(24 Feb 2021) On February 16, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a sub-decree on the establishment of a national internet gateway which would create a single point of entry for internet traffic regulated by a government-appointed operator. While the specifics of its implementation remain unclear, the move exacerbates ongoing concerns about internet freedom in the country…
(25 Mar 2021) The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the National University of Laos (NUOL) today signed a memorandum of agreement to expand access to ADB’s research and other publications to a wider audience in the country. The agreement was signed by ADB Country Director for the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) Sonomi Tanaka…
(24 Mar 2021) Today, the European Commission launched Open Research Europe, a publishing platform for scientific papers that will be accessible to everyone. The platform will present the results of research funded by Horizon Europe, the EU research and innovation programme for 2021-2027, and its predecessor, Horizon 2020. Open Research Europe will give everyone, researchers and citizens…
(25 Mar 2021) Today is the first anniversary of the start of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Level 4 COVID-19 lockdown. At this time, one year ago today, one in five of the world’s population (around 1.7 billion people) were also experiencing some form of lockdown, including cancellations of public events and gatherings, stay-at-home recommendations and/or orders,…
(March 2021) Ten years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake. One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Japan, it caused widespread damage to the eastern coastal region, especially in the northeast. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami took a heavy toll of lives and caused massive damage to buildings and facilities, including…
(24 Mar 2021) Jisc, the not for profit for research and education, is launching a toolkit that will help new university presses to find sustainable ways to publish open access. Funder policies surrounding open access have led to a revival in university presses in the UK and overseas. A 2017 report found that in the past five years,…
(23 Mar 2021) Springer Nature has signed its first ever institutional open access (OA) book agreement with the University of California, Berkeley Library. The agreement will cover a broad range of book titles across all disciplines — from humanities and social sciences to sciences, technology and mathematics and, starting in 2021 and running for at least…
(22 Mar 2021) University rankings are imbued with great significance by university staff and leadership teams and the outcomes of their ranking systems can have significant material consequences. Drawing on a curious example from their own institution, Jelena Brankovic argues that taking rankings as proxies for quality or performance in a linear-causal fashion is a…
Site offers access millions of scientific research papers which detectives say were illegally obtained through phishing attacks (20 Mar 2021) Police are warning students and universities not to use a popular pirate website offering free access to millions of scientific research papers. Sci-Hub, which was set up by Alexandra Elbakyan, a graduate student…
(17 Mar 2021) Wikipedia is launching a paid-for service in an effort to charge big tech companies for access to its trove of information. While the encyclopedia is run by a non-profit that operates on donations, keeping the essential online resource free for general users, it is readying a commercial product for later this year, reports Wired.…