Open-Access & Open-Science (Science 22/01/16)

In 2005, the Wellcome Trust became the first research institution to mandate Open-Access to any publication that stemmed from research funded by the trust. In October 2015 Kate Arkless Gray wrote an interesting article on “10 years of Open Access at the Wellcome Trust in 10 numbers” at the Wellcome Trust blog.

Today in Science, Brian Owen’s reports that the Montreal Neurological Institute is going  further still to become the first scientific institute where all research must follow Open-Science principles.

Taking the lead from government-funded Open-Science successes such as the Human Genome Project, results & data from MNI research will be made freely available on publication, and the institute will not be pursuing patents.

The intent is that neuroscience research will become more efficient if duplication is reduced and data are shared more widely and earlier. Opening access to the tissue samples in MNI’s biobank and to its extensive databank of brain scans and other data will have a major impact, [MNI Director] Rouleau hopes. “We think that it is a way to accelerate discovery and the application of neuroscience.”

Montreal institute going ‘open’ to accelerate science
Science  22 Jan 2016:
Vol. 351, Issue 6271, pp. 329
DOI: 10.1126/science.351.6271.329