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

a good start

[untermensch]

I'm glad to see that Nature is at least taking an interest in Open Science, since right now the high profile journals like Nature are the most difficult to get access to. The university I attend has a subscription of course, but only for the dead-tree version. I've asked the librarians about getting online access and they say it is simply prohibitively expensive.

I think that Scientific journals should take a cue for the mistakes of the music industry and embrace the abilities of new technology. By moving from paper magazines to web-published journals they can cut distribution costs enormously, hopefully to the levels where they can survive on ads (or other non-subscription means) alone. Also, unlike the music industry there's none of this controversy over file-sharing and authors not getting paid.

Re:a good start

[lukewarmfusion]

My University had subscriptions available online for anyone with a valid University acct. So our entire school population could read the online journals for "free." It still cost the school a ton of money each year to keep the subscription. Is that what you mean by "online for anyone to access?"

I'm not sure I like the idea of having authors pay to have their work accepted. Underfunded studies/authors may not be able to afford submissions. That would lead to less exposure, and increasing obscurity. Of course, this is me not knowing the exact details of how much it would cost for a submission, but I guess it would have to be substantial in order to foot the bill for their journal in the first place.

Re:a good start

[s20451]

Are you sure you want ads subsidising the publication of scientific research, especially in medicine?

This paper entitled, "Viagra causes withered genitals," is brought to you by the makers of Cialis.

Better yet, there were two separate instances at the University of Toronto where two separate researchers were pressured into suppressing their research when it was unfavorable to one of the university's sponsors. The investigator in one case was Dr. Nancy Olivieri, who faced a possible lawsuit and discipline when she spoke out against Apotex; the other one involved Dr. David Healey, who had a job offer rescinded when he spoke against Prozac.

So what's left? Author-pay, government-pay and donation-based systems all have disadvantages.

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:Public grants = free publication

[GileadGreene]

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.

Unless the research is classified...

They are open and believe me, the scientist pays

[Neil Blender]

Anyone can go to any public university library and make copies of articles from journals. Articles which the scientist has paid a good amount to get published in terms of research not to mention paying the journal to publish it (even if a journal accepts your article, you still have to pay the costs of the layout, figures, reprints, etc.) I worked in life sciences research at the University of Washington for 10 years and I have seen this personally.

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.

Journals Need To Open

[LabRat007]

I am research scientist who has worked in big Pharma (Pfizer, Pharmacia & Upjohn) and I am currently working in a small startup biotech company. While working in big pharma we constantly had problems with our service that made all the journals available online (intranet). It was always a pain in the ass to hunt down that 'last paper' but we "People" who could take care of it for us. This is, by the way, how big Pharma handles most problems; throw ridiculous amounts of money at the problem unti it goes away. At the time I rather enjoyed that power - but I always felt a bit uneasy about it.

Now that I'm in a small Biotech the issues are very apparent. Many scientific journals, that we absolutely need, cost more then $1000 each for a years subscription. If you only new how many different journals we need. With start up monies of less then $500k and insane prices on lab equipment and supplies we need every break we can get. If we didn't already have an "alternate"(in other words shady) method of literature acquisition we would be screwed.

While it is true you can find just about any journal in some library - good f-ing luck finding one with everything you need. I hope that a solution can be worked out. Many researchers could benefit from an environment were the data/methods/protocols they need are just a few clicks away - instead of a 4 hour drive or expensive contract away.