Why Conservation Letters is Going 100% Open Access | Cool Green Science

"Conservation science: You’re finally about to get a little freer. Conservation Letters, a research journal aimed at policy audiences, will go 'gold standard open access' as of January 1 — making all of its content (including its archives) free to download and reuse. Letters — which is associated with the Society for Conservation Biology — is the first high-impact applied conservation science journal to go completely open. Which might surprise some observers, since the field’s purpose is to influence conservation practice and how conservation is included in land-use planning and other societal decision-making. Most insiders, however, know conservation is notorious for lagging behind other disciplines in terms of data- and knowledge sharing. In fact, a recent review in Conservation Biology of 20 journals aimed at conservation practitioners found that only 9 percent of their papers published since 2000 were freely downloadable — compared to 32 percent of journals in the field of evolutionary biology. Making this development even stranger was that taking Letters gold standard open access was the idea of its publisher John C. Wiley & Sons — the same John C. Wiley & Sons whose science, technology and medical division made $106 million profit in 2011, and who (along with Elsevier and other big for-profit STM publishers) has been vilified by open access proponents. What’s behind the move? And might it galvanize more openness for the rest of conservation science publishing? Eddie Game, associate editor for Letters and Nature Conservancy senior scientist, gave me his take ..."