Nature Debate on Open Scientific Journals

Declan Butler writes "I thought I'd let you know that the journal Nature is currently running an online special on the debate over access to the electronic scientific literature. It will be updated with two to three new articles each week, and will run until around mid-May. 'The Internet is profoundly changing how scientists work and publish. New business models are being tested by publishers, including open access, in which the author pays and content is free to the user. This ongoing web focus will explore current trends and future possibilities.' Best, Declan Butler, European correspondent, Nature"

Comments

Public grants = free publication

[dillon_rinker]

If the research is funded in whole or in part by the taxpayers, then ALL research results must be published and made freely available to ALL taxpayers. I can see no room for argument there.

If you don't want everyone to read your article, don't accept government funds. If you don't want to give your journal away for free, don't publish publicly-funded research.

Now, let's imagine a world in which corporate tax breaks were considered public funding...

Re:academic library

[stuph]

I'm one example of a person who would love to read these journals but no longer can as I'm not attached to any university or institution. In my undergrad and graduate research I was involved in a very new area of chemistry/materials science and like to see new developments in the field. Since I dropped out of grad school and am working in a completely different field these days, I'm not able to freely read the articles like I could back then.

I realize I'm a minority, but there are plenty of high school kids who are interested in science that would love to have access to this type of stuff.

The preprint archive

[manobes]

Virtually every paper published in the last ten years in high energy physics is online at the preprint arxiv. People still publish in peer reviewed journals, but very few people I know read them anymore. It's faster, and more current, on the arxiv. More and more physics papers in other fields are showing up there as well. The debate about open access in physics appears to have been settled already.

Re:Publishing in Journals

[Dr. GeneMachine]

There are already publishing fees in various journals. Some charge you for colour figures only, some take a fee per site and accordingly mark each article as "advertising" (PNAS does so, if I'm not mistaken). The business model of scientific journals is deeply and disturbingly flawed in my opinion - take work stemming from publicly funded projects, charge the authors and sell it back to the public for ridiculous prices.

Nature and Science are amongst the worst, charging prices for their online access that are so high, that most german university libraries have cancelled their online access as protest. Great working conditions, I can tell you..

Open scientific literature is a great idea, but it has to be done consequently. Cut out the publishing houses completely, organize peer review as a network of individual scientists. The big journals have long overdone their ripping of of the public.