New funding sources in drug development, social media affects patient choice, and Harvard’s Libraries make waves in this week’s Blog Buzz!

Fiercehealthcare reports that, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Patients choose hospitals based on social media.

The Atlantic’s Rebecca Rosen reported big news from Harvard this week—a faculty committee announced that, due to the high price of academic journal bundles, they are encouraging faculty to publish in open access journals and add their work to the institution’s repository. In related news, the library has released nearly all of its bibliographic records under a Creative Commons license and hopes to encourage other institutions to make their metadata available as well.

In a recent issue, The Economist discusses charities (especially patient foundations) collaborating with pharmaceutical companies in drug discovery efforts. The article mentions an April 19 announcement that the Michael J. Fox Foundation will pay the clinical trial costs of a Sanofi drug targeted against Parkinson’s disease.

What do text-mining and data citation, retractions and calls for scientific reform, and a great piece on the potential of anti-virals have in common? They are all part of this week’s blog buzz!

Tuesdays’ piece from the NY Times, A Sharp Rise in Scientific Journal Retrations Prompts Calls for Reform, discusses the recent increase in retractions of scientific papers and the ways our current systems of funding, publishing and research institutions contribute to an environment where problematic publications are increasing. Follow the blog Retraction Watch for more on these important issues.

For a related series of blog posts consider this post from In The Pipeline on Buckyball longevity where a careful reader spotted the reuse of a figure.

Heather Piwowar, a researcher on data sharing and reuse has been blogging up a storm this week at Research Remix. She received approval for researchers at her university to access Elsevier’s content for mining, reminded readers why we should care about access for text mining and data citation, and reported on Elsevier calling text mining the new front.  Congratulations and thanks to her for getting the word out!

A long, thought provoking read from Carl Zimmer at Wired, Could Anti-Virals Blast the Common Cold?

With an Ebook price fixing lawsuit, an open access policy from the World Bank and guidelines from UNESCO, and the bird flu security recommendation reversal (with a catch), it’s been an eventful couple of weeks in blog land.

There was a reversal from the biosecurity panel on publishing the previously blocked bird flu papers (Washington Post), but the publication of one paper is now blocked by export control laws (NPR’s Shots).  In a related but not new item, Ed Yong explains the 2009 vaccine’s relation to the 1918 flu epidemic.

The US is suing publishers for Ebook price fixing (Bloomberg). Here is an interesting item from Forbes about why Apple’s fancy footwork upset the Feds.

Nature precedings is closing up shop. Meanwhile, in other Nature news, the NPG has announced a linked data platform.

Open access’ momentum is clear in the news of late—The World Bank announced an open access policy and launched a repository using Creative Commons licensing, and UNESCO released a set of guidelines for the “development and promotion” of open access to scientific information.

There were changes to testing recommendations for low-risk patients from a number of medical groups last week.  Christine Cassel and James Guest provide an explanation and commentary in JAMA and the NY Times covered the topic as well.

And here is some belated library-related April Fools fun from The Daily Crimson and Google (scroll down in the coverage from SearchEngineLand to the “Really Advanced Search”).