[Linux-aus] Grant application to Linux Australia for Aletheia
Rowland Mosbergen
rowland.mosbergen at gmail.com
Mon Jun 19 22:06:39 AEST 2017
I just saw this on Twitter and thought it would be worth sharing:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170404/09344237080/european-commission-may-join-gates-foundation-wellcome-trust-becoming-open-access-publisher.shtml
*One of Europe's biggest science spenders could soon branch out into
publishing. The European Commission, which spends more than €10 billion
annually on research, may follow two other big league funders, the Wellcome
Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and set up a "publishing
platform" for the scientists it funds, in an attempt to accelerate the
transition to open-access publishing in Europe.*
El 19 jun. 2017 17:27, "Rowland Mosbergen" <rowland.mosbergen at gmail.com>
escribió:
> Thanks for the feedback Kade.
>
> The biggest concern that I see for researchers on a year to year basis is
> the ability to increase the probability for the NHMRC, ARC and other
> funding bodies to fund their work. This is directly tied into the papers
> they publish, where they publish and their citation record (among other
> things). I think it would be interesting to know how you are approaching
> the funding bodies and their reactions to your ideas. I think without this
> your technical fix would not be sustainable.
>
> While some of the technical discussions you mentioned I think are
> interesting technically, in my opinion they aren't even close to the
> priority that is needed on the same level as the communty issues.
>
> For example:
>
> - websites can easily be architected for high availability (we do this
> ourselves),
> - PlosOne has all it's content protected by CC-BY
> <http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright> and
> - PlosOne has an impact factor (3.057 in 2015
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS_ONE>)
>
>
> Not that Aletheia isn't a cool idea. I just want to ensure that we can
> tease out the pros and cons to allow the Linux Australia community to work
> out if this fits into their funding model.
>
> Whatever the outcome I think you are raising this issue at the right time
> as it's a hot topic in research.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rowland.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 4:53 PM, Kade Morton <kademorton at protonmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Rowland,
>>
>> Thanks for the below. We've consulted pretty widely with researchers here
>> in Aus and overseas (two of the people on our team currently publish
>> academic papers in their fields and we're working with a group Jon Tennant
>> is involved with that are publishing a thesis around a better peer review
>> process, our peer review process is going to be build around their
>> findings). If it strengthens the application I can list out the different
>> researchers and groups we've spoken with.
>>
>> I'd contend we do need a technical fix to paywalls along with a community
>> fix and we're looking to address both. F1000Research, PLOS ONE and others
>> are great, even Sci-Hub if you feel adventurous, but I think we have some
>> positives over existing solutions.
>>
>> - Websites are a single point of failure, they can fall over through
>> neglect or malicious actors. Aletheia is a decentralised and distributed
>> database, no single point of failure.
>> - Open access journals and preprint archives can be bought out by
>> larger paywall journals. Aletheia is under a GNU Lesser General Public
>> License v3.0, Elsevier is not buying us.
>> - Open access journals charge for submissions, it's free to submit to
>> Aletheia. We're looking at how the platform can be monetised but it won't
>> be through submission of or access to content.
>> - You can't see what open access journals spend their money on, we
>> publish our financial records.
>> - Open Access journals often die because they don't make profit,
>> we're community run so as long as we have enough community nodes the
>> contents of Aletheia is stored forever.
>> - Open Access journals don't have publishing impact factor. We won't
>> either, but we're building a reputation system based on submitted articles,
>> peer review articles (our platform handles peer review), community
>> participation and some other factors. This transparent reputation score is
>> your contribution academia so we're looking to turn that into publishing
>> impact factor once we are well established.
>> - The community doesn't have a say in how open access journals are
>> run usually, they are a bit of a block box. The community runs Aletheia as
>> a decentralised autonomous organisation.
>> - Open access aren't not open source, you can audit all our code,
>> look at how we are storing papers and data sets, etc.
>> - There has been little innovation in academic publishing since
>> journals were established in the 16th centry. The only real change is the
>> journals now have websites and databases. I think looking at doing
>> something different in this space is worth the effort just for the
>> exploration alone, and I'd rather open source communities do that exploring
>> over corporations because if a better way is hit on it should be open from
>> the start.
>> - A decentralised and distributed database administered as a DAO has
>> applications past scientific publishing, we want to prove it works in this
>> space and then move into other areas.
>>
>> I'm not sure if this covers all your concerns, we have a white paper
>> covering Aletheia's features if you're interested,
>> https://github.com/aletheia-foundation/aletheia-whitepaper/
>> blob/master/WHITE-PAPER.md
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Kade Morton
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Grant application to Linux Australia for Aletheia
>> Local Time: June 19, 2017 3:36 PM
>> UTC Time: June 19, 2017 5:36 AM
>> From: rowland.mosbergen at gmail.com
>> To: Kade Morton <kademorton at protonmail.com>
>> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au <linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au>,
>> council at linux.org.au <council at linux.org.au>
>>
>> Hi Kade,
>>
>> As a person who works with researchers everyday at the University of
>> Melbourne, the idea of paywalls is a very hot topic at the moment.
>>
>> Open access publications such as F1000Research and PLOS ONE have provided
>> researchers with more choices than ever before.
>>
>> Yet the big publications can still provide paywalls due to the way that
>> research funding is granted, based on publication impact factor. Being able
>> to publish in Nature gives one an advantage the next time the NHMRC and ARC
>> grants come around.
>>
>> In my opinion, the issue around paywalls in research is very much one
>> that needs a community fix, not a technical fix. And that fix is going to
>> be a long and complicated journey.
>>
>> I am unsure how much of this backstory you know or which researchers you
>> have talked to from a range of disciplines like Life Sciences, Humanities,
>> Astronomy etc. I would highly recommend engaging with these researchers if
>> you don't have those relationships already.
>>
>> In my opinion, this kind of project would be discussed at a University
>> and Funding level (eg NHMRC) both nationally and internationally. I think
>> the technical considerations would be of a very low priority
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Rowland Mosbergen
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 2:52 PM, Kade Morton via linux-aus <
>> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au> wrote:
>>
>>> I've been asked to resend
>>>
>>> ***
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I wanted to make a grant for the open source project I co-founded,
>>> Aletheia.
>>>
>>> Project name: Aletheia
>>> Aim of the project: To provide an alternative to publishing scientific
>>> research behind paywalls and to popularise decentralised autonomous
>>> organisations.
>>>
>>> Aletheia is a decentralised and distributed database which we're
>>> applying to academic publishing. Basically a a database that is free to
>>> upload to and access from, administered by the community as a decentralised
>>> autonomous organisation. Aletheia would be an alternative to publishing
>>> research behind paywalls.
>>>
>>> Have a look at our source code here: https://github.com/aletheia-fo
>>> undation/aletheia-app
>>> Have a look at our community documentation here:
>>> https://github.com/aletheia-foundation/aletheia-admin
>>>
>>> Key stages or milestones of the project:
>>>
>>> Completed
>>>
>>> - Onboarding documents up to standard that newcomers can come onto
>>> the project, documents hosted on GitHub.
>>> - Participated in the Mozilla Global Sprint
>>> https://mozilla.github.io/global-sprint/
>>> <https://mozilla.github.io/global-sprint/>
>>> - Get application running on Ubuntu
>>> - Get application running on Mac
>>> - Cofounder to complete courses through Mozilla to help create
>>> avenues for Mozilla's continued support for Aletheia
>>>
>>> To be Completed
>>>
>>> - Get application running on Windows
>>> - Finish MVP (aiming for 27th of October 2017)
>>> - Run presentation about Aletheia and the applications of
>>> decentralised and open source technology in science at MozFest (application
>>> made, waiting to hear for acceptance, presentation will be in London, 27th
>>> of October 2017)
>>> - Finish Aletheia 2.0 (aiming for 1st of July 2018)
>>>
>>> How the success of the project will be measured: Number of downloads,
>>> number of active community users and number of documents stored in Aletheia
>>> Estimated cost breakdown of the project, including any materials,
>>> projects or online services that are required to deliver the project. The
>>> cost breakdown should include estimates of labour costs and/or professional
>>> services:
>>>
>>> - $15,000 for Extra Credits to create a video covering Aletheia.
>>> - $10,000 legal fees, up front consultation and ongoing
>>> - $2,000 incidentals incurred so far (server costs, custom domain
>>> name, travel expenses we have coming up)
>>> - $5,000 to have website professionally built.
>>>
>>> These are a great deal of costs. I'd be happy to just apply to have the
>>> video covered. We think a professionally created video that's engaging and
>>> made by a talented group of people with a large fan base that's easily
>>> sharable on social media and can be given to anyone who asks "what is
>>> Aletheia?" would be the greatest boon to our project. We need to get the
>>> word out about our project and increase the rate of volunteers coming on to
>>> the project, we think the visual medium of a video is the best way to do
>>> this. Unfortunately we don't have any video editors working on the project
>>> yet, and we've attempted to negotiate an "open source rate" with Extra
>>> Credits but they have said $15,000 is the lowest they will go. This single
>>> cost can be paid and therefore count as incurred before 30th of September
>>> 2017.
>>>
>>> The project team, their credentials and professional capabilities,
>>> especially their history of open source, open data, open hardware or open
>>> culture contributions:
>>>
>>> - Kade Morton, Mozilla regional coordinator for Brisbane, Mozilla
>>> techspeaker, completed the Mozilla open leadership course for open source
>>> projects, organised Aletheia's contributions to Mozilla's Global Sprint
>>> 2017, board member of Electronic Frontiers Australia
>>> - Roo (wishes to remain anonymous) cofounded Aletheia with Kade,
>>> works for ThoughtWorks on a number of open source projects, is extremely
>>> active in running privacy, online security and decentralisation meetups
>>> locally. If our application hinges on the identity of Aletheia's cofounder
>>> I can approach him and ask if he would mind his name being disclosed to the
>>> council but as a blanket rule he has asked for anonymity.
>>>
>>> Person responsible for project: Kade Morton
>>> A statement including a willingness to provide regular project updates
>>> on the project: I would be more than happy to provide Linux Australia with
>>> regular status updates on Aletheia and how our client is coming along.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Kade Morton
>>> Twitter: @cypath
>>> LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kade-morton-34179283
>>> Keybase: https://keybase.io/kademorton
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> linux-aus mailing list
>>> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
>>> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>>>
>>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/attachments/20170619/f718ef4c/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the linux-aus
mailing list