The UK Reproducibility Network: A progress report.

There is growing awareness that the ways in which academic research is conducted could be improved. A number of exciting innovations are emerging, alongside a broader agenda that includes a growing emphasis on open research. This short article outlines the rationale, progress and plans of the UK Reproducibility Network, which is one of a growing number of similar initiatives internationally that promote more rigorous and transparent research.

Pitfalls in interpreting bioprosthetic aortic valve pressure gradients: a cautionary tale!

High transvalvular pressure gradients following aortic valve replacement can be caused by several possible mechanisms. We present the case of an elderly woman with an elevated pressure gradient across an aortic valve bioprosthesis in the setting of complete heart block. After consideration of the presence of complete heart block, the hemodynamic profile of the specific prosthesis, and patient-prosthesis mismatch, only a mild degree of stenosis was found to be attributable to degeneration of the prosthesis. There is no literature quantifying the hemodynamic effect of complete heart block on the pressure gradients across bioprosthetic aortic valves. In the case presented, the transvalvular peak and mean pressure gradients were reduced by 41% and 39%, respectively, following treatment of complete heart block by insertion of a permanent pacemaker.

1% Aspiration, 99% Perspiration: Acute Left Atrial Thrombus During Percutaneous Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion.

A 71-year-old man with chronic atrial fibrillation underwent insertion of a left atrial appendage occlusion device. Before release, a large thrombus was noted within the left atrium, attached to the left atrial appendage occluder delivery system. With continuous negative pressure, the device was deployed and thrombus successfully aspirated with no clinical sequelae. (Level of Difficulty: Intermediate.).

An open toolkit for tracking open science partnership implementation and impact.

Serious concerns about the way research is organized collectively are increasingly being raised. They include the escalating costs of research and lower research productivity, low public trust in researchers to report the truth, lack of diversity, poor community engagement, ethical concerns over research practices, and irreproducibility. Open science (OS) collaborations comprise of a set of practices including open access publication, open data sharing and the absence of restrictive intellectual property rights with which institutions, firms, governments and communities are experimenting in order to overcome these concerns. We gathered two groups of international representatives from a large variety of stakeholders to construct a toolkit to guide and facilitate data collection about OS and non-OS collaborations. Ultimately, the toolkit will be used to assess and study the impact of OS collaborations on research and innovation. The toolkit contains the following four elements: 1) an annual report form of quantitative data to be completed by OS partnership administrators; 2) a series of semi-structured interview guides of stakeholders; 3) a survey form of participants in OS collaborations; and 4) a set of other quantitative measures best collected by other organizations, such as research foundations and governmental or intergovernmental agencies. We opened our toolkit to community comment and input. We present the resulting toolkit for use by government and philanthropic grantors, institutions, researchers and community organizations with the aim of measuring the implementation and impact of OS partnership across these organizations. We invite these and other stakeholders to not only measure, but to share the resulting data so that social scientists and policy makers can analyse the data across projects.

LERU roadmap towards Open Access.

Money which is not directly spent on research and education, even though it is largely taxpayers´ money. As Harvard University already denounced in 2012, many large journal publishers have rendered the situation "fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive", with some journals costing as much as $40,000 per year (and publishers drawing profits of 35% or more). If one of the wealthiest universities in the world can no longer afford it, who can? It is easy to picture the struggle of European universities with tighter budgets. In addition to subscription costs, academic research funding is also largely affected by "Article Processing Charges" (APC), which come at an additional cost of €2000/article, on average, when making individual articles Gold Open Access. Some publishers are in this way even being paid twice for the same content ("double dipping"). In the era of Open Science, Open Access to publications is one of the cornerstones of the new research paradigm and business models must support this transition. It should be one of the principal objectives of Commissioner Carlos Moedas and the Dutch EU Presidency (January-June 2016) to ensure that this transition happens. Further developing the EU´s leadership in research and innovation largely depends on it. With this statement "Moving Forwards on Open Access", LERU calls upon all universities, research institutes, research funders and researchers to sign this statement and give a clear signal towards the European Commission and the Dutch EU Presidency.