Open Access Research

“As someone that is an avid advocate of open source software/hardware (both for my creative endeavors, as you’ve seen here, and my scientific endeavors as a researcher at MIT) and a member of many DIY/Maker/Hackerspace communities, I try to keep tabs on the status of open science/open access. The idea is simple — one should not need a pedigree (or, in this case, a degree) to participate in science! Scientific information, techniques, data, and results should be made available to anyone that desires access to it... In the last month or so, the issue of Open Access Research has really taken center stage in the scientific community. A boycott against Elsevier (one of the three largest scientific publishers) was initiated, which snowballed into increased awareness of the Research Works Act. This wild month of attention came to a surprising turning point this week:Elsevier officially withdrew its support for the RWA, effectively killing the bill... even given how much easier it is to publish and distribute information these days, journals frequently cost thousands of dollars per title per year. For example, Elsevier-published journals cost an average of $6,598 a year. Elsevier’s profits, on the other hand, are upwards of $1,000,000,000.00 annually. Yes, that is one billion dollars. Not bad for a company that is outsourcing most of their work to academic volunteers! Plus, they get to keep the copyright to the journals to boot... So why does the scientific community continue to participate in this system? Prestige. Journals are essentially ranked — certain journals have a reputation of having higher standards or publishing more high-impact work than others; as a result, a publication in a high-ranking journal like Nature can make a researcher’s career... Taking advantage of the aforementioned benefits of electronic dissemination, open access archives of scientific papers such as ArXiv and the Public Library of Science were created to serve as centralized databases of published researcher. These databases got around journal copyrights by serving as databases for ‘pre-print’ papers... the National Institute of Health formed PubMed, an open-access archive that required all recipients of NIH research grants to submit a copy of their final paper under the belief that publicly-funded research should be publicly-accessible. However, in December 2011 the Research Works Act [RWA] was introduced, which would effectively nullify the efforts of the NIH and PubMed... (RWA) caused quite a stir in the scientific community... The Cost of Knowledge was started to spread awareness of the RWA and begin a boycott of all Elsevier-published journals. Amazingly, over 7000 researchers have signed it... I am proud to have added my own name to the list... It seems that all of the RWA-related noise had an impact — Elsevier withdrew its support for the RWA, and the representatives that originally backed the bill dropped support for it too... Not only is the RWA dead, but there is now a bill being pushed through Congress — the Federal Research Public Access Act — would require that research funded by eleven federal agencies (see the wikipedia page for a full list) be open access to the public... The passing of this bill would be a huge success for open access, and would make a huge portion of new scientific research (a lot of research gets funded through these federal agencies) available to the public, free of charge. There’s lots that you can do if you’re interested in supporting the FRPAA... Things that anyone can do: [1]Read about the FRPAA; learn about it, and form your own opinion on it! [2] Sign a white house poetition to have President Obama review the FRPAA if you want to support it. [3] Write a letter to your local representatives asking them to co-sponsor and support the FRPAA! [4] Spread the word! After all, we’re looking to improve dissemination of information... If you’re working in academia, additional things you can do: [1] Refrain from publishing in an Elsevier journal — you can read more (and sign a list of scholars that are boycotting Elsevier) at The Cost of Knowledge.
[2] John Baez at Azimuth made some sweet posters to place on your office door to raise awareness about the Elsevier Boycott. Print one out and post it on your door!”