The following is my application to join the European Commission Open Science Policy Platform. The OSPP will provide expert advice to the European Commission on implementing the broader Open Science Agenda. As you will see some of us have a concern that the focus of the call is on organisations, rather than communities.

It has been painful to watch the tensions at the Wikimedia Foundation explode over the last few months and with the stepping down of the Executive Director there seems a mood of conciliation and a desire for WMF to learn from the process. I know next to nothing of the details or the story, so while it is the spur for this post I don’t want to offer any opinions on WMF itself.

Ein Kommentar von Juliane Waack (@Jules_McCloud) Im Rahmen des #inetbib16, kurz für die 13. InetBib-Tagung in Stuttgart, die vom 10. bis 12. Februar stattfand, geisterte ein Zitat von Bernd Schmid-Ruhe, Leiter der Mannheimer Stadtbibliothek, durch die Twitter-Sphere: „Wir brauchen mehr Geeks und weniger Büchertanten.“ Diese Formulierung ist, gelinde gesagt, ungeschickt.

Eine Anmerkung von Ben Kaden (@bkaden) Man ist geneigt, in Rafael Ball, den Direktor der Bibliothek der ETH Zürich, nach seinen jüngsten Äußerungen einen nur mit begrenzter Bodenhaftung ausgestatten Radikaldenker des zeitgenössischen Bibliothekswesens zu sehen. Im Prinzip folgt er jedoch, und auch das muss man anerkennen, einer bibliothekstheoretischen Ideenwelt, die einmal sehr progressiv war.

Eine Anmerkung zu: Urs Heftrich: Studieren geht über kopieren . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 05.02.2016, S. 14. online bei faz.net von Ben Kaden (@bkaden) Auch an einem schönen Freitag wie diesem gibt es manchmal traurige Nachrichten.

I promised some thinking out loud and likely naive and uninformed opinion in my plans for the new year. Here’s a start on that with apologies to Science and Technology Studies and Cultural Studies people who’ve probably thought all of this through.

Cite as “*Bilder G, Lin J, Neylon C (2016) Where are the pipes? Building Foundational Infrastructures for Future Services, retrieved [date], http://cameronneylon.net/blog/where-are-the-pipes-building-foundational-infrastructures-for-future-services/ ‎” * **You probably don’t think too much about where all the services to your residence run. They go missing from view until something goes wrong.

Mit großem Erstaunen musste der Vorstand des LIBREAS-Vereins zur Kenntnis nehmen, dass die Philosophische Fakultät der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf das Fach und den Studiengang der Informationswissenschaft als entbehrlich ansieht. (vgl. hier) Wir halten diese Sicht für einen großen Fehler.

I’m not much for end of year or beginning of year posts but I have found that putting down plans is a good way of holding myself to account (and that a few people out there might help with that job…you know who you are). I also think my use of this space may change a little over the coming year, so for those of you still using RSS (yes! we do still exist!) this may have an impact on including me or not in your selection for 2016.

I’ve been engaged in different ways with some people in the rare genetic disease community for a few years. In most cases the initial issue that brought us together was access to literature and in some cases that lead towards Open Science issues more generally. Many people in the Open Access space have been motivated by personal stories and losses, and quite a few of those relate to rare genetic diseases.