On publishing research

“Much has been said recently about the Research Works Act so I won’t go into too much detail again. For me, the trigger was Stephen’s post on his refusal to review a paper published by Elsevier. After that, I started avidly reading other’s take on the issue namely, Tim Gower’s “call to arms” and Cameron Neylon’s views on the subject... Wide access to research results, particularly when derived from publicly-funded work, is something I have supported for a long time, even before having anything close to a research career. Back in early 2001, even before finding a PhD position, I was told about an online petition that asked scientists to pledge to stop publishing in journals that would not make them freely accessible to all and eagerly signed it as well. This petition later led to the creation of a new publishing model, the Public Library of Science, now becoming a main player in science publishing, with several respectable journals. After 10 years working in research, I now know how naive I was in that pledge. Even so, 6 years ago, the most important paper of my PhD was published in PLoS Biology – a risky move back then, for a recent postdoc aiming to have an academic career. Both decisions have stood the test of time and I continue to support any initiatives that will take research and science to a more open and wide access world. So it was I joined Tim’s boycott...”