When entering the research world, Early Career Researchers (ECRs) may encounter difficulties building a good reputation for their research, its quality and the research results. Open access is the movement that could assist ECRs to: (a) widely disseminate their scholarly outputs, (b) demonstrate the research and societal impact of their work and, (c) organise online research portfolios that can be accessed by all researchers, as well as prospective employers.

For decades, particle physicists have been using open access archives of preprints, i.e. research papers shared before the submission to peer reviewed journals. With the shift to digital archives, this model has proved to be attractive to other disciplines: but can it be exported? In particle physics, archives do not only represent the medium of choice for the circulation of scientific knowledge, but they are central places to build a sense of belonging and to define one's role within the community.

Open Science may become the next scientific revolution, but still lingers in a pre-paradigmatic phase, characterised by the lack of established definitions and domains. Certainly, Open Science requires a new vision of the way to produce and share scientific knowledge, as well as new skills. Therefore, education plays a crucial role in supporting this cultural change along the path of science. This is the basic principle inspiring the collection of essays published in this issue of JCOM, which deals with many subjects ranging from open access to the public engagement in scientific research, from open data to the social function of preprint servers for the physicians' community. These are issues that go along with the targets of the FOSTER project (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research) funded by the European Union, which has provided interesting food for thought in order to write this commentary.

This study addresses an open question about science bloggers' self-perceived roles as science communicators. Previous research has investigated the roles science journalists see themselves engaging in, but such research has failed to capture the experiences of science bloggers as a broad and diverse group that is yet often very different in their practices from professional journalists. In this study, a survey of over 600 science bloggers reveals that on the broadest level, science bloggers see themselves engaging most often as explainers of science and public intellectuals. Perceived communication role depends predominantly on occupation, science communication training, blog affiliation and gender.

The ever-changing nature of academic science communication discourse can make it challenging for those not intimately associated with the field ― scientists and science-communication practitioners or new-comers to the field such as graduate students ― to keep up with the research. This collection of articles provides a comprehensive overview of the subject and serves as a thorough reference book for students and practitioners of science communication.

In contrast to past consensus, many authors now feel that the passive voice compromises the quality of scientific writing. However, studies involving scientific articles are rare. Using a corpus of 60 scientific research articles from six journals, this study examined the proportion of passives used, and the contexts and forms in which they occurred. The results revealed that about 30% of all clauses were passive clauses. The canonical form was most pervasive, followed by the bare passive; together, they constituted more than a quarter of all clauses analyzed. Passives were typically used in main clauses, followed by relative and adverbial clauses. Roughly 29% of all passives were located in the methodology section. Based on the results, the proportion of passives in scientific writing may stabilize at about 30%. It is unlikely to dramatically drop any further since the trend suggests that passives are still widely used in the methodology section.

The paper investigates diversity in terms of interest and goals in international research in Physical Education (PE). This investigation is based on publications in PE indexed in three major international databases, namely Medline, Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). To identify these publications in Medline, we searched for “physical education and training”. As for the WoS and Scopus, we searched for “physical education” in the title, abstract or key-word. We also searched for “physical education” in the affiliation address only in the Scopus database, which we describe as Scopus-Afill. Using these strategies, we found 2,257 documents in Medline, 6,107 in WoS, 8,807 in Scopus and 5,838 in Scopus – Affil. for the 1991-2005 period. Our findings offer evidence that PE research is mostly associated with biological and medical sciences. However, our results show that the field is multifaceted when it comes to the nature of PE contributions to knowledge.

In a refereed journal in the food and agriculture sector, papers were tracked over a five-year period during the introduction of electronic submissions. Papers originated in the Americas and Pacific region and were processed in Canada. Acceptance times for revised papers were reduced (P < 0.001) to 59% of the original, from 156.5 ± 69.1 days to 92.8 ± 57.5 days. But the start of electronic submission coincided with a change in the geographical origin of papers, with papers from Anglophone countries changing from a 61% majority to a 42% minority. It is possible that submissions from non-Anglophone sources were facilitated, thus creating challenges to the traditional Anglophone reviewer population.

From the life sciences to the physical sciences, chemistry to archaeology, the last 25 years have brought an unprecedented shift in the way research happens day to day, and the average scientist is now simply awash in data. This comment focuses on the integration and federation of an exponentially increasing pool of data on the global digital network. Furthermore, it explores the question of the legal regimes available for use on this pool of data, with particular attention to the application of “Free/Libre/Open” copyright licenses on data and databases. In fact, the application of such licenses has the potential to severely restrict the integration and federation of scientific data. The public domain for science should be the first choice if integration is our goal, and there are other strategies that show potential to achieve the social goals embodied in many common-use licensing systems without the negative consequences of a copyright-based approach.

My intention is to analyze how, where and if grid computing technology is truly enabling a new way of doing science (so-called ‘e-science’). I will base my views on the experiences accumulated thus far in a number of scientific communities, which we have provided with the opportunity of using grid computing. I shall first define some basic terms and concepts and then discuss a number of specific cases in which the use of grid computing has actually made possible a new method for doing science. I will then present a case in which this did not result in a change in research methods. I will try to identify the reasons for these failures and analyze the future evolution of grid computing. I will conclude by introducing and commenting the concept of ‘cloud computing’, the approach offered and provided by major industrial actors (Google/IBM and Amazon being among the most important) and what impact this technology might have on the world of research.