We have received numerous nominations since the ASAP program was launched two weeks ago. There are still 30 days left to nominate yourself or another individual. Teams or groups of ollaborators are also eligible– such as scientists, researchers, educators, social services professionals, technology leaders, entrepreneurs, policy makers, patient advocates, public health workers, librarians and students.

Three top awards of $30,000* each will be presented in October at an Open Access Week kickoff event hosted by SPARC and the World Bank.   The winners will be those individuals or teams that have used, applied or remixed scientific research – published through Open Access – to innovate and make a difference in science, medicine, business, technology or society as a whole.

Here are some examples of potential nominations (please note that these are for illustrative purposes only and not meant to represent any actual researcher, innovative use, individual, or organization, and they do not cover all the potential innovative use cases)

• The health minister of a low income country was able to confidently and quickly change cancer treatment protocols based on an oncology research article detailing successful uses of a repurposed cancer drug published by a peer reviewed, Open Access journal, which had been translated into multiple languages by a group of retired language teachers.
• A bioinformatics team repurposes existing source codes used for searching genomic data associated with individual cancer tumors to create a new open source algorithm and web tool that can search multiple tumor types simultaneously, enabling faster and more comprehensive searches by oncologists for use in clinical treatment of cancer patients
• A climate policy expert took original figures and examples from a recent Open Access climate change research paper — correlating temperature increases with rises in ocean depth — and repurposed these findings in a policy-focused presentation at a conference of experts from 25 Asian and Oceanic countries – leading to the adoption of stricter emissions standards by several participating countries.
• A patient advocate creates a new web community for individuals with a rare genetic disorder and their families; this website curates existing and newly available open access research about causes and treatment protocols, and offers interpretative science articles and a user forum to help nonscientist readers better understand the science presented

The ASAP program is sponsored by 24 global organizations that value  the transformative impact of applying scientific research, published through Open Access, to extend the reach of science and medicine.

*For more information on the ASAP program, please visit asap.plos.org. See also the Program rules at http://asap.plos.org/nominate/rules/. Follow the ASAP Program on Twitter at #SciASAP.