Information that we want to be free

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-08-20

Summary:

[Use the link above to access the letter printed in the editorial section of “the guardian” on April 12, 2012. The piece was written and signed by eight authors.] “‘[1] As the editor of an online journal, Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, now entering its fourth year with 1,100 registered readers, I was delighted to read such strong endorsement of open access publishingfrom the director of the Wellcome Trust, Mark Walport, and others (Wellcome joins 'academic spring' to open up science, 10 April). The Walport case was based on meeting the operational costs of open access to scientific literature through charges levied on authors that the Wellcome Trust is prepared to meet in relation to its own funded research... As we know from running an interdisciplinary journal, many authors do not have access to such support; hence if we were to charge for publication, open access to authorship, if not to readership, would be effectively barred to them. It would make sense for the major research funders to establish a funding pool to which open access journals could apply for meeting at least some of their costs directly. A multidisciplinary conference would be the obvious first step...’ Prof John Bynner ... ‘[2] So-called open access publishing of scientific research requires the author to pay to publish. Open access is therefore a closed shop. Only people affiliated to an organisation which will pay on their behalf can publish. There may be very few scientists like myself who have no such affiliation and who work for free with no funding, but our work would have no peer-reviewed outlet if all journals went this way...’ Rick Bradford... ‘[3] The Wellcome Trust can take another lead, namely remove impact factor as one of the major determinants of screening grant applications. This "factor" is a clever device invented by the expensive journals to reward articles in their journals, to reinforce their importance to scientists who require grant funding for a living...’ Professor Gordon McVie... ‘[4] Online access to academic articles is crucial for researchers inhumanities as well as science (How an angry maths blog grew into a new scientific revolution, 10 April). However, the present publisher-led system ensures that while fee contracts with universities make a range of journals available online to their members, universities cannot in any circumstances extend this service to individual researchers, including alumni... Co-ordinating bodies such as JSTOR are trying to breach this huge financial structure on behalf of researchers outside the academy, but with very minor outcomes so far...’ Dr. Tricia Cusack...  ‘[5] Any chance that those nice people at Wellcome might lend some of their millions to liberate arts and humanities publishing from its Elsevier incubus too?’ ... David Crouch... ‘[6] We are seldom paid for writing, or for peer-reviewing other academics' work; and we are in the invidious position of writing research papers which our students cannot then read because our library budgets have been cut. Our problem is that we are tied to the assessment for the Research Excellence Framework, and our managers still insist that our research will not count unless it is published in a notional ‘A-list’ of journals. We want to share our research as widely as possible, but if we allow free access to our publications the "A-list" journals will reject them and we will end up on the scrapheap... We cannot tackle this problem on our own initiative. It requires a reframing of the assessment process for the REF and pressure from the key funding bodies. Welcome, Wellcome!...’ Maddie Gray... ‘[7] It is not only scientists that have difficulty accessing research journals. As a now self-employed researcher, pensioned off due to public service cuts, I find that I cannot remotely access electronic sources because I am not employed at or a student of a higher education institute. Even being an external borrower of university libraries does not allow access. An alternative would be to use public libraries as in the US, but this is almost nonexistent, except for bodies like the British Library or the National Library of Wales, where the access is on-site only. This situation will not improve due to funding cuts to public libraries. So much for the widening of the UK research base and making use of skills and knowledge built up over many years...’ Dr Alun Thomas ... ‘[8] The most effective way of tackling the the behaviour of academic publishers is for the Office of Fair Trading to launch a market study. It has the powers to ask for changes in areas where no explicit anti-competitive behaviour is going on but firms are still not operating in consumers' interests’ ... Anil Patel”

Link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/11/information-we-want-to-be-free?INTCMP=SRCH

Updated:

08/16/2012, 06:08

From feeds:

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

Tags:

oa.new oa.gold oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.comment oa.elsevier oa.libraries oa.peer_review oa.uk oa.impact oa.costs oa.funding oa.humanities oa.prestige oa.funders oa.fees oa.wellcome oa.jif oa.recommendations oa.budgets oa.jstor oa.ssh oa.journals oa.metrics oa.monopoly

Authors:

abernard

Date tagged:

08/20/2012, 18:22

Date published:

04/12/2012, 17:49