Weekly digest: Meta’s AI unleashed, an open science impact prize and open data badges

Luke Bratton

This week, we read about how Facebook’s parent company Meta has made its large language model open access, and we share details of an open science impact prize from the Medical Research Council. We also read about the digital badges that have been adopted by PLOS to highlight open data, and finally, we highlight a 6-week course and a 2-day conference for those interested in learning more about open science.

To read:

Meta makes its AI language model open access via Engineering and Technology | 2-minute read

It is thought that artificial intelligence (AI) large language models could help with drug discovery and development, but the development of these models is too resource-intensive for most institutions. Facebook parent company Meta Platforms, Inc. uses its own advanced Open Pre-trained Transformer model to understand vast amounts of text across its technology platforms to answer questions, create text and solve mathematical problems. This week, the tech giant made its model open access for academic researchers, industry research laboratories and civil society.

The Medical Research Council open science impact prize via UKRI | 1-minute read

This year, the Medical Research Council will be awarding three prizes to recognize outstanding contributions by individuals and teams involved in medical research. For the first time, this includes an open science impact prize for the implementation of open science principles to increase accessibility, reproducibility and transparency of research. Nominations open on 23 May 2022, and the winner will receive £20 000 to enhance their project.

Tagging open science research to increase visibility via Center for Open Science | 2-minute read

For new research published in 2022, PLOS will tag papers that link to open data sets with visible badges to make it easier to find open and sharable data. In this article, the Center for Open Science outlines their open science badge programme, which has been running since 2014. It is hoped that increasing the visibility of linked open data will help readers spend less time searching for articles with open data sets.

To engage with:

A 6-week course on open science principles for academia via edX | 3-minute read

edX will be hosting a 6-week course on open science principles, provided by Delft University of Technology. Topics covered will include the concepts and objectives of open science, the available routes for open access publishing, and how to set up an open data-sharing strategy. The course begins on 18 May 2022, and there are free and paid routes available to everyone.

The junction between sustainability and open science: a 2-day conference via The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies | 1-minute read

Hosted by the Finnish Environment Institute, this 2-day Open Science and Research Summer Conference takes place on 31 May and 1 June 2022, and will cover the links between open science and environmental sustainability. The conference will be primarily in the Finnish language. Registration is open for attendance online and in-person in Jyväskylä and Helsinki.

Have you seen our recent commentary about user perspectives on plain language summaries? Read it here in Current Medical Research and Opinion.