Set science free from publishers' paywalls - opinion - 19 June 2012 - New Scientist

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-06-19

Summary:

“... Many scientists are passionate supporters of open access and want to see the old model swept away. They have launched a protest movement dubbed the Academic Spring and organised a high-profile boycott of journals published by Elsevier. And the tide appears to be turning in their favour. This week the Finch Report, commissioned by the UK government, recommended that research papers – especially those funded by the taxpayer – should be made freely available to anyone who wants to read them... Advocates of open access... argue that science operates more effectively when findings can be accessed freely and immediately by scientists around the world. Better yet, it allows new results to be data-mined using powerful web-crawling technology that might spot connections between data – insights that no individual would be likely to make... The model has been around for a decade but about nine-tenths of the approximately 2 million research papers that appear every year are still published behind a paywall. Part of the reason is scientists' reluctance to abandon traditional journals and the established ranking among them. Not all journals are equal – they are graded by impact factor, which reflects the average number of times that the papers they publish are cited by others. Nature's impact factor is 36, one of the highest going, whereas Biochemistry's is around 3.2. Biochemistry is well regarded – many journals have lower factors – but a paper in Nature is still a much greater prize. Unfortunately, it is prized for the wrong reasons. Impact factors apply to journals as a whole, not individual papers or their authors. Despite this, scientists are still judged on publications in high-impact journals; funding and promotion often depend on it... Another reason for the slowness of the revolution is concern about quality. Unlike many traditional journals, PLoS One does not assess the significance of research during peer review; it simply publishes all papers judged to be technically sound. However, this concern proved unfounded. PLoS One now publishes more papers than any other life science journal and has an impact factor of 4.4... At the high end of the market, Nature is about to face competition from eLife, an open access journal to be launched later this year... Adding to the momentum, UK government research councils are increasingly insisting that the research they pay for be published in open access journals. The European Union is poised to do the same for the science it funds. In the US, a bill now before Congress would require all large federal funders to make papers freely available no later than six months after publication... I agree that access is a public good, but making journals open to all won't be enough. Most scientific literature is written by researchers, for researchers... Open access could be the key to unlocking this information. The model is seen as disruptive to publishers; I hope it might also be disruptive to scientists. By expanding the readership of scientific papers, open access could stimulate demand for a literature that is intelligible as well as accessible. If more of us felt motivated to pitch our findings to the public it could bring benefits to all sides: a society more engaged with science and scientists more engaged with society. The stuttering debates on genetic modification, climate, vaccines, drug policy and energy show that we need to find ways to build more meaningful dialogue. We can make a small start now. Have a look at my latest paper. It may commit a few jargon sins – I'm still getting my eye in – but it should explain why we worked out the structure of a protein from a norovirus that infects mice, and how that might help us tackle a human disease. I'm interested to know what you think.”

Link:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21937-set-science-free-from-publishers-paywalls.html

Updated:

08/16/2012, 06:08

From feeds:

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

Tags:

oa.new oa.data oa.npg oa.gold oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.mining oa.comment oa.government oa.mandates oa.usa oa.frpaa oa.legislation oa.advocacy oa.signatures oa.petitions oa.boycotts oa.elsevier oa.plos oa.uk oa.impact oa.quality oa.prestige oa.lay oa.jif oa.recommendations oa.benefits oa.elife oa.finch_report oa.europe oa.policies oa.journals oa.metrics oa.rankings

Authors:

abernard

Date tagged:

06/19/2012, 15:39

Date published:

06/19/2012, 16:04