What are transformative agreements and what to know before using them

Last week, researchers at the University of Granada received an email from the director of the University Library, announcing a new agreement with the publishers Elsevier and Wiley. Here I comment on some of the consequences of these deals, called “transformative agreements”, which are important to understand before deciding whether to use this new “service for researchers”.

How to upload your scientific software code to GitHub and get a DOI from Zenodo

This past weekend I had the pleasant experience of migrating my software KARDIA form its old home at the SourceForge repository to GitHub. Although the clearest benefit from this migration is the possibility to easier collaborate with other programers for the future development of the software, there are several other sweet candies that came along…

Which side are you on boys?

As promised, I publish here a recent correspondence between Angel Correa, a colleague at the Brain, Mind & Behaviour Research Center of the University of Granada, and the editor of an Elsevier journal. I do not wish to express my opinion here —although the title and image of this post may be giving a hint— nor to reveal the identity of the editor. I prefer to listen to what my fellow colleagues think about which are the obligations and responsibilities of authors and journal editors in the emerging landscape of open scholarly communication.

Open scientists in the shoes of frustrated academics part I: Open-minded scepticism

Last week I was in Oslo, invited by the organising committee of Eurodoc2017, to give an introductory talk on Open Science [1]. One thing that became apparent during this two-day event was that, although irresistibly trendy, Open Science remains an elusive concept. Many continue to confuse Open Science with Open Access, not to mention that almost everyone still thinks Open Access is equivalent to publishing in open access journals. In this series of posts, I will discuss a few issues that will hopefully help clarify the meaning of Open Science, why is it important, and how individual scientists can make a difference.

Report back from the COAR 2016 annual meeting

Last week I attended the COAR (@COAR_eV) 2016 annual meeting hosted by the University of Vienna. I was invited by COAR’s executive director Kathleen Shearer to give a talk on peer review on top of repository networks and to participate in a working group that will discuss and provide recommendations for “Next Generation Repositories”.