Mozilla Science Lab, GitHub and Figshare team up to fix the citation of code in academia - The Next Web

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-03-18

Summary:

"Academia has a problem. Research is becoming increasingly computational and data-driven, but the traditional paper and scientific journal has barely changed to accommodate this growing form of analysis. The current referencing structure makes it difficult for anyone to reproduce the results in a paper, either to check findings or build upon their results. In addition, scientists that generate code for middle-author contributions struggle to get the credit they deserve. The Mozilla Science Lab, GitHub and Figshare – a repository where academics can upload, share and cite their research materials – is starting to tackle the problem. The trio have developed a system so researchers can easily sync their GitHub releases with a Figshare account. It creates a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) automatically, which can then be referenced and checked by other people. The advantages over simply linking to GitHub are twofold. For one, the DOI points to the synced release on Figshare, so the data won’t be affected if the original GitHub repository is updated. The page on GitHub is still accessible for anyone who wants to review the project’s development, but this approach ensures the code referenced in a paper can be easily reviewed. For another, the DOI is a persistent link. Broken links are a growing problem for academia, as link structures are changed and online content is edited. 'If your persistent link is pointing to something on Figshare, which is ‘this GitHub repository at that version, at that release,’ then even if the GitHub repository changes or Figshare changes its link structure, that DOI will always point to that object,' Mark Hahnel, founder of Figshare said. Academics will be able to leverage the GitHub and Figshare integration in two different ways. A new area of the Figshare site will give researchers the ability to pull releases in from a connected account. Mozilla, meanwhile, is offering a bookmarklet or browser extension which can be activated at any GitHub repository. Select it to build a DOI, add in any other information for an accurate, well-formed citation and then it’ll be pushed to Figshare with a redirect going back and forth between the two sites."

Link:

http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/03/17/mozilla-science-lab-github-figshare-team-fix-citation-code-academia/#!AtQuQ

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.citations oa.data oa.software oa.github oa.figshare oa.mozilla_science_lab oa.dois oa.impact oa.preservation

Date tagged:

03/18/2014, 16:28

Date published:

03/18/2014, 12:28