Ebola: Crowdsourcing type of access and licensing of the most mentioned articles according to Altmetric

Update: for a follow-up, please read this [opens in a new window].

I have shared a dataset of 497 bibliographic entries of scientific articles mentioning the keyword ‘Ebola’. The spreadsheet is an export from an Altmetric Explorer report obtained on Wednesday 6 August 2014 at 7:55 PM BST. The spreadsheet includes the number of mentions in different social media and Web platforms each article had as tracked by Altmetric at the time of obtaining the report.

We need your help.  Ebola is a relevant topic right now and accessibility to research about it is critical. The intention is to crowdsource the type of access (non-Open Acces or Open Access) of each article (column J) and the type of license (column I).

Please click on the URL of an article (column E) and manually look for access type and license type. If you are accessing the Internet from your institution, please make sure to verify how you are getting access to an article; you may have immediate access to it, but this does not mean the article is Open Access properly. Please include your name and if appropriate Twitter username on column K next to your contributions.

For the purposes of this project an article will qualify as “Open Access” if it is freely accessible without previous membership, login or paywall. It must be described literally as such by the platform/journal that publishes it and must have been published with a Creative Commons or similar open license.

“Free Access”, “Free to You” or any other access model which is not explicitly self-described by the publisher on the article as “Open Access” and is not published with a Creative Commons license should be listed as “non-OA” as there is no guarantee said article will remain available free of charge or that it can be accessed, distributed or reused without cost or previous permission.

“Type of license” (column I) refers to the license with which the article has been published under. Options are “All Rights Reserved” for non-OA articles and all the types of Creative Commons licenses. By definition, any article published under All Rights Reserved cannot qualify as “Open Access” even if it is available without toll. If the license is not clearly visible, please add “N/A”. If the article is published under different type of ‘open’ license (but not CC) please indicate which one.

The data in the spreadsheet might also need refining; i.e. some titles might not be relevant (not scientific articles properly or not about ebola) and these should be removed.

The shared spreadsheet is a public document and all visitors can edit. Please edit respectfully, responsibly and ethically. As such this is also an experiment into the possibilities of open collaboration. Thank you for your contribution!

About the CC licenses: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Source: http://www.altmetric.com/

Spreadsheet shortened URL: http://goo.gl/nxKCmU