Open-access Framework Research Articles

A new optimization framework for piezoelectric actuators location identification

The study addresses piezoelectric actuator placement for active vibration control using an open-access framework that couples ANSYS and Python. It outlines a three-stage procedure: creating a finite element model in ANSYS APDL, using Python to determine the objective function, and applying a genetic algorithm optimization to find optimal actuator locations. Numerical simulations on plates and thin-walled conical structures demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, showing it efficiently finds optimal placements with minimal search time and energy requirements. The study provides open-access codes for the framework, enhancing its accessibility and reproducibility.

Framework for a living systematic review and meta-analysis for the surgical treatment of bladder cancer: introducing EVIglance to urology.

Knowledge of current and ongoing studies is critical for identifying research gaps and enabling evidence-based decisions for individualized treatment. However, the increasing number of scientific publications poses challenges for healthcare providers and patients in all medical fields to stay updated with the latest evidence. To overcome these barriers, we aim to develop a living systematic review and open-access online evidence map of surgical therapy for bladder cancer (BC), including meta-analyses. Following the guidelines provided in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Statement, a systematic literature search on uro-oncological therapy in BC will be performed across various literature databases. Within the scope of a meta-analysis and living systematic review, relevant randomized controlled trials will be identified. Data extraction and quantitative analysis will be conducted, along with a critical appraisal of the quality and risk of bias of each study. The available research evidence will be entered into an open-access framework (www.evidencemap.surgery) and will also be accessible via the EVIglance app. Regular semi-automatic updates will enable the implementation of a real-living review concept and facilitate resource-efficient screening. A regularly updated evidence map provides professionals and patients with an open-access knowledge base on the current state of research, allowing for decision-making based on recent evidence. It will help identify an oversupply of evidence, thus avoiding redundant work. Furthermore, by identifying research gaps, new hypotheses can be formulated more precisely, enabling planning, determination of sample size, and definition of endpoints for future trials.

An Open-Access Toolkit for Collaborative, Community-Informed Dictionaries

ABSTRACT: In this article, we discuss the development of a relational lexicography framework and an open-access toolkit for collaborative, community-informed dictionaries. We explain how the relational lexicography toolkit supports envisioning, developing, and publishing dictionaries that meet the cultural, linguistic, and educational goals of Indigenous communities who, despite ongoing language shift, are working to strengthen their languages. This framework recognizes the many relationships that are present in community-based language projects, including relationships between speakers, dialects, academics, communities, and the dictionary itself. The toolkit, which comprises two online Knowledgebase of Indigenous language dictionaries and lexicography technologies, documents how these relationships have been represented in existing work and provides a centralized platform to refer to and compare resources. Overall, this article provides background context on our methodology, project development, aspects of the resulting resources, and the anticipated benefit of creating such an open-access framework in support of community-based lexicography.

Remote sensing analysis on primary productivity and forest cover dynamics: A Western Ghats India case study

Tropical forest ecosystems are among the most essential habitats on Earth for conserving biological diversity and short-term climate regulation. For this reason, they are key areas of conservation policies in the world. In this paper, we aim to investigate the dynamics of forest cover and their changes in primary productivity by empowering information on historical forest management and fieldwork research with remote sensing vegetation monitoring methods. The study area falls within the central portion of the Indian Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot. In particular, part of the analysis was performed on the Kadamakal Reserve Forest and Pushpagiri Wildlife Sanctuary, which harbours an endemic low elevation dipterocarp evergreen forest. This area was managed by selective logging and became fully protected in 1984. We performed multiple time series macroscale analyses between 1999 and 2020 on the Indian Central Western Ghats region, using satellite products at 1 km spatial resolution from the VITO Copernicus Global Land Service on Dry Matter Productivity, Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation, and Normalised Difference Vegetation Index. We also performed a very-high spatial resolution Normalised Difference Vegetation Index differential analysis between 2021 and 2016 with Sentinel 2-L2A products to investigate forest dynamics within the reserve. At the 1 km spatial resolution has been found an increase in all three vegetation indices, by employing the LOESS statistical method for the smoothed transition autoregressive model of raster data medians of our datasets. The boxplot raster distribution analysis also highlighted a significant imbalance in dry matter productivity in the last decade (2010−2020) comparing the previous one (1999–2009). The second part of the analysis, at 10 m spatial resolution within the reserve forest, revealed a growth in the vegetation cover on the top of the Pushpagiri Mountain ridge and in a previously landslide area. The study found new erosion channels down to the upper plateau on the South-West side of the reserve due to an increment of the run-off processes during the monsoon period. This satellite analysis highlighted generalised positive vegetation trends in the Central Western Ghats, India, over the last twenty-two years, enhancing an improvement in the ecosystem functioning and carbon storage ecosystem service. Notably, through this work, we also developed a standardised and open-access framework to monitor the vegetation remotely (SVIT) during periods of forest inaccessibility for fieldwork sampling.

Herbivore species coexistence in changing rangeland ecosystems: First high resolution national open-source and open-access ensemble models for Iceland

Rangeland ecosystems are changing worldwide with the abandonment of extensive pastoralism practices and greater interest for species coexistence. However, the lack of compiled data on current changes in the abundance and distribution of herbivores challenges rangeland management decisions. Here we gathered and made available for the first time the most extensive set of occurrence data for rangeland herbivores in Iceland in an Open Access framework for transparent and repeatable science-based decisions. We mapped fine scale species distribution overlap to identify areas at risk for wildlife-livestock conflict and overgrazing. Nationwide and long term (1861–2021) occurrence data from 8 independent datasets were used alongside 11 predictor raster layers (“Big Data”) to data mine and map the distribution of the domestic sheep (Ovis aries), feral reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus), pink-footed geese (Anser brachyrhynchus), and rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta islandorum) over the country during the summer. Using algorithms of Maxent in R, RandomForest, TreeNet (stochastic gradient boosting) and MARS (Splines) in Minitab-SPM 8.3, we computed 1 km pixel predictions from machine learning-based ensemble models. Our high-resolution models were tested with alternative datasets, and Area Under the Curve (AUC) values that indicated good (reindeer: 0.8817 and rock ptarmigan: 0.8844) to high model accuracy (sheep: 0.9708 and pink-footed goose: 0.9143). Whenever possible, source data and models are made available online and described with ISO-compliant metadata. Our results illustrate that sheep and pink-footed geese have the greatest overlap in distribution with potential implication for wildlife-livestock conflicts and continued ecosystem degradation even under diminishing livestock abundance at higher elevation. These nationwide models and data are a global asset and a first step in making available the best data for science-based sustainable decision-making about national herbivores affecting species coexistence and environmental management.

Traffic generation for benchmarking data centre networks

Benchmarking is commonly used in research fields, such as computer architecture design and machine learning, as a powerful paradigm for rigorously assessing, comparing, and developing novel technologies. However, the data centre network (DCN) community lacks a standard open-access and reproducible traffic generation framework for benchmark workload generation. Driving factors behind this include the proprietary nature of traffic traces, the limited detail and quantity of open-access network-level data sets, the high cost of real world experimentation, and the poor reproducibility and fidelity of synthetically generated traffic. This is curtailing the community's understanding of existing systems and hindering the ability with which novel technologies, such as optical DCNs, can be developed, compared, and tested.We present TrafPy; an open-access framework for generating both realistic and custom DCN traffic traces. TrafPy is compatible with any simulation, emulation, or experimentation environment, and can be used for standardised benchmarking and for investigating the properties and limitations of network systems such as schedulers, switches, routers, and resource managers. We give an overview of the TrafPy traffic generation framework, and provide a brief demonstration of its efficacy through an investigation into the sensitivity of some canonical scheduling algorithms to varying traffic trace characteristics in the context of optical DCNs. TrafPy is open-sourced via GitHub and all data associated with this manuscript via RDR.

Function Splitting, Isolation, and Placement Trade-Offs in Network Slicing

We model the network slice provisioning as an optimization problem including novel mapping and provisioning requirements rising with new radio and core function placement policies. We propose an open-access framework based on an MILP formulation that encompasses flexible functional splitting, with possibly different splitting for different slices and slice subnets, while taking into account different network sharing policies from 5G specifications. We also consider novel mapping and continuity constraints specific to the 5G architectures and beyond. We show by numerical simulations the impact of taking into full and partial consideration these peculiar novel technical constraints.

When I use a word . . . . Bioscience journals-an open and shut case?

The term “open access” as applied to journals, widely and now inescapably used, is misleading. It implies that access to other journals is restricted. The important factor, however, is not openness or restrictedness, but who pays for access, readers and their sponsors (reader-directed access) or authors and their sponsors (author-directed access). Emerging evidence suggests that authors in low income countries can be disadvantaged by current author-directed fees in the open access framework, a problem that needs to be tackled. The recent “diamond” model may be beneficial, but it is much too soon to know.

Probabilistic Safety Assessment for internal and external events on nuclear power plants and on mitigation strategies/H2020 European projects NARSIS, R2CA and BESEP

The NARSIS project aimed at improving assessment methodologies to be integrated into “extended Probabilistic Safety Assessment” (PSA) procedures for nuclear plants in case of single, cascade and combined external natural events. An open-access framework tool has been released to build multi-hazard scenarios, and various risk integration approaches (e.g., Bayesian Networks) have been implemented and compared, identifying their advantages and limits for further collaborative research activities. The R2CA project aims at harmonizing the safety analysis methods for best estimate evaluations of the radiological consequences, in case of Design Basis Accidents and Design Extension Conditions without significant fuel melting. It is planned to improve models and upgrade existing simulation tools and calculation chains used in safety studies. Finally, the BESEP project is to support safety margin determination, by developing best practices for safety requirement verification against external hazards, using efficient and integrated set of Safety Engineering practices and PSA. The project is carried out in a benchmark exercise based on case studies previously performed by the consortium participants. All three projects aim to improve nuclear safety within the European research and development framework. The research objectives are achieved by the development and improvement of proven and justified safety assessment methodologies for the verification of stringent safety requirements of nuclear industry.

Teaching: confidence, prediction and tolerance intervals in scientific practice: a tutorial on binary variables

BackgroundOne of the emerging themes in epidemiology is the use of interval estimates. Currently, three interval estimates for confidence (CI), prediction (PI), and tolerance (TI) are at a researcher's disposal and are accessible within the open access framework in R. These three types of statistical intervals serve different purposes. Confidence intervals are designed to describe a parameter with some uncertainty due to sampling errors. Prediction intervals aim to predict future observation(s), including some uncertainty present in the actual and future samples. Tolerance intervals are constructed to capture a specified proportion of a population with a defined confidence. It is well known that interval estimates support a greater knowledge gain than point estimates. Thus, a good understanding and the use of CI, PI, and TI underlie good statistical practice. While CIs are taught in introductory statistical classes, PIs and TIs are less familiar.ResultsIn this paper, we provide a concise tutorial on two-sided CI, PI and TI for binary variables. This hands-on tutorial is based on our teaching materials. It contains an overview of the meaning and applicability from both a classical and a Bayesian perspective. Based on a worked-out example from veterinary medicine, we provide guidance and code that can be directly applied in R.ConclusionsThis tutorial can be used by others for teaching, either in a class or for self-instruction of students and senior researchers.

Bridging educational innovation and financial offices: using the Business Model Canvas modified for medical educators to communicate need

ABSTRACT Background Medical education programs are faced with the ubiquitous challenge to innovate, which requires financial resources. Medical educators often face challenges of how best to communicate with financial officers to justify the expense for educational innovations. The Association of American Medical Colleges groups on business affairs and educational affairs collaborated to address this communication issue. Methods The Business Model Canvas is an open access framework designed for industry. It was revised to address the needs of medical educators. Results The adapted version for medical education modified the flow and content of the pre-existing canvas to better align with how educators think, yet support communication to executive leadership via a familiar framework. The nine blocks of the modified Business Model Canvas for Medical Educators include: value proposition, key stakeholders, stakeholder relationships, key activities, delivery logistics, key resources, key partners, revenue streams and cost structure (including program evaluation and reflection on costs). Questions are posed for each component to steer a thorough anticipation of educational program needs and to encourage creative approaches to address those needs. Conclusions This step by step framework helps financial officers and medical educators better communicate about the value, resource needs and feasibility of proposed medical education innovations. For medical educators, this process provides a framework to explain the return on investment anticipated from innovations.

Quinoa Phenotyping Methodologies: An International Consensus.

Quinoa is a crop originating in the Andes but grown more widely and with the genetic potential for significant further expansion. Due to the phenotypic plasticity of quinoa, varieties need to be assessed across years and multiple locations. To improve comparability among field trials across the globe and to facilitate collaborations, components of the trials need to be kept consistent, including the type and methods of data collected. Here, an internationally open-access framework for phenotyping a wide range of quinoa features is proposed to facilitate the systematic agronomic, physiological and genetic characterization of quinoa for crop adaptation and improvement. Mature plant phenotyping is a central aspect of this paper, including detailed descriptions and the provision of phenotyping cards to facilitate consistency in data collection. High-throughput methods for multi-temporal phenotyping based on remote sensing technologies are described. Tools for higher-throughput post-harvest phenotyping of seeds are presented. A guideline for approaching quinoa field trials including the collection of environmental data and designing layouts with statistical robustness is suggested. To move towards developing resources for quinoa in line with major cereal crops, a database was created. The Quinoa Germinate Platform will serve as a central repository of data for quinoa researchers globally.

Smart grid implementation in Morocco: Case study

Like all industrial sectors in Morocco, the electricity network is facing challenges due to energy demand growth, and environmental protection requirements. Therefore, in 2009, a new Moroccan energy strategy has been adopted to respond to the sustainable development revolution. Its main objectives are to provide sufficient and reliable energy to the country with minimum costs and impacts on the environment. Smart Grid (SG) is one of the aspects that can ensure the success of such strategy. Its implementation helps ensuring more efficient energy and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by adapting production to demand while reducing consumption, integrating renewable energies (RE), and using advanced communication and control technologies. Through this article, we will study the existing state of the Moroccan network, along with its potential of RE, as well as the obstacles and barriers to smart grid development in Morocco. Finally, we will propose solutions and strategies for deploying smart grids in the Kingdom. In which it is necessary to introduce intelligent measurement and analysis systems, to reinforce the regional and international interconnections and promote energy storage. In the alternative, Morocco needs to complete the regulatory framework for open and transparent access to the low-voltage system, particularly by harmonizing authorizations and tariff structures.

A qualitative investigation of addiction counselors' perceptions and experiences implementing an open-access model for treating opioid use disorder

ObjectiveTo examine addiction counselors' perceptions and experiences of implementing an open-access model for methadone maintenance treatment (MMT), in which the program rapidly enrolled prospective patients, irrespective of ability to pay, and provided real-time access to multiple voluntary treatment options. Between 2006, when the treatment program initially implemented this model, and 2020, the census of clients receiving methadone maintenance at the study site grew from 1431 to 4500. MethodsParticipants were 31 addiction counselors employed at a treatment organization that implemented an open-access model to scale up MMT. We examined counselors' perceptions and experiences of working in programs that employed this model, using individual semi-structured interviews, which an interdisciplinary team audiotaped, transcribed, and systematically coded using grounded theory. The team reviewed themes and reconciled disagreements (rater agreement was 98%). We describe themes that more than 10% of participants reported. ResultsCounselors described perceived advantages of the open-access model for clients (e.g., “individualized to client needs”), clinicians (e.g., “fewer demands”), and the community (e.g., “crime reduced”). Counselors also described perceived disadvantages of the open-access model for clinicians (e.g., “uneven workload”) and clients (e.g., “need for more intensive services for some clients”), as well as program-level concerns (e.g., “perceived lack of structure”). ConclusionsCounselors who work in opioid treatment programs that use an open-access framework described multiple benefits to themselves, their clients, and the public; they also outlined disadvantages for themselves and clients, which research should further explore and address to facilitate MMT scale up.

The LOCATA Challenge: Acoustic Source Localization and Tracking

The ability to localize and track acoustic events is a fundamental prerequisite for equipping machines with the ability to be aware of and engage with humans in their surrounding environment. However, in realistic scenarios, audio signals are adversely affected by reverberation, noise, interference, and periods of speech inactivity. In dynamic scenarios, where the sources and microphone platforms may be moving, the signals are additionally affected by variations in the source-sensor geometries. In practice, approaches to sound source localization and tracking are often impeded by missing estimates of active sources, estimation errors, as well as false estimates. The aim of the LOCAlization and TrAcking (LOCATA) Challenge is an open-access framework for the objective evaluation and benchmarking of broad classes of algorithms for sound source localization and tracking. This article provides a review of relevant localization and tracking algorithms and, within the context of the existing literature, a detailed evaluation and dissemination of the LOCATA submissions. The evaluation highlights achievements in the field, open challenges, and identifies potential future directions.

OPEN ACCESS TO SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION AS A FORM OF INFORMATION AND ANALYTICAL SUPPORT OF SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES AND COMMUNICATION

The article analyzes the issue of open access to scientific information, which is currently being discussed in national and foreign studies (V. Bykov, N. Veretennikova, L. Holovko, S. Ivanova, N. Kunanets, L. Luparenko, O. Novitsky, O. Spirin, T. Yaroshenko, A. Yatsyshyn, D. Salo, L. Thomas, F. Manista, et al.). The relevance of the issue is associated with the massive publication of scientific research results in the network, the creation of electronic scientific repositories, and building a specific informational scientific environment. Interpretations of the concepts “open access”, “open educational resources” (OER), “open knowledge”, “electronic open access journal systems” are given. The advantages of using open access to scientific information, features of the “green” and “golden” ways are determined, as well as the electronic platforms that host Ukrainian scientific open access e-journals are analyzed, which constitute the purpose of the article. It is emphasized that the key factors in the emergence of the movement to open access are intensive informatization of society, the emergence and rapid spread of the Internet, as well as the relatively high and ever-increasing price of a subscription to scientific journals. As a result, at the beginning of the 21st century, several international documents appeared, they declared free online access to scientific literature and introduced the concept of open access. Examples of information projects and portals that provide open access to Ukrainian scientific sources: “Scientific periodicals of Ukraine at OJS”, “Science of Ukraine: Access to Knowledge” are given. It is noted that the legal framework for open access is provided by Creative Commons licenses. Examples of open electronic journaling systems used in national scientific institutions are given: Open Journal System (OJS), Joomla! The conclusions prove that awareness of the policy of open access to scientific information and the study of the work principles of the open access scientific electronic publications are important parts of the scientific activity of higher education institution teachers, employees of scientific institutions, doctoral students, and post-graduate students.

CGEBox: A Flexible, Modular and Extendable Framework for CGE Analysis in GAMS

We present CGEBox, an open-source and open-access framework for regional and global Computable General Equilibrium analysis realized in the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) software. It flexibly depicts different nestings in production and factor supply, supports different functional forms for demand and choices in modeling international trade sectors (Armington, Armington plus Constant Elasticity of Transformation to distribute supply, Melitz and Krugman model). Either a regional household approach or separate accounts for government and potentially multiple private households with related closures are available. Supply and factor markets can be dis-aggregated to sub-regions and an implementation for GTAP-AEZ is available. We compare the layout of different well-known global and single country CGE models and discuss to what extent our flexible framework can replicate these layouts. In a structural sensitivity analysis, we compare major results under multi-lateral trade liberalization and endowment changes in one country for different model configurations. These reflect important structural differences between the chosen examples as well as additional features such as the Melitz model or endogenous capital stocks driven by investments in a comparative-static setting. We find relative limited differences in global and regional welfare between models based on the Armington assumption, even if other features differ such as closures, nestings or functional form in demand. A discussion on further joint development of such a framework leads to our summary and conclusions.

Czech Open Access for the Humanities and Social Sciences

ABSTRACTThis article examines the current state of Open Access for the humanities and social sciences in the Czech Republic. Since the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and following the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia in January of 1993, the Open Access movement in the Czech context remains understudied. This article focuses on the current state of affairs of Open Access in the Czech Republic within the European Union framework for Open Access.

Populism: A Threat to Democracy? Or a verification of it?

Abstract The recent surge in the number of populist governments coming into power raises the question of their effect on the prospects for democracy. This article uses the limited vs. open access framework – developed by North, Wallis, Webb and Weingast – to evaluate how populist leaders and their parties govern after coming to power. It looks at episodes of populists in power in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Although most populist governments have kept civilian control of the military, notwithstanding some Latin American exceptions, they have typically moved their societies away from open access and sustainable democracy in several important ways: undermining rule of law in the name of the “will of the people” whom they claim to represent; reducing citizenship rights for unpopular minorities; making rules and their enforcement more personal and dependent on group identity; and hindering a free press and opposition parties that could hold the government accountable and perhaps bring about peaceful democratic transitions in the future. This sheds new light on how open access orders might revert to limited access. JEL Codes: H110, P5

Report from the "What Is Open?" Workgroup

The scholarly community’s current definition of “open” captures only some of the attributes of openness that exist across different publishing models and content types. Open is not an end in itself, but a means for achieving the most effective dissemination of scholarship and research. We suggest that the different attributes of open exist along a broad spectrum and propose an alternative way of describing and evaluating openness based on four attributes: discoverable, accessible, reusable, and transparent. These four attributes of openness, taken together, form the draft “DART Framework for Open Access.” This framework can be applied to both research artifacts as well as research processes. We welcome input from the broader scholarly community about this framework.OSI2016 workgroup questionThere is a broad difference of opinion among the many stakeholders in scholarly publishing about how to precisely define open access publishing. Are “open access” and “open data” what we mean by open? Does “open” mean anything else? Does it mean “to make available,” or “to make freely available in a particular format?” Is a clearer definition needed (or maybe just better education on the current definition)? Why or why not? At present, some stakeholders see public access as being an acceptable stopping point in the move toward open access. Others see “open” as requiring free and immediate access with articles being available in CC-BY format. The range of opinions between these extremes is vast. How should these differences be decided? Who should decide? Is it possible to make binding recommendations (and how)? Is consensus necessary? What are the consequences of the lack of consensus?