Un piano radicale di accesso libero democratizzerebbe la scienza
alespierno's bookmarks 2018-09-14
Summary:
[google transl.] A RADICAL PLAN FOR FREE ACCESS WOULD DEMOCRATIZE SCIENCE
Research funders from France, the UK, the Netherlands and eight other European nations have revealed a radical free access initiative that could change the face of scientific publications within two years, and that instantly provoked protests from publishers.
The eleven bodies that together spend €7.6 billion ($8.8 billion) annually on research grants say that from 2020 they will require that the scientists they fund should make the documents of their results immediately free to read in publication (see "Plan S protagonists"). The documents would have a liberal publication license that would allow anyone else to download, translate or otherwise reuse the work. "No science should be stuck behind a paywall," says a preamble document that accompanied the commitment, called Plan S, released on September 4.
"It's a very strong statement. It will be controversial and will create strong feelings," says Stephen Curry, a structural biologist and promoter of free access at Imperial College London. Politics, he says, is marking a "significant turning point" in the free access publications movement, which has seen slow progress in its effort to make scientific literature freely available on the web.
As drafted, Plan S would prohibit researchers from publishing in 85 percent of journals, including influential titles such as Nature and Science. According to a December 2017 analysis, only about 15 percent of journals immediately publish their work as free access (see "publication templates"), financed by charging authors or their funders per article, negotiating general free publication contracts with funders or through other means. More than a third of journals still publish documents under a paywall and usually allow free versions to be released online only after a delay of at least six months, while respecting the policies of influential financiers such as the US National Institute of Health (NIH).