Transparency, open sharing, and reproducibility are core features of science, but not always part of daily practice. Journals can increase transparency and reproducibility of research by adopting the TOP Guidelines. TOP includes eight modular standards, each with three levels of increasing stringency. Journals select which of the eight transparency standards they wish to adopt for their journal, and select a level of implementation for the selected standards. These features provide flexibility for adoption depending on disciplinary variation, but simultaneously establish community standards.

• Article introducing the TOP Guidelines, Science : Full Text | Summary | pdf

The TOP Guidelines are the result of work by a diverse group of researchers, journal editors, funders, and society leaders from behavioral and social sciences.  The purpose of the TOP Guidelines is to provide templates of policies and procedures that journals can adopt to encourage greater transparency and reproducibility of research in the published record.  The Guidelines are modular and have multiple levels so that journals can adopt part or all of the standards, and can select a level of stringency that is most appropriate for them.  This simultaneously provides flexibility and offers the benefits of standards. Organization signatories are expressing their support for the principles expressed in the TOP Guidelines.

Details at http://cos.io/top

Now that the OAS has achieved 501(c)(3) status and can commence normal operations, per the charter, applications are being sought:

Article II: The OAS Board of Directors

Section 1. The control of this organization shall be vested in the OAS Board of Directors.

Section 2. There shall be a nomination process and election to form the OAS Board of Directors within 6 months of the OAS commencing operation. During the startup phase of the organization, all member classes will be welcomed based on requirements found in Article V, until such time that a membership committee can be formed.

Section 3. The OAS Board of Directors shall consist of five full members of the OAS. The executive director of OAS shall be an ex-officio member of the OAS Board of Directors without voting privilege, but attends meetings for the purpose of keeping the OAS board advised on the state of the organization.

Section 4. Members of the Board of Directors shall be elected for a term of no more than three consecutive years.

Section 5. A simple majority of members shall constitute a quorum of the Board of Directors.

Section 6. So that Associate Members have a voice in the society, they may appoint a spokesperson to sit in on Board of Directors meetings who can convey the wishes of Associate members to the board.  The Associate Members spokesperson shall be an ex-officio member of the OAS Board of Directors without voting privilege In lieu of actual meeting attendance, a written statement can be submitted by the representative.

For those interested, please complete the OAS_board_application and return it to the email listed within it.

A vote of the membership will be convened within 30 days.

Friday, June 12th – Washington, D.C. After months of applications and waiting, the Internal Revenue Service has granted tax-exempt status to the Open Atmospheric Society under the 501(c) 3 section of the U.S. Tax code.

“During the waiting period of the application, the OAS went into a holding pattern mode, while we waited on the process to be completed.”, said acting executive director Anthony Watts.

Now that this status has been granted, the OAS can move forward with the many projects and ideas that are part of the charter.

Look for further announcements in the days and weeks ahead.

Reference: Letter from the Internal Revenue Service OAS-IRS-Letter (PDF)

Press release: OAS PRESS RELEASE-June-2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A new professional society for meteorology and climatology is announced

The Open Atmospheric Society takes a new approach to atmospheric science, becoming the first society of its kind to be a cloud-based online organization

September 16, 2014– The Open Atmospheric Society, known as “The OAS” for short, announces its formation, and readiness to accept charter members. The purpose of The OAS is to provide a paperless and entirely online professional organization that will represent individuals who have been unrepresented by existing professional organizations that have become more activist than science based in their outlook. It also aims to provide a professional peer reviewed publication platform to produce an online journal with a unique and important requirement placed up-front for any paper submitted; it must be replicable, with all data, software, formulas, and methods submitted with the paper. Without those elements, the paper will be rejected. This focus on replicability up front is not found in other similar organizations that publish scientific results.

John Coleman, Founder of The Weather Channel had this to say

It is very gratifying to hear of the formation of The Open Atmospheric Society. A new Meteorological organization and scientific publication have been greatly needed for more than a decade. It is unfortunate that the American Meteorological Society has become totally politicized and conducts itself in total violation of the basic scientific principal of open debate; encouraging competing points of view to be presented and published.

I allowed my Professional Membership in the AMS expire many years ago after being an active member, attending National Conferences and reading The Bulletin of the AMS for many years. Several events occurred that made it clear to me that the society was in the control of people who were using it to complete their personal agendas and the Society would was becoming closed and dogmatic. I look forward to membership in the OAS.

Joseph D’Aleo AMS Fellow, and Certified Consulting Meteorologist adds:

The AMS, AGU and other professional society editors have slow-walked and thrown up obstacles to papers that challenge the “consensus” position, usually forcing authors to go elsewhere to publish their work. They have fast tracked other papers when issues arose that threatened that position. The AMS had policy advocacy as one of the top organizational goals. A professional scientific society should only advocate for good science and leave the policymaking to those elected to determine the policies based on the very best science.

The OAS, whose motto: verum in luce means “truth in the light”, offers not only a place for a free exchange of ideas, but a unique Internet cloud-based journal publishing platform providing emphasis on open review and reproducibility requirements up-front. Here are a few points of interest:

• Open membership— Associate members, anyone who has an interest in atmospheric science, can join at a basic rate, providing interdisciplinary membership. Professional full voting members, will require a degree in atmospheric sciences or related earth or physical science disciplines, or three published papers in these subjects. Student members get a reduced rate, similar to associate members with option to full member elevation. More details at The OAS Charter.
• Open journal— The Journal of the OAS will be free to read by the public. Open science— a transparent online peer review process
• No other journal asks this upfront: strict OAS Journal submission requirements—technical submissions to the Journal by members must include all source data, software/code, procedures, and documentation to ensure reproducibility of the paper’s experiment or analysis by external reviewers.
• Author account—each author and co-author will have accounts for collaboration, submitting papers, making edits, and responding to reviewers.
• Emphasis on reasonable publication turnaround, 3 months or less.
• DOI’s will be assigned and provided with each publication.
• The OAS will offer press releases and web video assistance for authors to explain papers clearly and effectively to the general public. It will also occasionally offer statements and positions regarding atmospheric science as it relates to current news.
• Organizational activity will be conducted entirely online – This means no costly brick and mortar infrastructure, no costly postal mailings journals, and no need for warehousing paper files and publications.

The formation of The OAS represents a new way of conducting the scientific method, and welcomes those who feel their professional interests are not being served with the current collection of professional societies who focus on meteorology and climatology. The upcoming Journal of the Open Atmospheric Society has been assigned an official ISSN publication number by the Library of Congress (ISSN 2373-5953) and is registered with CrossRef, the world’s leading scientific publication identifier providing Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) for publications.

If you would like more information about this new society, please e-mail us at contact (at) theoas dot org or visit online at http://theoas.org to learn more or to become a member.

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