We are very pleased to announce the publication of an article detailing the working group’s aims and achievements in PLoS Biology’s Community Pages.

‘The Open Knowledge Foundation: Open Data Means Better Science‘ has already had over 1800 article views and offers a fantastic opportunity to engage the biological community in the work we do and raise awareness of the importance of open data in science.

Published in the same edition was a Perspectives piece tackling an issue that the working group has taken a great interest in – the use of non-commercial clauses in licenses for open access articles. In ‘Why Full Open Access Matters‘, Professor Michael Carroll, a Creative Commons bord member and Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University states “We are living through a moment of fundamental opportunity [for text and data mining, innovative reuse of article material]. Let’s be clear. Only those publishers willing to fully seize this opportunity deserve to call their publications “open access.””.

A lively discussion has been taking place on the open-science and okfn-discuss mailing lists and a plan has been compiled to survey the policies of funders and journals as well as to generate a resource pack on the use of non-commercial clauses and the downstream effects of applying such licenses. Please join the mailing list and the conversation if this is an issue you feel strongly about.