Laboratorytalk newsletter issue 500

"This week...it feels as if the arcane world of academic publishing has finally woken up the 21st century. Three powerhouses of research - the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust - have revealed plans to create an online-only open-access journal to be published from next year. I've long advocated open access in scientific publishing. It seems to me bizarre in the extreme that, to this day, the major printed journals maintain a stranglehold on scientific knowledge. Much research in our fields is funded from public coffers (even in these days of austerity and public spending cuts), and it is just plain wrong that the knowledge won at the public expense is not available for consumption by anybody who wishes to see it. The big journals make huge profits selling back to us that which we have already paid for...."