Call Agenda

You can find all the proposed agendas and minutes from our OpenCon librarian community calls here.

Joining details

To join the conference call from your computer, go to https://www.uberconference.com/SPARCconference.

To join the conference by phone within the US, dial 855 277 1599. To join the conference by phone outside of the US, see https://www.uberconference.com/international. This page provides local dial-in numbers for 50 countries. If available, you can dial into the local number for your country then enter our conference line information when prompted (phone number: 855 277 1599). If a local dial-in number isn’t available for your country, we suggest you either login from your computer using the instructions above or dial the US number using Skype.

For more information, visit http://www.opencon2016.org/feb_2017_librarian_call_2017.

Call Agenda

You can find all the proposed agendas and minutes from our OpenCon librarian community calls here.

Joining details

To join the conference call from your computer, go to https://www.uberconference.com/SPARCconference.

To join the conference by phone within the US, dial 855 277 1599. To join the conference by phone outside of the US, see https://www.uberconference.com/international. This page provides local dial-in numbers for 50 countries. If available, you can dial into the local number for your country then enter our conference line information when prompted (phone number: 855 277 1599). If a local dial-in number isn’t available for your country, we suggest you either login from your computer using the instructions above or dial the US number using Skype.

For more information, visit http://www.opencon2016.org/january_2017_librarian_call.

SPARC is pleased to release a new, integrated resource for tracking, comparing, and understanding U.S. federal agencies’ article and data sharing policies. This free tool combines a new analysis of federal public access plans for sharing peer-reviewed research articles with the federal data sharing policy resource that SPARC launched earlier this year in partnership with Johns Hopkins University Libraries. The resource is available at researchsharing.sparcopen.org

On Wednesday, November 2nd, at 3pm EDT / 12pm PDT, SPARC will host a webcast to demonstrate this new resource and explore how libraries are taking the lead in supporting compliance with federal public access policies, featuring representatives from Florida State University and Emory University. The webcast is open to all SPARC members, and registration is free but required. SPARC members can click here to register for this webcast.

This integrated policy resource can be used by researchers, librarians, policy makers, and other stakeholders to explore and compare agency plans for sharing articles and data. The new article-sharing analysis provides a tool for tracking practical information that can be used by active or prospective grant awardees to understand when, how, and where they need to make their manuscripts accessible, including links to each agency’s submission portal. As with the data-sharing resource, it will be updated as additional federal agency plans are released and analyzed and as current plans are revised.

This resource is openly available at researchsharing.sparcopen.org under a CC0 waiver. Additionally, the entire dataset of the policy analyses can be downloaded without restriction from the site under the same terms.

This afternoon, Vice President Biden presented a comprehensive report on his Cancer Moonshot Initiative during an event at the White House. He noted that while the Moonshot has sparked a new sense of urgency in the cancer research arena, large challenges remain, including a lack of coordination among researchers, an outdated research funding culture, and (no surprise here) the continued slow communication of crucial information about the disease.

The report lists an impressive and growing set of commitments that have been made to date by both government and the private sector to support the initiative, and makes additional recommendations on accelerating progress towards cancer treatments and cures.

The report directly addresses recommendations to accelerate the open sharing of cancer research data as well as clinical trial results. In fact, “Unleashing the Power of Data” is the second of five primary strategic goals of the initiative. The report specifically calls for "enabling a seamless data environment for clinical and research data through shared policies and technologies,” as well as “developing a scientific workforce capable of using an open and connected data environment.”

While the report does give a nod to opening up access to research articles, highlighting the need to “unlock scientific advances through open publication and storage platforms,” it stops short of providing any concrete recommendations on requiring open access to research articles or to their underlying data.

The theme of opening and accelerating the sharing of basic research outputs is consistently woven throughout the report, as is the need to create an incentive structure that is better aligned with the key goals of the Moonshot Initiative. This provides us with clear, continued opportunities to press for and support additional progress in both the open data and open access fronts.

As President Obama has entered his last 100 days in office, this report will serve as an important blueprint for the incoming administration. We’ll continue to work with all relevant players - from the White House, to Federal Agencies to Congress - who are or who will be directly involved in the initiative's implementation on additional strategies to advance our collective “open” agenda.

OpenCon is more than a conference. It’s a platform for the next generation to learn about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system for sharing the world’s information—from scholarly and scientific research, to educational materials, to digital research data. OpenCon 2016 will be held in Washington, DC on November 12-14, with satellite events hosted around the world.

Earlier today, Vice President Biden announced the launch of the Genomic Data Commons (GDC), a new fully open database to be housed at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that will help to achieve the Cancer Moonshot’s aim of speeding up progress towards cancer treatments and cures.

The GDC database will target a very specific layer of data - the raw genomic and clinical trial data from cancer patients. It will initially contain data from existing NCI programs (including data from about 12,000 patients), and is expected to grow rapidly as researchers contribute to it. The GDC will hold data on the molecular makeup of individual cancers, information on treatments used, and information on how patients responded to specific treatments. Researchers will be able to freely access this data, and more importantly, re-analyze it according to their needs.

The GDC has been in the planning stages at the NCI for the past couple of years, and has its roots in the Precision Medicine movement that both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the White House have been championing. The Precision Medicine movement calls for enabling access to individual patients genomic data to allow it to be mined. It’s worth noting that the GDC will operate as an international public/private partnership. It will be built and managed by the University of Chicago Center for Data Intensive Science in collaboration with the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and run under an operating contract with the NCI.

In remarks slated for later today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Vice President is also expected to address the need for facilitating a comprehensive strategy towards data sharing. In recent weeks he has been outspoken on the need for faster, open sharing of research outputs, and the need to break out of the current model of having data siloed in too many individual, largely inaccessible locations.

The Genomic Data Commons will take an important step towards creating a central, open location where researchers can easily find - and use - cancer data. But this is just a first step. More steps can be taken – and taken quickly – to further advance progress towards the Cancer Moonshot’s goal of making ten years of progress in cancer treatments and cures in half that time.

Last week, SPARC submitted a letter detailing recommendations for three things that the Vice President can do immediately to accelerate progress in the Moonshot:

1. Require that all articles reporting on National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded research be made immediately available upon publication - with no embargo.

2. Require that the data supporting these articles also be made immediately available upon publication - also without embargo.

3. Require federal agencies to incentivize the open sharing of research articles and data by rewarding that behavior in their funding and promotion process.

This is an important opportunity to highlight the value of full, immediate open access as an effective strategy to achieve the goals of the Moonshot. If these actions are adopted for cancer research, they would set an important precedent for actions that can - and should - be adopted in other disease-specific research areas, and potentially on a much wider basis, across research disciplines.

Its not often that we are presented with the chance to clearly articulate how the principles of open access can be turned into actions that can have an immediate and positive impact on the public’s good. The Vice President’s Cancer Moonshot offers a unique opportunity to do exactly that and to contribute to an innovative and ambitious initiative that effectively re-envisions the research process for the 21^st century.