An Institutional Rights Retention Strategy

Prorector for research and development at UiT The Arctic University of Norway informs about the institution's new Open Access Policy, in which Rights Retention takes a prominent place. All authors employed by UiT retain the rights to their peer-reviewed manuscripts, which can now be uploaded and be made available without any embargo period in the institutional repository, Munin, regardless of the policies of the publisher. In case an individual author refuses, (s)he is free to opt out, but no publisher shall have the right to force her/him to not make a manuscript publicly available in green open access through the institution's open repository. The original Norwegian policy document ("Prinsipper og retningslinjer for åpen tilgang til vitenskapelige publikasjoner ved UiT") is available through the website uit.no/publisering; an English translation will follow soon at en.uit.no/publishing.First published online: January 12, 2021

Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption for Cloud Storage: Toward Data Privacy and Authentication in AI-Enabled IoT System

People can store their data on servers in cloud computing and allow public users to access data via data centers. One of the most difficult tasks is to provide security for the access policy of data, which is also needed to be stored at cloud servers. The access structure (policy) itself may reveal partial information about what the ciphertext contains. To provide security for the access policy of data, a number of encryption schemes are available. Among these, CP-ABE (Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption) scheme is very significant because it helps to protect, broadcast, and control the access of information. The access policy that is sent as plaintext in the existing CP-ABE scheme along with a ciphertext may leak user privacy and data privacy. To resolve this problem, we hereby introduce a new technique, which hides the access policy using a hashing algorithm and provides security against insider attack using a signature verification scheme. The proposed system is compared with existing CP-ABE schemes in terms of computation and expressive policies. In addition, we can test the functioning of any access control that could be implemented in the Internet of Things (IoT). Additionally, security against indistinguishable adaptive chosen ciphertext attacks is also analyzed for the proposed work.

Optimization of the Observing Cadence for the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time: A Pioneering Process of Community-focused Experimental Design

Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a ground-based astronomical facility under construction, a joint project of the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, designed to conduct a multipurpose 10 yr optical survey of the Southern Hemisphere sky: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Significant flexibility in survey strategy remains within the constraints imposed by the core science goals of probing dark energy and dark matter, cataloging the solar system, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. The survey’s massive data throughput will be transformational for many other astrophysics domains and Rubin’s data access policy sets the stage for a huge community of potential users. To ensure that the survey science potential is maximized while serving as broad a community as possible, Rubin Observatory has involved the scientific community at large in the process of setting and refining the details of the observing strategy. The motivation, history, and decision-making process of this strategy optimization are detailed in this paper, giving context to the science-driven proposals and recommendations for the survey strategy included in this Focus Issue.

Promoting a culture of openness: Institutional open access policy development and evaluation at a Canadian university

Institutional open access (OA) policies can act as a solid foundation on which to build university-wide support for open access. This is the first paper to reflect on the entire process of developing, implementing, and reviewing an institutional open access policy at a Canadian post-secondary institution. Simon Fraser University (SFU) is one of a few Canadian universities with an institutional open access policy. As a leader in open access, SFU is well positioned to share observations of our experiences in the first three years of our OA policy. Throughout this paper, we reflect on the role that the policy plays in the broader culture of openness at SFU and on the OA resources and supports provided to SFU researchers. Other institutions may find our observations and adoption of the SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, results) appreciative inquiry framework useful as they explore future policy development or review and work to promote a culture of open access within their university community.

New UK open-access policy met with ‘deep concern’

A new open-access policy from UK Research and Innovation has been broadly welcomed but some are concerned that the requirement for researchers to deposit the final version of a manuscript in a repository under no embargo will be harmful to standards.

Digital Theses: A Revolution Through the Lens of Boadicea

Theses are an extraordinarily significant part of the scholarly ecosystem. For researchers, they are often the cornerstone of their career by establishing and communicating their professional knowledge. Boadicea’s journey and contribution to the overthrow of the Romans is used as a metaphor for the transition of theses to participate in and conquer the new digital environment through the activities libraries. The contemporary scholarly ecosystem provides for a transformation that takes theses from a place on the “dusty shelves” of libraries to works which have high impact and achieve international visibility. This paper reports on activities across Australia and New Zealand to open access to theses, together with a deep dive to reveal the community demand for theses in the fields of humanities and social science. The relationship of theses to the scholarly knowledge system and perceived barriers are assessed using a survey of academics. Key issues for the future in terms of the open access policy environment in the context of researchers’ careers are identified.

Towards Virtuous Cloud Data Storage Using Access Policy Hiding in Ciphertext Policy Attribute-Based Encryption

Managing and controlling access to the tremendous data in Cloud storage is very challenging. Due to various entities engaged in the Cloud environment, there is a high possibility of data tampering. Cloud encryption is being employed to control data access while securing Cloud data. The encrypted data are sent to Cloud storage with an access policy defined by the data owner. Only authorized users can decrypt the encrypted data. However, the access policy of the encrypted data is in readable form, which results in privacy leakage. To address this issue, we proposed a reinforcement hiding in access policy over Cloud storage by enhancing the Ciphertext Policy Attribute-based Encryption (CP-ABE) algorithm. Besides the encryption process, the reinforced CP-ABE used logical connective operations to hide the attribute value of data in the access policy. These attributes were converted into scrambled data along with a ciphertext form that provides a better unreadability feature. It means that a two-level concealed tactic is employed to secure data from any unauthorized access during a data transaction. Experimental results revealed that our reinforced CP-ABE had a low computational overhead and consumed low storage costs. Furthermore, a case study on security analysis shows that our approach is secure against a passive attack such as traffic analysis.

Ghostwriting and Authorship Practices in Biomedical Research: A Study Protocol

"Background: Scientific paper authorship represents an important form of academic attainment for research professionals and brings specific benefits (e.g., contribution science, recognizing the author’s intellectual efforts). Authors certify their work’s integrity by accepting the responsability of the published content. The principal two important unethical authorship is honorary authors (the criteria of authorship not met) and ghost authors (contributed substantially but not listed as an author). Aim: The current study has two-fold aim: to determine the prevalence of authorship violations in the biomedical journals according to the Web of Science classification and to evaluate its variation by article type (e.g., research, review, or editorial) and presence/absence authors contributions requirements. Materials and Methods: The following steps will be apply: 1) Identification of journal categories of interest – data source: Journal Citation Reports 2020 (JCR2020); 2) Identification of the eligible journal – JCR2020 by selection of journals weighted according to the number of jorunals in a specific category. The selection will be stratified by the Rank by Journal Citation Indicator (JCI); 3) Collection of characteristics of the included journals regarding the year 2020: total number of articles, number of articles and references, number of reviews and associated references; JCI percentile, open access policy and publication fee if applicable; 4) Random selection (simple random method) of authors who published in 2020. The selection will be done weighted according to the number of manuscripts published in 2020; 5) Development and validation of the questionnaire; 6) Invitation of the corresponding author to participate in the study; 7) Online anonymously data collection. The study protocol will be deposited in an international database. "