Transparency is essential for trust and credibility in the research community, and true openness brings great opportunities for academia. The internet facilitates the free flow of information and knowledge, and permits new forms of communication both for researchers and for the general public. Already, today’s children can listen freely on the internet to university courses taught by world-leading scientists, and everybody has the best encyclopaedia ever written (Wikipedia) at their fingertips. These are real game changers. Opening up the research literature is the next logical step.
David Shotton.
See also
this and
this post.