A Statistical Analysis of Death Rates in Italy for the Years 2015–2020 and a Comparison with the Casualties Reported from the COVID-19 Pandemic

We analyze the data about casualties in Italy in the period 01/01/2015 to 30/09/2020 released by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). Aim of this article is the description of a statistically robust methodology to extract quantitative values for the seasonal excesses of deaths featured by the data, accompanying them with correct estimates of the relative uncertainties. We will describe the advantages of the method adopted with respect to others listed in literature. The data exhibit a clear sinusoidal behavior, whose fit allows for a robust subtraction of the baseline trend of casualties in Italy, with a surplus of mortality in correspondence to the flu epidemics in winter and to the hottest periods in summer. The overall quality of the fit to the data turns out to be very good, an indication of the validity of the chosen model. We discuss the trend of casualties in Italy by different classes of ages and for the different genders. We finally compare the data-subtracted casualties, as reported by ISTAT, with those reported by the Italian Department for Civil Protection (DPC) relative to the deaths directly attributed to COVID-19, and we point out the differences in the two samples, collected under different assumptions

Open Science - Challenges and best practices: a view from research institutes in Italy

Talk given by Stefano Bianco at MINERVA Study Visit 2021.05. organised online by Universita' Marconi Roma

Plan S - FAQ's

A report on Plan S and the cOAlition S collaboration, with particular focus on the role of repositories and green OA

Open Science for Fair and Sustainable Access to Knowledge

Talk given at SISSA Trieste

The INFN Open Access Repository Conceptual Design Report

This document presents the conceptual design of a long-term institutional Open Access Repository for the INFN. The motivations and the objectives as well as the state-of-the-art technologies available and some already existing examples are discussed. Both the current implementation and the proposed long-term solution are presented, together with the human and financial resources needed

A study on the possible merits of using symptomatic cases to trace the development of the COVID-19 pandemic

In a recent work we introduced a novel method to compute the effective reproduction number $R_t$ and we applied it to describe the development of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. The study is based on the number of daily positive swabs as reported by the Italian Dipartimento di Protezione Civile. Recently, the Italian Istituto Superiore di Sanit\`a made available the data relative of the symptomatic cases, where the reporting date is the date of beginning of symptoms instead of the date of the reporting of the positive swab. In this paper we will discuss merits and drawbacks of this data, quantitatively comparing the quality of the pandemic indicators computed with the two samples

A simplified estimate of the Effective Reproduction Number RtR_t using its relation with the doubling time and application to Italian COVID-19 data

A simplified method to compute $R_t$, the Effective Reproduction Number, is presented. The method relates the value of $R_t$ to the estimation of the doubling time performed with a local exponential fit. The condition $R_t = 1$ corresponds to a growth rate equal to zero or equivalently an infinite doubling time. Different assumptions on the probability distribution of the generation time are considered. A simple analytical solution is presented in case the generation time follows a gamma distribution.Comment: Submitted to: The European Physical Journal Plus. Revised version according to reviewer's comment

Updates on the INFN Open Access Repository

Research organisations are moving to new models of sharing publications and data among communities in order to overcome limitations of current publishing systems: free and open access, data and publication associations, etc. INFN and other organisations, both public and private, have signed a global initiative launched by Science Europe, named Plan S, aimed at moving the state funded research works in open repositories or journal available to all. In this context, we have updated the pilot of the INFN Open Access Repository, that is operational since 2014, to a version that is compliant with Plan S requirements. Starting from Zenodo code, that powers the EC flagship repository with the same name, developed by CERN in the context of the OpenAIRE series of projects, we customised the implementation to add features useful for INFN. These include the integration with INFN-AAI for the authentication, configurable look and feel, data migration from previous repository and some fixes. Additionally, we have developed yaml files describing all micro services behind Zenodo for an automated deployment on a Kubernetes-based infrastructure. The repository is open for testing by all INFN staff and associated researchers and people from other organisations are also investigating it, already. We are currently preparing a Conceptual Design Report for the updater repository for evaluation by the INFN management and we will report on it

Updates on the INFN Open Access Repository

Research organisations are moving to new models of sharing publications and data among communities in order to overcome limitations of current publishing systems: free and open access, data and publication associations, etc. INFN and other organisations, both public and private, have signed a global initiative launched by Science Europe, named Plan S, aimed at moving the state funded research works in open repositories or journal available to all. In this context, we have updated the pilot of the INFN Open Access Repository, that is operational since 2014, to a version that is compliant with Plan S requirements. Starting from Zenodo code, that powers the EC flagship repository with the same name, developed by CERN in the context of the OpenAIRE series of projects, we customised the implementation to add features useful for INFN. These include the integration with INFN-AAI for the authentication, configurable look and feel, data migration from previous repository and some fixes. Additionally, we have developed yaml files describing all micro services behind Zenodo for an automated deployment on a Kubernetes-based infrastructure. The repository is open for testing by all INFN staff and associated researchers and people from other organisations are also investigating it, already. We are currently preparing a Conceptual Design Report for the updater repository for evaluation by the INFN management and we will report on it