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Nomination Deadline is Approaching—The Accelerating Science Award Program

PLOS Publishing

There is less than two weeks for ASAP program award nominations.  This is an opportunity to showcase significant examples of Open Access reuse and to bestow $30,000 to three winners who will be recognized at an Open Access Week kickoff event hosted by SPARC and the World Bank. The winners will be those individuals or teams that have used, applied or remixed scientific research – published through Open Access – to innovate and make a difference in science, medicine, business, technology or society as a whole. Anyone who meets the criteria is eligible — scientists, researchers, educators, social services professionals, technology leaders, entrepreneurs, policy makers, patient advocates, public health workers, librarians and students.

Here are some key aspects of the ASAP program:

  • Three top ASAP program awards of $30,000 each
  • Anyone can nominate, individuals can nominate themselves
  • Nominators are anonymous and blinded for the selection process
  • June 15, 2013 deadline
  • A simple online form located at the ASAP website: http://asap.plos.org
  • Judges include: Harold Varmus, Agnes Binagwaho, Helga Notwotny, Tim O’Reilly, and Hans Rosling
  • 27 Global sponsors including major sponsors: the Wellcome Trust, PLOS and Google

Here are some examples of potential nominations (please note that these are for illustrative purposes only and not meant to represent any actual researcher, innovative use, individual, or organization, and they do not cover all the potential innovative use cases)

  • The health minister of a low income country was able to confidently and      quickly change cancer treatment protocols based on an oncology research      article detailing successful uses of a repurposed cancer drug published by a peer reviewed, Open Access journal, which had been translated into multiple languages by a group of retired language teachers.
  • A bioinformatics team repurposes existing source codes used for searching genomic data associated with individual cancer tumors to create a new open source algorithm and web tool that can search multiple tumor types simultaneously, enabling faster and more comprehensive searches by      oncologists for use in clinical treatment of cancer patients
  • A climate policy expert took original figures and examples from a recent Open Access climate change research paper —  correlating temperature increases with rises in ocean depth — and repurposed these findings in a policy-focused presentation at a conference of experts from 25 Asian and Oceanic countries – leading to the adoption of stricter emissions standards by several participating countries.
  •  A patient advocate creates a new web community for individuals with a rare genetic disorder and their families; this website curates existing and newly available open access research about causes and treatment protocols, and offers interpretative science articles and a user forum to help nonscientist readers better understand the science presented

*For more information on the ASAP program, please visit asap.plos.org. See also the Program rules at http://asap.plos.org/nominate/rules/. Follow the ASAP Program on Twitter at #SciASAP.

 

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