The Ethics of Developing COVID-19 Treatments and Vaccination; Carnegie Mellon University, April 7, 2020

Jason Maderer, Carnegie Mellon University; The Ethics of Developing COVID-19 Treatments and Vaccination

CMU's experts explore the options

"In the rush to do science quickly, Carnegie Mellon University ethicist Alex John London says it is easy to make mistakes. 

"The point of research is to reduce uncertainty — to sort out dead ends from fruitful treatment strategies," said London, the Clara L. West Professor of Ethics and Philosophy and director of the Center for Ethics and Policy. But if you don’t do rigorous science, you can wind up increasing uncertainty, which can actually make things worse."

London’s research in Carnegie Mellon’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences focuses on ethical and policy issues surrounding the development and deployment of novel technologies in medicine...

One strategy to expedite the vaccine process for COVID-19 is turning to the power of artificial intelligence (AI). London’s colleague, Carnegie Mellon professor David Danks, looks at the intersection of ethics and machine learning."

Libraries will champion an open future for scholarship; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 29, 2020

Keith Webster, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette;

Libraries will champion an open future for scholarship

Open access deals help make knowledge and education accessible to the working class

"All of us who work in academic libraries here in Pittsburgh and around the world aspire to improve the quality of science and scholarship. It’s increasingly clear that this can best be done through the open exchange of ideas and data, which can accelerate the pace and reach of scientific discovery.

The desire of researchers and their funders to make their research freely available to all is evident. As a result, the acceptance of open access publishing and article sharing services has soared in recent years. Meanwhile, the rapidly escalating journal costs experienced by libraries over the past 25 years are agreed to be unsustainable. It is against this backdrop that Carnegie Mellon University is establishing open access agreements with top journal publishers, with a special focus on the the fields of science and computing."

Elsevier signs first open-access deal in the United States; Science, November 25, 2019

Science News Staff, Science; Elsevier signs first open-access deal in the United States

"Publishing giant Elsevier has signed its first open-access deal with a U.S. institution, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Inside Higher Ed reports. The arrangement, which CMU announced on 21 November, will allow CMU scholars to publish articles in any Elsevier journal on an immediately free-to-read basis. CMU researchers will also continue to have access to paywalled Elsevier articles, which previous contracts covered with subscription fees.

CMU did not disclose the cost of the arrangement, which has been a sticking point in Elsevier’s open-access negotiations with other research institutions. After the University of California system insisted on a price cut, Elsevier’s negotiations failed in February; in April, a research consortium in Norway cut a deal with Elsevier similar to CMU’s, while agreeing to a price hike. “All I can say is that we achieved the financial objectives we set out to achieve,” Keith Webster, dean of CMU’s university libraries and director of emerging and integrative media initiatives, tells Inside Higher Ed. 

CMU researchers only publish about 175 papers annually in Elsevier journals. That low volume gives Elsevier an opportunity to test the 4-year arrangement with relatively low financial risk."