Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Scientific American recognizes two OA leaders

Today Scientific American announced this year's SciAm 50.  Two of the winners have an OA connection.

  • The first place award, Research leader of the year, went to the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) for its work on "the mammoth challenge of ferreting out the causes of diseases in which multiple genes are implicated."  The SciAm citation doesn't mention that WTCCC freely shares its data, summary statistics, and software.
  • Ilaria Capua was recognized for her work on OA for avian flu data.  From the citation:  "Until recently, laboratories doing bird flu research often kept their findings private, with access to many avian influenza gene sequences confined to just 15 facilities globally....Instead of entering her avian influenza findings into this database, Ilaria Capua of Vialle University in Padua, Italy, disclosed the results of her studies in the publicly accessible GenBank and boldly rallied her colleagues to follow.  Her efforts helped to pave the way for the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data, a consortium through which findings can be freely shared while giving credit to researchers involved."  Also see my blog posts on her OA work.

PS:  Congratulations to Ilaria Capua and everyone at the WTCCC.