"Until and unless universal Open Access prevails on the planet, my words are better dubbed profitless than prophetic," responds Professor Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton's impatient archivangelist, to being dubbed "A Prophet Whose Time Has Come" in Information Today's February cover story, an interview by the chronicler of the Open Access movement, Richard Poynder.

"And without the boundless talent and resourcefulness of the School of Electronics and Computer Science and its EPrints team (led by Dr Les Carr), the words would also have been empty," continued Professor Harnad.

Among the Open Access highlights for 2009 Information Today lists:

(1) The Houghton Report for JISC demonstrated the substantial benefits of Open Access for the UK economy as well as globally.

(2) With the reintroduction of the US Federal Research Public Access Act to mandate Open Access to federally funded research, President Obama has launched a public consultation on public access policies for US federal science and technology funding agencies.

(3) The German National Parliament (Bundestag) has likewise been petitioned to mandate OA.

Prior to all this, the UK Parliamentary Select Committee had already recommended mandating OA in 2004, and mandates have already been adopted by all the UK research funding councils in 2006-7. It can be fairly said that Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science - the first in the world to mandate OA (2003) and the provider of the world's first OA repository software (EPrints, 2000) - was a significant factor in the UK's lead in OA.

Southampton continues to help shape OA policy worldwide, in its role in two mose of Information Today's 2009 highlights:

(4) The Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS), a new portal for educational materials on the “concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving Open Accessâ€?

and

(5) Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS), an international information service and a forum committed to “opening up of scholarship and researchâ€? conformant with “the growing open access, open education, open science and open innovation movements.â€?

These were both created by Dr Alma Swan of the University of Southampton and Key Perspectives, in collaboration with the Rector of the University of Liege, Professor Bernard Rentier.

Southampton's ROARMAP, the global registry of OA mandates by universities and research funders, continues to grow, with over 100 university mandates and over 40 funder mandates worldwide. Although there is still a long way to go - as the ROAR registry (created by Southampon's Dr Tim Brody) of over 1500 repositories shows -- Harnad writes: "Once we have mandates at the top 750 to 1,500 institutions, we’re safely past the tipping point; the others [10,000] will all follow suit soon enough."

Southampton is also working to complement the Houghton report on the economic benefits of OA with evidence of the benefits of OA to the research community in particular, to give them further incentive to mandate OA. Southampton's Dr Steve Hitchcock maintains a widely used bibliography of the growing number of studies on the effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact, to which Southampton has made many of the fundamental contributions, the latest of which has shown that - contrary to what anti-OA lobbyists have argued - the widely reported increase in downloads and citations associated with OA is not merely an artifact of authors selectively making their better papers OA: The OA impact Advantage remains just as high for mandated OA as it is for self-selected OA.

If any more evidence was needed that OA should be mandated universally as soon as possible, Southampton has now provided that evidence too.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453

Two new appointments at the University of Southampton's Nano Research Group will drive research into a whole new range of nano and bio-nano technologies and lead to global industrial research collaborations.

Professor Peter Ashburn, who has led the Nano Research Group at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) for a number of years, has become Director of the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, a state-of-the-art building fitted out with £50m of the latest nanofabrication technologies.

“I look forward to developing our new Centre,â€? said Professor Ashburn. “We anticipate that all of our partners will be able to benefit from our unique multidisciplinary capability and our wide-ranging nanofabrication expertise.â€?

Professor Hiroshi Mizuta has become Head of the Nano Research Group, which carries out research focusing on fabrication and engineering at the nanometre-length scale in order to produce a wide range of novel devices and integrated systems; much of this research will be realised in the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre. "In my new role, I will have excellent opportunities to combine a range of different technologies to take us in new directions,â€? said Professor Mizuta. “The equipment in the new clean rooms means that we are now capable of fabricating down to one nanometre and can view nanostructures in far more detail. This will result in more interesting collaborations with industry."

Both academics have a strong industry background.

After starting his career at the Philips Research Labs in 1974, where he gained valuable experience of silicon bipolar and MOS technology and electron beam lithography, Professor Ashburn joined the University of Southampton and since then has published over 250 papers and made many research breakthroughs in nanoelectronics technology, particularly in the field of silicon bipolar technology. In 2006, he devised a method to make bipolar transistors twice as fast as current devices; more recent research involves the development of new nanoelectronics technology for healthcare applications, including blood-testing kits which can be mass produced using nanowires.

Professor Mizuta joined ECS from Hitachi. He set up the Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in Tokyo in 1985 and in 1989 he moved to Cambridge where he set up a new Hitachi laboratory and started to liaise with academics at the University of Cambridge with a view to developing ultra small devices which operate by controlling the motion of individual electrons and spins; he has just received a £1M grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to make further groundbreaking advances in this field. His mission is to develop new types of silicon-based devices which create advanced functionalities at nanoscale so that future ICT technology such as mobile phones and computers will be even lighter, more functional and more economical.

Commenting on these new appointments, Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of ECS, said: “Peter and Hiroshi will be leading the management and research directions of our truly world-leading new centre. We have a range of fabrication and characterisation facilities which can be found nowhere else. In a few years time, the latest electronic gadget in your pocket will contain devices invented here by these two and their co-workers.â€?

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.

A conference which will discuss emerging silicon-based nanotechnologies for advanced information and communication devices which mean that mobile phones and computers will be even lighter, more functional and more economical, will be held at the University of Southampton next month.

Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, Head of the Nano Research Group at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), whose research interest is in the development of novel nanoelectronic devices, will host the 2010 International Symposium on Atom-scale Silicon Hybrid Nanotechnologies for ‘More-than-Moore’ and ‘Beyond CMOS’ era on 1 and 2 March 2010 at the University.

For the ‘More than Moore’ era, the researchers are trying to co-integrate conventional electronic devices with other heterogeneous nanotechnologies such as nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS), nanophotonic and nanospintronic devices to meet challenging specifications for advanced applications such as high-performance, extremely low-power and even more functional switch, memory and sensor devices. On the theme of ‘Beyond CMOS’ the researchers will discuss work on atom-scale silicon nanotechnologies which could control individual dopant (impurities in silicon) atoms, charge and spin rates of single-electrons and NEMS states of silicon nanostructures. These extreme silicon nanotechnologies will result in a breakthrough to the next generation digital economy by providing a unique solution to massively-parallel and highly-secure information processing technology and extremely high-density information storage beyond the multi-Tetra-bit/inch2 era.

Eight sessions delivered by eminent academics and industry representatives will address key aspects of the symposium theme which include atomically-controlled nanostructure fabrication, hybrid NEMS technology, single-dopant devices and single-spin technology. These emerging silicon-based nanotechnologies will provide us with a breakthrough to overcome the limits of present ICT systems.

Commenting on the significance of the symposium, Professor Mizuta said: “This event will illustrate that if we adopt unique properties of atomically-controlled nanostructures and heterogeneous co-integration with other emerging technologies such as NEMS, nanophotonics and nanospintronics, we can develop extremely functional information processing devices, faster than anything we could ever have imagined with just conventional technologies.â€?

The 2010 International Symposium on Atom-scale Silicon Hybrid Nanotechnologies for ‘More-than-Moore’ and ‘Beyond CMOS’ will be held at Garden Court, University of Southampton on 1-2 March 2010, sponsored by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.

The Web Science Trust has been granted charitable status, in a move which will enable greater focused, global development of the discipline.

Established in November 2009, the Web Science Trust (WST) was developed to advance education, research and thought leadership in the new discipline of Web Science.

The announcement of its charitable status by the UK Charity Commissioners now enables it to undertake its own independent fundraising and provides it with a greater degree of self-determination.

Launched as a discipline in 2006, under the aegis of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), Web Science brings together researchers and educators from many disciplines to coordinate and support the study of the decentralised information system that is the World Wide Web and to research its impact on society.

With the concept of Web Science now widely disseminated and established as an important area of activity, the Founding Directors of WSRI took the decision last year to establish a charitable body – the Web Science Trust – to take the work forward.

The key people in the Trust, which is chaired by Sir John Taylor, are Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Noshir Contractor, Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Professor James Hendler, Rosemary Leith, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, and Daniel J Weitzner.

‘The establishment of the Web Science Trust and the granting of charitable status marks a significant stage in the global development of the discipline,’ said Professor Wendy Hall. ‘It is a hugely important development for the community - in fact it feels like Web Science is “coming of ageâ€?.’

‘We are now firmly focussed on our goal of encouraging the widest participation in the development of Web Science,’ said Professor James Hendler.

Recent months have provided a number of illustrations of the growing influence of Web Science, from the UK Government’s endorsement of open data, to the growing network of Web Science research laboratories around the world.

The BBC is currently showing a four-part series, Virtual Revolution, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Web, for which Professor Nigel Shadbolt has acted as Series Consultant. Professor Tim Berners-Lee features prominently in the series, along with other leaders of the World Wide Web community.

On Monday 8 March the Web Science Trust will be supporting a panel discussion on ‘Why Study the Web?’, to be held at the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace. The event is free and open to the public and organized by the Web Science Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Southampton.

In April 2010 the second conference on Web Science (WebSci10) will be held at Raleigh, North Carolina, co-located with the World Wide Web Conference.

WST is working with the World Wide Web Foundation. The Foundation has a mission to advance the Web and empower people via the Web. The Trust and the Foundation have a common commitment to advance the new discipline of Web Science, and will work together on projects that improve our understanding of the Web and promote the Web's positive impact on society.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453

A symposium which will reveal new methods for making future low-power, lighter, smarter and more economical computers and mobile phones will take place at the University of Southampton next week and has attracted almost 100 delegates.

Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, Head of the Nano Research Group at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), whose research interest is in the development of novel nanoelectronic devices, will host the 2010 International Symposium on Atom-scale Silicon Hybrid Nanotechnologies for ‘More-than-Moore’ and ‘Beyond CMOS’ era on 1 and 2 March 2010 at the University.

The key themes that will be addressed at the conference include single-dopants, electron spins and nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS) hybrid technologies. A theme of particular interest to the future of working with silicon is silicon single-dopant and electron spin technology, for which six academics will present cutting-edge nanotechnologies for working with dopants (impurities) in silicon.

“This is a very important area as dopants and electron spins in a silicon device are not controlled yet,â€? said Professor Mizuta. “As devices get smaller, the position of the dopant will affect the performance of transistors, so, as there will always be dopants in silicon, it is crucial that we find ways to detect and control them in a manner which maximises the performance of smaller, low-power devices. Furthermore, electron spins associated with dopants in silicon may provide a new pathway to faster information processing devices and higher capacity storage.â€?

In the opening session entitled Top-down and bottom-up silicon nanodevice technologies, which takes place at 9:30am on Monday 1 March, Dr M. T. Björk, IBM Zurich, will describe the impact of dopant atoms on the operation of silicon nanowire devices.

This is followed by the afternoon session entitled Silicon single-dopant device technology, which takes place at 3.40pm, in which Professor Michiharu Tabe, Shizuoka University, will demonstrate Kelvin Force Microscopy at low temperature to observe the impurities embedded in silicon devices. In this session, Professor Sven Rogge from TU Delft and Dr Yukinori Ono, NTT Basic Research Labs, will also both illustrate electrical methods for detecting dopants and illustrate the effects of running a current through silicon which has very few impurities.

The theme will be discussed further in the session Silicon-based quantum information technology which takes place at 9am on Tuesday 2 March when Dr Andrew Ferguson, University of Cambridge and Dr John Morton, University of Oxford, will describe the donor nuclear spins and electron spins towards silicon spin-based quantum information processing.

In the following session entitled Silicon-based nanoelectromechanical (NEM) hybrid systems on Tuesday 2 March at 10.50am, Professor Mizuta will illustrate, jointly with Professor Oda of Tokyo Institute of Technology, how one electron interacts with mechanical vibration of silicon NEM structure and loses energy in silicon at nanoscale.

“This is an important breakthrough for us,â€? he said. “In order to reduce the power consumption of future silicon devices, we need to understand the processes in which single electrons dissipate energy and eventually control them. We now have a clue to do this.â€? 2010 International Symposium on Atom-scale Silicon Hybrid Nanotechnologies for ‘More-than-Moore’ and ‘Beyond CMOS’ will be held at Garden Court, University of Southampton on 1-2 March 2010, sponsored by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

A new Energy Harvesting Network to be launched next week could mean unlimited power supplies for industry.

The Network, which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and will be managed by the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), will bring together UK academic and industrial researchers and end-users of energy harvesting (EH) technology.

It will be launched on Monday 1 March, at which point researchers and industrialists are invited to contribute to the Network website where news and events will be regularly posted.

EH is a means of powering wireless electronic devices by scavenging many low-grade ambient energy sources, such as environmental vibrations, human motion, thermal gradients and light so that they can be converted into usable electrical energy.

These devices are therefore potentially attractive as replacements for primary batteries in low power wireless sensor nodes. They also hold the possibility of one day enabling the powering of a range of devices not currently possible, including implantable and wearable medical devices. ECS and its spin-out company Perpetuum are global leaders in energy harvesting systems and ECS co-ordinated the European Union-funded VIBES project which developed miniature electromagnetic and piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters.

The Network will work to define new research challenges and stimulate collaborative research proposals. It will also ensure more effective dissemination on the current and future capabilities of energy harvesting technologies to all potential users in both industry and academia.

According to Dr Steve Beeby and Dr Geoff Merrett at ECS’ Electronic Systems and Devices Group, this is good news for industry as it will create a power supply that will last the lifetime of a device, and avoid downtime due to batteries failing.

“Batteries have to be recharged or replaced,â€? said Dr Beeby. “Energy harvesting is a potential alternative power supply that will outlast the application.â€?

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

A new report launched yesterday (25 February) and written by Dr Alma Swan of the University of Southampton shows how universities can work out how much they could save on their profit and loss accounts as well as increasing their contribution to UK plc when they share their research papers through Open Access.

The ‘Modelling scholarly communication options: Costs and benefits for universities’ report, is based on different types of university. It shows how universities might reduce costs, how they can calculate these saving and their greater contribution to society by following an Open Access route.

Neil Jacobs, programme manager at JISC says: “This is the first time that universities will have a method and practical examples from which to build a business case for Open Access and to calculate the cost to them of the scholarly communications process; for example, working out the value of researchers carrying out peer-reviewing duties or the comparative costs of the library handling of journals subscribed to in print, electronically, or in both formats.

“As universities such as Edinburgh, Salford and UCL lead the world to mandate self-archiving and adopt Open Access policies, this report gives evidence to help universities make informed decisions about how their research is disseminated. There are still issues to overcome and the benefits of adopting an Open Access route can be seen through economies of scale, the more researchers disseminate their work through this route the greater the benefits.â€?

The key findings from the report show:

• The annual savings in research and library costs of a university repository model combined with subscription publishing could range from £100,000 to £1,320,000

• Moving from Open Access journals and subscription-funding to per-article Open Access journal funding has the potential to achieve savings for universities between £620,000 per year and £1,700,000 per year if the article-processing charge is set at £500 or less

• Savings from a change away from subscription-funding to per-article Open Access journal funding were estimated to be between £170,000 and £1,365,000 per year for three out of the four universities studied when the article-processing charge is £1000 per article or less

• For the remaining university in the study a move from subscription-funding to the per-article Open Access journal funding saw the university having to pay £1.86m more in this scenario

Jacobs adds: “While some research intensive universities may pay more for the subscription-funding to per-article Open Access journal scenario, it should be noted that many research funders, including the Research Councils and Wellcome Trust, may contribute article-processing charges as a part of normal research grant, so that all universities have a potential source of income to cover the majority of such costs.

“JISC is working with partners in the sector to overcome the barriers which exist to adopting Open Access.â€?

The University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science was the first in the world to mandate OA (2003) and the provider of the world's first OA repository software (EPrints, 2000). Dr Swan, a graduate of the University of Southampton, works closely with the EPrints team advising on many aspects of OA. Earlier this month a major article in Information Today highlighted the work of ECS Professor Stevan Harnad in the worldwide Open Access movement.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

Students from a whole range of disciplines are being invited to go along to the Royal Society in London next week to hear why they should study the World Wide Web.

At a discussion entitled Why Study the Web? at the Royal Society on Monday 8 March at 6.30pm chaired by Dr Aleks Krotoski, presenter of the BBC's Virtual Revolution, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Government Information Advisor, will discuss the future of the Web with JP Rangaswami of BT, Professor Helen Margetts of the Oxford Internet Institute, and Professor Noshir Contractor from Northwestern University in the USA. The panel discussion will be streamed live on the Web at http://webscience.org/event/48.html

"People think that you need to be a computer scientist to study the Web, but that is not the case," said Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Director of the Web Science Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Southampton. "We need economists, sociologists, political scientists, linguists and people with backgrounds in many other disciplines to take up our PhDs so that we can fully understand the impact the Web is having on our lives." The Centre has 50 fully-funded studentships for graduates from a whole range of disciplines to study four-year PhDs in Web Science.

After the panel session, there will be presentations from Professor Hall, Professor Bill Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute, and Professor Jim Hendler of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the USA about the nature of the Web Science courses at their particular institutions.

“We are very encouraged to see an increasing number of courses and degree programmes in Web Science emerging at various institutions around the world,â€? said Professor Hall. “Each one has a different focus but all seek to enable students to study the development of the Web, the way it is shaping our lives and the socio-technical dynamics that will determine its future. We believe that career prospects for Web Scientists will be very bright indeed as companies increasingly become aware of the need for highly-qualified people with this range of interdisciplinary skills.â€?

'Why study the Web' will take place at the Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG on Monday 8 March 2010 at 6.30pm GMT. The event will be broadcast live on the Web and will be available for subsequent video download.

Find out more about this free event and register (free).

The panel will be streamed live on the Web and available for subsequent video download at http://webscience.org/event/48.html

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.

The School of Electronics and Computer Science and University of Southampton were very well represented at Dev8D, a JISC-sponsored event to train developers and to germinate new ideas and techniques.

Southampton staff won a total of three of the ten contests held during the event. Dave Tarrant, ECS PhD student, achieved joint first place for the "mobile challenge", building an open source iPhone app which could control a plug socket - enabling a light to be turned on and off from anywhere in the world.

Joint first-place with Dave Tarrant was a team of Christopher Gutteridge (ECS Web Projects Manager) and Sam Easterby-Smith who built an iPhone conference visualiser enabling users to 'see' what was currently on in each room, and what people were saying on Twitter.

Mark Borkum (School of Chemistry and ECS Alumnus)won the linked data challenge for creating 'Shredded Tweet', an example of a Web service that enhances Twitter search results to include RDF triples for 'hashtags', 'mentions', URLs and any user-defined regular expression!

Dave Challis (ECS webmaster) and Dr Mike Jewell (ECS Alumnus) won the 'Internet Archive' challenge for creating a way to graph and compare the history of websites.

"This event was a collision between an academic conference and a musicians' jam session,' said Chris Gutteridge. 'You see two or three delegates having a conversation and it results in a new tool or technique so blindingly simple and elegant that it seems odd nobody thought of it before! Too many people underestimate the huge value of motivated and imaginative developers to our growing information economy. Kudos to JISC for finding ways to strengthen the developer community.'

The UK's first Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) is being established with a grant of £4.2M from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

A team of academics and software engineers based at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science, the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester and led by EPCC at the University of Edinburgh, will work in partnership with the research community to manage software beyond the lifetime of its original funding, so that it is strengthened, adapted and customised to maximise its value to future generations of researchers.

“The issue at the moment is that there are no co-ordinated ways of sustaining important research software once it comes to the end of its funding,â€? said Neil Chue Hong, Director of the SSI and OMII-UK. “Some software gets abandoned when the project ends. Some systems are maintained in pockets on very much a best-effort basis rather than on the basis of any longer term strategy.â€?

Mr Chue Hong and his collaborators will work with 30-40 groups across the UK, providing the expertise needed to create self-sustaining communities of researchers around important software. It is these communities that will ensure the software’s future by keeping it up-to-date and developing it to meet new requirements. A wide range of disciplines are set to benefit from the SSI’s work, with early projects encompassing climate change, nuclear fusion and medical imaging.

The SSI will collaborate with key researchers to identify and shape the software which is considered by its community to be the most important for research. Strategies for sustaining software will be optimised, and the best methods will be communicated to researchers through SSI consultancy. This work will help to stop the decay of software.

“The creation of the SSI will ensure that important software is sustained so that it can continue to contribute towards high quality researchâ€? said Mr Chue Hong.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.