of Technology Graduate Student Council and the Trinity University Association of Student Representatives.

The Research Information Network and Universities UK have produced a guide (March 2009) to provide advice on paying open access publication charges: that is, fees levied by some journals for the publication of scholarly articles so that they can be made available free of charge to readers, immediately upon publication. The guide also sets out recommendations for universities and other research institutions, publishers, research funders, and authors.

The Lincoln Memorial University-DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine opened its doors less than two years ago, but in recent weeks it has been getting press in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times. The articles concern a Lincoln Memorial professor who exposed conflicts of interest in an article published by the The Journal of the American Medical Association and subsequently provoked the wrath of JAMA's editors for spreading his story to the media and another journal. Charges that the editors sought to intimidate Lincoln Memorial officials have prompted an investigation by the American Medical Association's oversight committee, and the university has garnered some newfound name recognition in the world of academic medicine.

Google & Books: An Exchange
By Paul N. Courant, Ann Kjellberg, J. D. McClatchy, Edward Mendelson, Margo Viscusi, Tappan Wilder et al.

In response to Google & the Future of Books (February 12, 2009)

To the Editors:

My colleague and friend Robert Darnton is a marvelous historian and an elegant writer. His utopian vision of a digital infrastructure for a new Republic of Letters [NYR, February 12] makes the spirit soar. But his idea that congressional committees beholden to Hollywood might have implemented that vision is a utopian fantasy, while his description of what will happen as a result of Google's scanning of copyrighted works is a dystopian fantasy.

Crews, Kenneth D. "The Law of Fair Use and the Illusion of Fair-Use Guidelines." Ohio State Law Journal 62, 2 (2001): 599-702.

The Taiga 4 Steering Committee is pleased to announce a new set of “provocative statements” about libraries
and the information environment. These ten statements represent the combined wisdom, eagerness,
impatience and engagement of more than 50 Associate University Librarians and Associate Directors who
attended the Taiga 4 Forum in Denver, on January 22, 2009.

AuthorMapper, an online tool for visualizing scientific research, enables document discovery based on author locations and geographic maps. Integrating content and mapping technology, AuthorMapper provides an easy-to-use, dynamic interface that allows you to:

* Explore patterns in scientific research
* Identify new and historic literature trends
* Discover wider relationships
* Locate other experts in your field

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has hardly lacked for targets in his campaign against conflicts of interest in biomedical science and academic research. But a study published Wednesday in the April issue of Academic Medicine suggests potential problems in an area that has largely escaped Grassley's scrutiny so far -- among the members of institutional boards that review research at medical schools and academic medical centers. The study, based on a survey of more than 200 chairs of such review boards, found that a third of IRBs at those institutions did not require voting members to disclose their relationships with pharmaceutical companies or other industry representatives -- even though national groups have urged such reporting and the relationships, in practice, were reported in a majority of cases.

On 7 November 2008, the directors of the law libraries at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of Texas, and Yale University met in Durham, North Carolina at the Duke Law School. That meeting resulted in the "Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship," which calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats.

But while there was no real dissent from Culberson's view that federal spending on science is crucial and should be protected and even expanded, lawmakers and the hearing's lone witness, President Ralph J. Cicerone of the National Academy of Sciences, acknowledged that there would not be a limitless supply of money available for science programs, and that difficult choices about priorities would have to be made.

And Cicerone and some lawmakers agreed that federal agencies and universities needed, as they managed the sudden, massive infusion of money from the economic stimulus package, to learn lessons from the doubling of the budget of the National Institutes of Health that the government provided a decade ago, to avoid repeating problems that emerged in the wake of that effort.

Michèle Lamont decided to explore excellence by studying one of the primary mechanisms used by higher education to -- in theory -- reward excellence: scholarly peer review. Applying sociological and other disciplinary approaches to her study, Lamont won the right to observe peer review panels that are normally closed to all outsiders. And she was able to interview peer review panelists before and after their meetings, examine notes of reviewers before and after decision-making meetings, and gain access to information on the outcomes of these decisions.

The result is How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (Harvard University Press), which aims to expose what goes on behind the closed doors where funds are allocated and careers can be made.

The term "edupunk" started with a blog rant by Jim Groom, an instructional-technology specialist and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington, who was annoyed at commercial course-management systems and wanted to encourage professors to take a do-it-yourself approach to using the latest Web tools for their courses. But since we wrote about that rant last year, the term has been widely discussed in educational-technology circles - with some people excited about it, and others arguing that professors should use the tools provided by colleges rather than go off on their own to try to replicate them.

The One Health Initiative, a movement to forge co-equal, all inclusive collaborations between physicians, veterinarians, and other scientific-health related disciplines, has been endorsed by various major medical organizations and health agencies, including the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the American Society for Microbiology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

14 October 2008. PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), supported by the European Union, will investigate the effects of the large-scale systematic depositing of authors' final peer-reviewed manuscripts (so called Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, author visibility, and journal vability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research. The project is a collaboration between publishers, repositories and researchers and will last from 2008 to 2011.

The $787 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama on Tuesday dedicates $1.1 billion for head-to-head research to determine which drugs, devices, and procedures are most effective and carry the lowest risk.

The money will be split between the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The legislation also creates a board, called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research, to oversee and direct the studies, which will likely include literature reviews as well as independent trials.

This report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System offers recommendations for a comprehensive set of insurance, payment, and system reforms that could guarantee affordable coverage for all by 2012, improve health outcomes, and slow health spending growth by $3 trillion by 2020-if enacted now to start in 2010. Central to the Commission's strategy is establishing a national insurance exchange that offers a choice of private plans and a new public plan, with reforms to make coverage affordable, ensure access, and lower administrative costs. Building on this foundation, the report recommends policies to change the way the nation pays for care, invest in information systems to improve quality and safety, and promote health. By stimulating competition and delivery system changes aimed at providing more effective and efficient care, the policies could yield higher value and substantial savings for families, businesses, and the public sector.

health workforce information

Advances in interdisciplinary research and teaching are critical to producing workable solutions to many of society's most pressing problems. "Fostering Interdisciplinary Inquiry: An Invitational Conference" will focus on policies and practices of academic institutions and is intended to foster institutional cooperation among the nation's top research universities, public and private, and to expand understanding of both opportunities and challenges in advancing interdisciplinary research, academic programs, teaching, and training. A key goal of the conference is to create a consortium for interdisciplinary transformation that will continue to advance progress on these important issues.

Eight years ago, President George W. Bush sharply limited federal support for stem-cell research. The move cost universities millions of dollars while slowing the hunt for life-saving medical advances. And it may now be only days before President Obama reverses course.

But for all the trouble the presidential restriction has caused, and for all the political trauma that may accompany a cancellation of Mr. Bush's order, both the science and the economics have evolved so far since 2001 that universities may feel affected far less by Mr. Obama's decision than they were by Mr. Bush's. Still, an obscure piece of legislation called the Dickey-Wicker Amendment may remain an obstacle no matter what the president does.

Tulane University School of Medicine's compressed medical education program:

They came up with a compromise. Students would enter straight from high school and complete their undergraduate work in two years. After that, they would complete a mandatory year of community service, followed by four years of medical school.

Called Gradshare and developed by ProQuest, the Web site follows on the heels of other social-networking sites aimed at graduate students, like Graduate Junction. However, Gradshare's developers hope that the site, which opened in beta form last October, will carve out a niche with its question-and-answer focus.

Summary of Macy Foundation report

A report released on Thursday by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, "Revisiting the Medical School Educational Mission at a Time of Expansion," calls on medical schools to adopt sweeping changes in order to attract students of more diverse economic and ethnic backgrounds, train them in community settings as well as hospitals, and, in some cases, compress the time it takes to become a physician.

As of this month, Journal of Biology initiates a 're-review opt-out scheme' whereby once authors have revised their paper in response to peer review it is their choice whether the reviewers see it again. The experiment was inspired by the widespread frustration with current peer review practices and is strongly supported by a majority of the Editorial Board of the journal.

One signature at a time, national research agencies and university libraries have pledged to support a radical new system that would replace expensive subscriptions to leading journals with membership in a nonprofit group. The new organization would then dole out money to journal publishers, while pushing them to distribute all articles free online and to keep their prices in check.
The group is called Scoap³, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics.

IBM Advances Research Through Cloud Computing to Help Solve Real-World Problems

Builds Cloud Computing Environments for Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Qatar University, Texas A&M University at Qatar, University of Pretoria, HEALTH Alliance and Kyushu University

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)'s Horizon Project, a long-running qualitative research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations. The 2009 Horizon Report is the sixth annual report in the series. The report is produced again in 2009 as a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program.

More services will be running on cellphones or handheld computers, and more devices will be able to broadcast their location to others, says a new report from Educause's Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium.

The "2009 Horizon Report," the latest edition of the annual list of technology trends to watch in education, is compiled based on news reports, research studies, and interviews with experts.

Topping the list of hot technologies are smart phones and other mobile devices.

The University of California libraries and Springer Science+Business Media (Springer) have concluded a groundbreaking experimental agreement to support open access publishing by UC authors. The arrangement is part of the journals license negotiated by the California Digital Library on behalf of the 10 campuses of the University of California.

Under the terms of the agreement, articles by UC-affiliated authors accepted for publication in a Springer journal beginning in 2009 will be published using Springer Open Choice with full and immediate open access. There will be no separate per-article charges, since costs have been factored into the overall license. Articles will be released under a license compatible with the Creative Commons (by-nc: Attribution, Non-commercial) license. In addition to access via the Springer platform, final published articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library's eScholarship Repository.

The University of California-Springer agreement is the first large-scale open access experiment of its type undertaken with a major commercial publisher in North America.

The Clinician-Consumer Health Advisory Information Network (CHAIN) is an online educational, informational, and resource dissemination program operated as a collaborative effort of the Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) Educational Consortium. The Educational Consortium is comprised of representatives from all of the CERTs research centers, the CERTs Coordinating Center, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

as many professors incorporate "peer instruction" designed to encourage students to discuss concepts with, and learn from, each other. There, as elsewhere, though, many other professors remain skeptical about new technologies and new teaching methods.

After four months of spirited discussion, the EDUCAUSE teaching and learning community has voted on the, "Top Teaching and Learning Challenges, 2009." The final list for 2009, ranked by popularity, includes (click on individual Challenges to visit their wiki page):

1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation.
2. Developing 21st-century literacies among students and faculty (information, digital, and visual).
3. Reaching and engaging today's learner.
4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with IT.
5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning (with technology) in an era of budget cuts.

The University of Pennsylvania and Arizona State University are teaming up on technology transfer in a three-year experiment that will allow each to take advantage of the other’s expertise in commercializing the findings of their researchers.

While an estimated 2.3 million people in the United States take part in clinical trials every year, there currently exists no formal requirement to inform them of study results, an oversight that leaves participants confused, frustrated, and, in some cases, lacking information that may be important to their health. In an article published today in the Archives of Neurology, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have proposed a novel and effective approach to disseminate the results of clinical trials to study volunteers.

Founded by Johns Hopkins Medicine and leading professional medical societies, the MedBiquitous Consortium is the ANSI-accredited developer of information technology standards for healthcare education and competence assessment.

But are faculty members really embracing new models of scholarly communication? According to a report issued this week by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), carried out by Ithaka, the answer appears to be yes.

The report, "Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication," was conceptual­ized as a "field study," based on conversations, designed to "look squarely at new forms of scholarship and scholarly works and consider them in their own lights." While the approach was not "statistically" meaningful, it revealed a rich cross-section of what innovation in digital scholarly resources looks like today. Among the principal types of digital scholarly resources identified: e-only journals; reviews; preprints and working papers; encyclopedias; dictionaries and annotated content; blogs and discussion forums; and professional and scholarly hubs.

Called Reference Extract, the project is being developed by the Online Computer Library Center and the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington. OCLC is an international cooperative that shares resources among more than 69,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories. A $100,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is covering planning costs.

According to the project proposal, the search engine "will be built for maximum credibility by relying on the expertise and credibility judgments of librarians from around the globe."

"Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media-Literacy Education." from American University's Center for Social Media

Partnerships with African universities-- Botswana-UPenn Partnership is highlighted.

Tiffany & Co. announced last week that it is granting the University $2 million to go toward building an HIV treatment center and research facility on the grounds of the Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone, Botswana. The Botswanan government is also contributing to the building.

Vadlo is brought to you by two biology scientists who wish to make it easier to locate biology research related information on the web.

Vadlo search engine caters to all branches of life sciences. This beta offering allows users to search within five categories: Protocols, Online Tools, Seminars, Databases and Software.

Mosio is a mobile community enabling you to
text any question from your phone
and have it answered by real people (other Mosio members).

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), supported by the European Union, will investigate the effects of the large-scale systematic depositing of authors' final peer-reviewed manuscripts (so called Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, author visibility, and journal vability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research. The project is a collaboration between publishers, repositories and researchers and will last from 2008 to 2011.

National Center for Research Resources strategic plan links and information.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released "PubMed Central Deposit and Author Rights: Agreements between 12 Publishers and the Authors Subject to the NIH Public Access Policy," by Ben Grillot, MLS (Maryland 2002), second-year student at the George Washington University Law School, and legal intern for ARL.

Medpedia, a new online medical encyclopedia to be written and edited by a collaborative group of thousands, with support from several leading medical schools, is calling for volunteers. But not everyone will be accepted. Only those who hold an M.D. or Ph.D. in a biomedical field need apply.

Within hours of last week's hearing on the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, a sweeping, publisher-supported bill that would ban public access measures similar to the National Institutes of Health's (NIH), lawmakers all but ruled out action on the bill in 2008.

How should we be rethinking the research library in a swiftly changing information landscape?

In February 2008, CLIR convened 25 leading librarians, publishers, faculty members, and information technology specialists to consider this question. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities that libraries are likely to face in the next five to ten years, and how changes in scholarly communication will affect the future library. Essays by eight of the participants-Paul Courant, Andrew Dillon, Rick Luce, Stephen Nichols, Daphnée Rentfrow, Abby Smith, Kate Wittenberg, and Lee Zia-were circulated to participants in advance and provided background for the conversation. This report contains these background essays as well as a summary of the meeting.

Federal funding of academic science and engineering (S&E) R&D failed to outpace inflation for the second year in a row, according to FY 2007 data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges.

Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration (EUREKA) (R01)

The EUREKA program funds exceptionally innovative research that, if successful, will have an unusually high impact.

The paper probes the relationship between libraries and the faculty at institutions of all sizes, and how the digital shift is altering that relationship. The authors, Roger Schonfeld and Ross Housewright, pulled together the highlights from two surveys conducted in 2006: one of American faculty members and another of librarians in charge of collection developmen

Proteopedia is a 3D, interactive encyclopedia of proteins, RNA, DNA and other molecules.

Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a peer reviewed, open access, online journal devoted to the publication of biological research in a video format.

HOW SHOULD WE be rethinking the research library in a swiftly changing information landscape?

In February, CLIR convened 25 leading librarians, publishers, faculty members, and information technology specialists to consider this question. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities that libraries are likely to face in the next five to ten years, and how changes in scholarly communication will affect the future library. Essays by eight of the participants-Paul Courant, Andrew Dillon, Rick Luce, Stephen Nichols, Daphnee Rentfrow, Abby Smith, Kate Wittenberg, and Lee Zia-were circulated to participants in advance and provided background for the conversation.1 CLIR will issue a full report of the meeting, including the background essays, later this summer.

The Office of UW Technology at University of Washington is developing Research1, a Web site that will allow scattered researchers to reunite in online communities and share their projects with the general public through various media, including audio and video files.

A statistical model is proposed for the analysis of peer-review ratings of R01 grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health. Innovations of this model include parameters that reflect differences in reviewer scoring patterns, a mechanism to account for the transfer of information from an application's preliminary ratings and group discussion to final ratings provided by all panel members and posterior estimates of the uncertainty associated with proposal ratings. Application of this model to recent R01 rating data suggests that statistical adjustments to panel rating data would lead to a 25% change in the pool of funded proposals. Viewed more broadly, the methodology proposed in this article provides a general framework for the analysis of data collected interactively from expert panels through the use of the Delphi method and related procedures.

The NIH recognizes the importance of keeping the American people informed about how their tax dollars are spent to support medical research. In 2009, the NIH will unveil the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) system. RCDC will provide consistent and transparent information to the public about NIH research. With this new computer-based tool, the public will see NIH's research activities broken down into nearly 240 categories each fiscal year. The categories cover research areas, diseases, and conditions. The new system will produce a complete list of all NIH-funded projects related to each category.

iBreadCrumbs.com is a recording toolbar for your web browser. Similar to what a DVR does for tv, iBreadCrumbs.com records all the web pages you visit while you research. Save, review, and share your research with friends or colleagues.

iBreadCrumbs allows students, researchers, and professors to organize the world's data into narrow research "breadcrumbs" or click-streams.

product of Knowlet, Knewco