*Written on the train on the way from Barcelona to Grenoble. This life really is a lot less exotic than it sounds…*  The workshop that I’ve reported on over the past few days was both positive and inspiring. There is a real sense that the ideas of Open Access and Open Data are becoming mainstream.

I received the rejection letter late last week but hadn’t got as far as posting about this yet. Given the referee’s comments this was not surprising. We were ranked 20 out of 21 proposals that were considered by the panel. This is not nearly so bad as it sounds. The story as that there were over a hundred proposals so to actually get to the panel wasn’t a bad thing in its own right.

So we have received the referees comments on the network proposal and after a bit of a delay I have received permission to make them public. You can find a pdf of the referee’s comments here. I have started to draft a reply which is published on google docs. I have given a number of people access but if you are feeling left out and would like to contribute just drop me a line.

Shirley Wu from Stanford left a comment on my New Years Resolutions post suggesting the possibility of a session on Open Science at the PSB meeting in Hawaii in 2009 which I wanted to bring to front for peoples attention. She also has a post on her new blog One Big Lab where she fleshes out the idea in a bit more detail and which is probably the best place to continue the discussion. Hi Shirley!

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I have not in fact fallen off the end of the world. I have just been a little run off my feet over the last week or so. A quick weekend trip to the south of France (see here for probably rather too much detail) and a lot of other things, not least some wrangling over allowed costs for the grant, have been keeping me busy.

Enough said. Thanks to everyone who helped. I will reflect on the process at a later stage and will put the complete proposal up as soon as I can. If anyone wants to send letters of support or get involved don’t feel that you’ve missed the boat. Whether the money comes up or not we ought to be doing something along these lines and I can always include more material when we reply to referee’s comments.

The text of the proposal is now in a near complete form. I need to add references and a few others things but it is mostly in reasonable shape. If you would like to have your name included as a founder member of the network please drop me a comment on this post, email, or if I have given you editing rights then feel free to add yourself.

Thanks to all those who have sent letters of support, paragraphs of text, and made comments or modifications to the proposal. Just a quick update on where we are. The text of the proposal is up at GoogleDocs. I believe I have given anyone who has commented on the original post access to edit but if not give me a yell or just send me any comments by email or pop them in as comments here.

Ok. In this morning’s post I proposed the idea of applying for some UK money to support meetings in the general area of open science. I’ve made a start with an outline on a GoogleDoc which can be viewed here. I have tried to set out some general headings and areas to be fleshed out and added a little text. This is early days but if anyone wishes to add anything then please feel free.

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council currently has a call out for proposals to fund ‘Network Activities’ in e-science. This seems like an opportunity to both publicise and support the ‘Open Science’ agenda so I am proposing to write a proposal to ask for ~£150-200k to fund workshops, meetings, and visits between different people and groups.