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Open Access For Research Gaining Steam

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the popularity-contests dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that open access to research is gaining steam as more than 20,000 people, including Nobel Prize winners, have signed a petition calling for greater access to publicly-funded research. While publishers are fighting open access, a growing number of funding agencies and universities are making it a mandatory requirement."

5 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. On the one hand... by Etherwalk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On the one hand, peer review and editing (things which closed journals often provide) are important. The classic example is the law journal where a misplaced comma cost millions, but it's also important in scientific journals where someone should be asking "does this sentence make sense?"

    On the other hand, why the hell should it cost anything for someone to read the research that their taxpayer dollars are funding? And why should there be gatekeepers of knowledge, or perceived knowledge? My grandfather had a paper that was rejected from the New England Journal of Medicine because he'd done the research before one of the editors, who came out with his own substantially similar paper later. Information should not be subjected to politics--especially information that saves lives. Restricting information increases corruption.

    1. Re:On the one hand... by shura57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. The ideal process would be a taxpayer-sponsored publishing. There's some overhead in maintaining the organization, so it's not completely zero cost. However, it must be far lower that what the publishers want us to believe. One could have taxpayer-run electronic publishing, and then allow commercial publishers to print and sell the articles for those who want the nice and shiny paper version (as opposed to printing it yourself).

      What gets me the most is that currently publishers make you sign the copyright waver to transfer rights to them. All such forms that I have seen start with "The copyright law requires that you transfer the copyright..." which is a complete bullshit. I could have held the copyright and just given them permission to publish it once, there's nothing in any law that requires copyright transfer for publishing.

      But if I don't sign that form then I don't get published, and then I don't get funded for research because I have no publications. Catch-22.

    2. Re:On the one hand... by MemoryDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is one thing... fame, thats pretty much the only thing those journals can provide. But I agree, the journal system is dreadful and the publishers are mostly crooks ripping the universities off after they bascially have done all the work themselves, they only are overpriced printing presses and fame donators (well the big journals are, the small ones are just printing presses)

  2. FireHose by Bob54321 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given the five or so posts pointing out this was a dupe from this morning, who voted for this on FireHose? The status for this article was red indicating many people want this story on the main page. If anything, this shows we should probably give the editors a break... they made only one mistake based on the mistakes of a large number of readers.

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    :(){ :|:& };:
  3. Do NOT blame the scientists. by posterlogo · · Score: 4, Insightful
    As these discussions go, I would like to emphasize that NOTHING will be accomplished by blaming scientists. We certainly will keep results and important data to ourselves until such time as it forms a story worth publishing. Demanding anything before that is a recipe for disaster. After something is published, I for one want as many people in the world to read it as possible. However, the major journals out there operate as business via advertising and publishing costs, then again via subscription costs. As a business, they want to keep their circulation to paying subscribers only. Currently, it costs scientists more to publish in open access journals, because those journals do not recuperate their operating costs by subscription fees. In a sense, the researcher (and ultimately the taxpayer) will be charged even more to get the data out.


    On another note, many researchers have partial funding from agencies which are not taxpayer funded, like Howard Hughes, American Cancer Society, Alzheimer's Foundation, etc. This is also very common for postdoctoral fellow or graduate student fellowships. So just because a particular area of research got a dime of taxpayer money, does that automatically mean it should all be open access? It's not often easy to figure out the final contribution from multiple funding sources to a specific project.


    Most journals actually provide free access to articles after a certain time frame (like six months, or a year). Additionally, most articles that have broad interest are typically well publicized by news outlets (the applicable conclusions from the research, at least). Frankly, I don't think most of Joe. Q. Public gives a damn about the details of 99% of the research articles published, or could even understand it. As a biologist, I'm not sure I could understand most physics papers, for example. This whole bruhaha seems more about some principle that important to some vocal minority than a genuine public concern. In the end, important taxpayer funded research finds the light of day at the appropriate juncture.


    Personally, as someone who is proud of his work and wants it to be widely known, open access is great. Practically, I don't think it's THAT big a deal. And I think most journals are doing enough to publicize the broad picture.