Richard Charkin: An Heretical View of Academic Publishing
peter.suber's bookmarks 2021-09-17
Summary:
"Clearly the biggest shift is the move in scientific publishing from the traditional subscription journal to one form or other of open-access publication. There will be debate as to which of the various open-science initiatives is the best, the worst, the most feasible, and the most affordable. What won’t be debated is whether the world needs open access at all....
Personally, I was less convinced—as my 2004 appearance at the United Kingdom Select Committee on Science and Technology suggested—but we all had to pay lip service to this “free” ideology. It was said that such an open-access revolution would aid the dissemination of scientific research for the benefit of humanity. Who could argue with that? Indeed, the response of the open access community to the desperate need for reliable information about COVID-19 has been stupendous.
And yet, and yet...."