It seems like we are on a lucky streak. Another thirteen books in the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine have just been published. Why not add up to your summer reading with the latest research findings and scientific discoveries? All the books are freely available for you to read, share and download.
We always strive to update the scientific community on a regular basis, by providing new research findings and latest discovers in our open access books. This time, a lucky thirteen publications on different subjects in Science, Technology and Medicine has just become available for you to read, share and download.
What’s new this spring? Well, some books are. We have just published 16 new books bringing the latest advances in different areas of Science, Technology and Medicine. All the scientific papers are open access, available for you to read, share and download from our reading platform.
18 new open access books have just been uploaded to our reading platform. With a base of more than 1700 books, InTech places itself as the world leader in publishing highly specialized open access books in science, technology and medicine. Be sure to get hold of our freshest content!
The petition started at the White House homepage this Monday by the Access2Research initiative has already been signed by more than 6000 supporters.
It is always a hot topic and especially so in the States, of who has the right to access the results from research funded by the public, for the public. The petition, requiring free access over the Internet to journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research, aims to escalate the issue inside the White House, as 25,000 signatures in 30 days gets an official Administration response.
“We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.”
This is how the Access2Research petition addresses the public, choosing the approach of a broad public appeal for support, straight to the people. This petition is made possible by the Obama Administration, who have created a web platform to petition the White House directly called We The People. Any petition receiving more than 25,000 digital signatures is placed on the desk of the President’s Chief of Staff and must be integrated into policy and political discussions. In order to qualify, however, the petition must gather the signatures in 30 days.
So far, so good. Only two days into the appeal, and the petition is over 6000-strong. People are sharing the news on social networks and relevant websites, making it more likely that the petition will not only make it to the Chief of Staff’s office, but make a substantial impact and potentially change the debate happening right now.
It is important to point out that the initiative is by no way limited to US citizens. Any open access supporter is invited to sign the petition, it is only required that they register at the White House page with a valid email.
May 21 has been appointed by the UN as World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in 2001 and in 2002, the UN declared May 21 the day to remind us all to think about the values of cultural diversity in society.
The 2012 campaign to promote cultural diversity, organised by UNESCO and the UN Alliance of Civilizations states the following goals:
The UN, on the official web-site page built for this special day, states that:
Placing culture at the heart of development policy constitutes an essential investment in the world’s future and a pre-condition to successful globalization processes that take into account the principles of cultural diversity.
Development is inseparable from culture. In this regard, the major challenge is to convince political decision-makers and local, national and international social actors to integrating the principles of cultural diversity and the values of cultural pluralism into all public policies, mechanisms and practices, particularly through public/private partnerships.
Now, this sounds wonderful. And it is, but this nicely-put quote awakened in us a rushing flow of thoughts and mind-provoking reasoning on the state of cultural diversity in the scientific industry world-wide.
Confused about what does Cultural Diversity Day have to do with the science industry? Let us go back a few steps. Cultural diversity and heterogeneity in terms of a global, diverse array of science output centres is not an issue. Cultural diversity in science has been present, maybe, even longer than the same issue proposed itself in terms of civic and political engagement within and beyond local and global societies. In fact, there is no discrimination based on skin colour, religion or culture in science, as a scientific postulate by a researcher from an economically-less developed country does not have less relevance from the one of a Western country. But, what the global scientific community might be biased with, taking the example aforementioned, is the level of access to research and knowledge given to the Western country scientist in comparison to his less-developed country fellow. Being known in the scientific community that, on one hand, traditional scientific publishing requires paying for subscriptions to access published research, and on the other hand, it is a general conception that it publishes what is to be considered the scientific elite as it attracts readership, it all comes down to what turns around all industries today: money. If 
getting a good education requires quite a bit of funding, and so does paying for subscription to access research, the economic imbalance between societies strikes and imposes the imbalance in cultural diversity in terms of heterogeneity of scientific research papers output. However, if this is an on-going discussion firing the global scientific community for decades now, with the introduction of open access and its benefits being free access to research world-wide, the science dinosaurs of our time might face what the animal-like did thousands of year ago: extinction.
The recent joined efforts of world-renowned scientists and experts and InTech as a publisher resulted in 22 impressive new titles. To see what is new this spring in the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine, feel free to browse through our rich collection of scientific books supported by this latest addition.
