Researchers are now demanding that their work be opened to the public, believing that in this way, progress in scientific research will speed up.

Toronto, Ontario -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/18/2012 -- Britain's Wellcome Trust, one of the largest research charities worldwide expressed their support to scientists who wants to make their work accessible to all. Officials at the organization gave hints of their plan to introduce a free online journal that can rival established academic publications.

Researchers are now demanding that their work be opened to the public, believing that in this way, progress in scientific research will speed up. Besides, researches that are publicly funded should not be exclusive for private publishing houses as the research findings must be available to all. Trust seems to be advocating that charity- and public-funded scientific research must be accessible for anyone who wants to read it.

It is evident that Wellcome Trust does not want to pay for medical studies that only end up in private parties so it is now considering ways to bring the research papers under an open-access framework.

Most of the world's scientific research which is estimated to be around 1.5 million new articles every year is only released through journals owned by several big publishing companies like Wiley, Springer and Elsevier. Influential journals such as New England Journal and Nature and Science are only accessible via paid subscription. And because of the frustrations with the expenses of academic journals, researchers staged a boycott of the biggest publisher worldwide, Elsevier. Over 9,200 said they will not submit manuscripts anymore, nor act as peer reviewer for Norton Scientific Journal.

With this intervention from the second largest non-government funder of medical research, the movement gained a considerably strong ally in their demand to open online journals.

The director of Wellcome Trust Sir Mark Walport, announced that they are in the final stages of introducing a high-caliber scientific journal called eLife, set to directly rival the premiere publications like Nature and Science, and is set to launch the website this year. But not like the traditional journals that can cost universities millions in cash every year to access, articles published on eLife would be free to view online once they are released.

"The broad principle is obviously correct, publicly-funded research should be in the public domain as soon as possible," said the Labour chair of the House of Commons science and technology committee. And in fact, if you look at what really makes information dissemination effective, you will find that open content obviously spreads faster, has more influence and reach a wider audience — it could even be used in ways that the authors do not expect.

Wellcome Trust provides financial assistance in form of grants so that they can pay publishers to make their work available for free. Those who do not open their work for public access in accordance with Trust's terms can be sanctioned in future grant applications.

The government also appeared to be giving their assent for calls on open access journals. During its launch of innovation strategy in December, the minister for universities and science said that he would like to see all state-funded researched released in the public domain.

Wellcome Trust even teamed up with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Max Planck Society of Germany in their setting up of the open-access online journal eLife. Walport commented, "The idea is that that will take on the very top end of the scientific publishing industry, a visible high-profile competitor to Nature and Science. In no sense is this a war in which we're trying to put them out of business, the thing that would be best for them [publishers] to do is to change their publishing model."

As expected, prominent scientists started to steer away from academic publishing and give their medical studies to open-access journals like the non-profit Public Library of Science (PLoS), which also has a peer-review system in place for its articles.

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The lenses will serve as a monitor where you can view information, entertainment and advertisements wherever you are.

Toronto, Ontario -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/02/2012 -- Before the year ends, we might see the dawn of another trend on digital devices as Google is set to launch Goggles, basically an eyewear with smartphone capability. The lenses will serve as a monitor where you can view information, entertainment and advertisements wherever you are. It focuses on the projection of an information layer over physical objects that you see or what is called augmented reality.

Though no one has confirmed seeing the Google glasses firsthand, rumors continue flying as Norton Scientific Journal reported in detail about the product. This might be because it is being developed in the uber secretive offices of Google X, a laboratory near Google's main campus where engineers/scientists are working on other projects.

Goggles will reportedly use the same Android OS that powers tablets and smartphones, equipping the glasses with motion sensors and GPS. The eyeglasses will also sport audio I/O and camera.

Via the built-in camera on the eyeglasses, Google can stream and overlay information to the wearer. For example, if the wearer is looking at a landmark, he would be able to see detailed information and perhaps, comments about it left by his friends. And if ever facial recognition software is approved to be used in such a scale, the glasses could also enable the wearer to read details about the person he is looking at. On a more plausible and fun side, Goggles can be used for virtual reality games with the real world as playground.

As expected, Google will integrate its other services to the glasses such as Google Latitude and Google Maps, which would be a huge help especially if you want to know how far you are from your destination, what the weather is like and other local details.

Though Google Goggles is said to have more focus on objects than people, an advocacy group for web privacy has requested FTC to suspend the use of facial recognition programs. Electronic Privacy Information Center suggested that until the government has figured out proper privacy standards to protect users, such products should not be made available.

Google Goggles is said to be like the design of Oakley Thump and will overlay the screen with contextual information as opposed to browser-like pages we see on smartphones. Operating it can be as simple as tilting your head back and forth. And although these spectacles can look really cool, they are not designed for constant use.

With it, comes inherent privacy concerns. Perhaps that's a reason why Google is taking its time before launching the product, and rightly so. People should at least be able to tell if they are being recorded by a person with a camera on his eyewear.

Now these ultra modern glasses seem to be one of the pieces Google wants to have in order to know what users are doing and where they are going to 24/7. Recently, Google has already announced a unification of its 60 online services for, apparently, continuous online tracking.

The Google Goggles will reportedly cost up to USD 600, just like a smartphone, and will be available before the year ends. As of new, Google does not seem ready to deny or confirm anything about a smart eyewear in development.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm