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Papers

As part of EACR’s research for the Eurocancercoms project, the following papers have been completed:

• R. Warden, The Internet and science communication: blurring the boundaries, ecancermedicalscience, 4, 2010, DOI: 10.3332/ecancer.2010.203

Abstract

Scientific research is heavily dependent on communication and collaboration. Research does not exist in a bubble; scientific work must be communicated in order to add it to the body of knowledge within a scientific community, so that its members may ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’ and benefit from all that has come before. The effectiveness of scientific communication is crucial to the pace of scientific progress: in all its forms it enables ideas to be formulated, results to be compared, and replications and improvements to be made. The sharing of science is a foundational aspect of the scientific method. This paper, part of the policy research within the FP7 EUROCANCERCOMS project, discusses how the Internet has changed communication by cancer researchers and how it has the potential to change it still more in the future. It will detail two broad types of communication: formal and informal, and how these are changing with the use of new web tools and technologies.

Click here to download a PDF of the paper

 

• R. Kenney & R. Warden, An Open Access Future? Report from the eurocancercoms project, ecancermedicalscience, 5, 2011, DOI: 10.3332/ecancer.2011.223

Abstract

In March 2011, as part of the background research to the FP7 Eurocancercoms project, the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) conducted an online survey of its members working in Europe to discover their experiences of and attitudes to the issues surrounding academic publishing and Open Access. This paper presents the results from this survey and compares them to the results from a much larger survey on the same topic from the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP). The responses from both surveys show very positive attitudes to the Open Access publishing route; perhaps the most challenging statistic from the EACR survey is that 88% of respondents believe that publicly funded research should be made available to be read and used without access barriers

As a conclusion and invitation to further discussion, this paper also contributes to the debate around subscription and Open Access publishing, supporting the case for accelerating the progress towards Open Access publishing of cancer research articles as a particularly supportive way of assisting all researchers to make unhindered progress with their work.

Click here to download a PDF of the paper

Click here to download a PDF of the full results from the EACR Open Access survey

 

• R. Warden, Impact of caBIG on the European cancer community, ecancermedicalscience, 5, 2011, DOI: 10.3332/ecancer.2011.225

Abstract

The cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) was launched in 2003 by the US National Cancer Institute with the aim of connecting research teams through the use of shared infrastructure and software to collect, analyse and share data. It was an ambitious project, and the issue it aimed to address was huge and far-reaching. With such developments as the mapping of the human genome and the advancement of new technologies for the analysis of genes and proteins, cancer researchers have never produced so much complex data, nor have they understood so much about cancer on a molecular level. This new ‘molecular understanding’ of cancer, according to the caBIG 2007 ‘Pilot Report’ , leads to molecular or ‘personalised’ medicine being the way forward in cancer research and treatment, and connects basic research to clinical care in an unprecedented way. But the former ‘silo-like’ nature of research does not lend itself to this brave new world of molecular medicine – individual labs and institutes working in isolation, “in effect, as cottage industries, each collecting and interpreting data using a unique language of their own” will not advance cancer research as it should be advanced. The solution proposed by the NCI in caBIG was to produce an integrated informatics grid (‘caGrid’) to incorporate open source, open access tools to collect, analyse and share data, enabling everyone to use the same methods and language for these tasks.

caBIG is primarily a US-based endeavour, and though the tools are openly available for users worldwide, it is in US NCI-funded cancer centres that they have been actively introduced and promoted with the eventual hope, according to the pilot report, of being able to do the same worldwide. caBIG also has a collaboration in place with the UK organisation NCRI to exchange technologies and research data. The European Association for Cancer Research, a member association for cancer researchers, conducted an online survey in January 2011 to identify the penetration of the ambitious caBIG project into European laboratories. The survey was sent to 6396 researchers based in Europe, with 764 respondents, a total response rate of 11.94%.

Click here to download a PDF of the paper