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Sociological implications of scientific publishing: Open access, science, society, democracy, and the digital divide Ulrich Herb. First Monday , Volume 15, Number 2 - 1 February 2010 Claims for open access are mostly underpinned with science–related arguments (open access accelerates scientific communication); financial arguments (open access relieves the serials crisis); social arguments (open access reduces the digital divide); democracy–related arguments (open access facilitates participation); and, socio–political arguments (open access levels disparities). Using sociological concepts and notions, this article focuses strongly on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of (scientific) capital and its implications for the acceptance of open access, Michel Foucault’s discourse analysis and the implications of open access for the concept of the digital divide. Bourdieu’s theory of capital implies that the acceptance of open access depends on the logic of power and the accumulation of ...

The January 2009 issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems is a special issue on the Semantic Web and science knowledge integration: The Emerging Field of Semantic Scientific Knowledge Integration . McGuinness, Deborah L.; Fox, Peter; Brodaric, Boyan; Kendall, Elisa Ontology Design for Scientific Theories That Make Probabilistic Predictions . Poole, D.; Smyth, C.; Sharma, R. Semantic Support for Quantitative Research Processes . Rijgersberg, H.; Top, J.; Meinders, M. MatSeek: An Ontology-Based Federated Search Interface for Materials Scientists . Cheung, Kwok; Hunter, Jane; Drennan, John Annotation and Image Markup: Accessing and Interoperating with the Semantic Content in Medical Imaging . Rubin, Daniel L.; Mongkolwat, Pattanasak; Kleper, Vladimir; Supekar, Kaustubh; Channin, David S. Enabling Cross-Disciplinary E-Science by Integrating Geoscience Ontologies with Dolce . Brodaric, B.; Probst, F.

Obama goes 'all in' for science New Scientist, Mar 4 2009 Sigh. Related: Editorial: The pitfalls of Obama's science bonanza , New Scientist, Mar 4 2009 Obama to restore science to its rightful place . New Scientist, Jan 20 2009

ICSTI2009 "Managing Data for Science" Conference From the site: ICSTI's 2009 Public conference will take place on June 9 and 10, 2009 at Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Speakers from Canada, the United States and Europe will address: How eScience affects the way libraries, publishers and scientists relate to each other. How the era of "big data" will enable enhanced experimentation and collaboration in science. The program includes presentations from: Francine Berman San Diego Super-Computing Center, California Richard Boulderstone Director of e-Strategy and Programmes British Library, UK Jan Brase German National Library of Science and Technology, EU Lee Dirks Microsoft, State of Washington Peter Fox Rensselaer Polytechnic University, State of New York Paula Hurtubise Project Manager Carleton University, Ottawa Liz Lyon UKOLN University of Bath, UK James Mullins Purdue...

As reported on the Science Blogging 2008: London forum , this clever challenge was announced at the London Science Blogging Conference August 30 2008. Related: Good summary of Timo Hannay 's closing sum-up of the conference and the same blog's ( Humans in Science ) entry on the conference proper.

The Industry Canada minister accepted (Sept 2 2008) recommendations from the Science, Technology and Innovation Council on the sub-priorities of the four priority areas identified in the 2007 Science and Technology (S&T) Strategy ( The State of Science & Technology in Canada , 2006, Council of Canadian Academies ). The recommended sub-areas are: S&T priority: Environmental science and technologies Sub-priorities : Water (health, energy, security); cleaner methods of extracting, processing and using hydrocarbon fuels, including reduced consumption of these fuels S&T priority: Natural resources and energy Sub-priorities : Energy production in the oil sands; Arctic (resource production, climate change adaptation, monitoring); biofuels, fuel cells and nuclear energy S&T priority: Health and related life sciences and technologies Sub-priorities : Regenerative medicine; neuroscience; health in an aging population; biomedical engineering and medical technologies S&T p...

LNCS 5071: Sharing Data, Information and Knowledge (25th British National Conference on Databases, BNCOD 25, Cardiff, UK, July 7-10, 2008). Some interesting papers: The Power of Data Visualisation to Aid Biodiversity Studies through Accurate Taxonomic Reconciliation Distributed Systems and Automated Biodiversity Informatics: Genomic Analysis and Geographic Visualization of Disease Evolution. Role Based Access to Support Collaboration in Healthcare Finding Data Resources in a Virtual Observatory Using SKOS Vocabularies Semantic Matching for the Medical Domain The Hyperdatabase Project – From the Vision to Realizations

The Canadian government's House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has released a press release describing a consultation which is looking for submissions from various sectors and regions in the following areas: Science advice to government; Commercialization, venture capital and intellectual property; Federally funded research performed in government and higher education; and “Big science” projects and Canada’s position in global science and technology. Submissions must less than 5 pages in length, and emailed in by April 18 2008. No indication of what file formats are accepted.