Why Biology Will Be Very Different, Even Medieval, Without Open Access to Publications | The Wire

abernard102@gmail.com 2016-02-13

Summary:

"A major bone of contention in academic research in biology concerns the ownership of and third-party access to research data. Should research data be made available publicly for everyone to access, or should it be closely held by the producers of the data behind an iron curtain? Should research publications, typically written in a language that is unintelligible to those outside the domain of research concerned, be deposited in copyleft venues allowing unhindered access to all? One would have believed that the issue was settled, and that the answer would be an emphatic yes in favour of open access to research data and publications. But apparently not! The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a 'priggish' editorial last month, expressing a problem with open data sharing, justified by fears over their inappropriate reanalysis by 'research parasites', a term which trended on Twitter. A concern expressed by the authors of this editorial was that these parasites would not understand the 'choices made' in the 'generation and collection of the data' and would therefore reinterpret the data wrongly ..."

Link:

http://thewire.in/2016/02/12/why-biology-will-be-very-different-even-medieval-without-open-access-to-publications-21392/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.data

Date tagged:

02/13/2016, 09:16

Date published:

02/13/2016, 04:16