The Open Science Prize: enabling discoveries for health

The Open Science Prize has been launched by the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to unleash the power of open content and data to advance biomedical research and its application for health benefit.

The Prize encourages technology experts and inventive researchers to submit innovative ideas for services, tools, and platforms that will make it easier for scientists, innovators and the wider public to discover, access and re-use the digital information being generated through health research. The aim of the Open Science Prize is also that of promoting international collaborations for the development of solutions that can benefit the global research community.

The competition consists of two phases and the opportunity to receive a prize of $230,000.

The deadline for entries is 29 February 2016.

For more information visit https://www.openscienceprize.org/.

Federica Fina
(Research Data Management)

iFutures 2015 conference

©2014 University of Sheffield

The iFutures 2015 conference is now open for registration. The conference, now in its third year, is run by and for postgraduate researchers in the information science community. This year's event has the theme: "Open Information Science: Exploring New Landscapes".

"We want to know how is open information influencing your research? Openness is a key part of Information Science research, from using open source tools and big open data sets to open standards advocacy, creating open accessible environments in institutions, and opening information science to radical perspectives and exploring diverse communities. We want to hear about your research and how these themes relate to it." iFutures

The keynote speakers at the event are Fabio Ciravegna (Professor of Computer Science at Sheffield University) and Helen Kennedy (Professor of Sociology at Sheffield University). The event will also include student presentations of research papers, workshops on impact, as well as poster and Pecha Kucha sessions.

The event will take place on Tuesday 7th July.

Sign up for the event here.

Location: Jessop West Exhibition Space.

Venue Details:
The University of Sheffield
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield S3 7RA

Science as an open enterprise - Prof. Geoffrey Boulton

'Open Science' seems to be one of the hottest topics around, with organisations and funders from the G8 downwards stressing the importance of open data in driving everything from global innovation through to more accountable governance; not to mention the more direct possibility that non-compliance could result in research grant income drying up.

Here at St Andrews we have had an institutional research information system (CRIS) integrated with our Open Access Institutional Repository of research publications since 2006 and in 2013 we published our Open Access Policy based on the principle that  ‘The University of St Andrews is strongly committed to ensuring the widest possible access to its research.’

With many funders now pushing for all research outputs – publications and data – to be ‘open by default’ it is the ideal time for one of most high profile figures in the debate to present the case for ‘Open Science’.

Professor Geoffrey Boulton OBE, FRS, FRSE, General Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Regius Professor Emeritus and former Vice Principal of the University of Edinburgh, will be giving a public lecture entitled "Open Data and the Future of Science" in the Medical and Biological Sciences Building Lecture Theatre on Wednesday 26th February at 5:15 pm. All are welcome to the lecture and to join Prof Boulton afterwards for wine and light refreshments.

Professor Boulton is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology. His research is in the field of climatic and environmental change and energy. He leads the Global Change Research Group in the University of Edinburgh in the University’s School of Geosciences. He has received international and national prizes for his research, including the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society, the Kirk Bryan Medal of the Geological Society of America, the Seligman Crystal of the International Glaciological Society and the Science Medal of the Institute of Contemporary Scotland.

Prof. Boulton had been chair of the Royal Society project "Science as an Open Enterprise" which was a major study on the use of scientific information as it affects scientists and society. The final report was published in June 2012.

Guest post by Anna Clements, Head of Research Data and Information Services, University of St Andrews Library