But the problems don't stop there. In the digital age, it is absurd that ordinary members of the public, such as healthcare professional and their patients, cannot access and compare the latest research quickly and cheaply in order to take better care of themselves and others.
In this online discussion, we want to discuss the impact open access is having across the board in the higher education and publishing sectors, from researchers to universities, from libraries to the publishing giants. Here's what we're looking to discuss: • Quality control and peer review • Cost and corruption • Access and knowledge • "Publish or perish" attitude • Where now and what next?
OAPEN-NL’s final report, published yesterday, gives recommendations for research funders, libraries, publishers and authors. (...) In total 50 academic books were published in Open Access with subsidy from NWO. (...) OAPEN-NL also gathered data of all 50 books to get an insight in the costs related to publishing academic books. Based on this research, publishing a monograph in the Netherlands costs an average of € 12,000. Roughly half of these costs are for the Open Access edition. Remaining costs regard printing and disseminating the paper version. These results are important for the funding of Open Access monographs in the Netherlands.
The Wellcome Library has made funds available to pay the open access publishing costs for research papers, monographs and book chapters that result from research based on the Wellcome Library's collections. In this video the Head of Library, Simon Chaplin, explains why the Fund has been created and what the benefits are for the Library and its users.See also this post.
Sharing is a phenomenon as old as humankind, while collaborative consumption and the “sharing economy” are phenomena born of the Internet age. This paper compares sharing and collaborative consumption and finds that both are growing in popularity today. Examples are given and an assessment is made of the reasons for the current growth in these practices and their implications for businesses still using traditional models of sales and ownership. The old wisdom that we are what we own, may need modifying to consider forms of possession and uses that do not involve ownership.
Open access to research is still held back by misunderstandings repeated by people who should know better, says Peter Suber
The Guardian, Higher Education Network.
"When the richest academic institution in the world can't afford its research articles, how do you expect a teenager to do that?"
At this point I thought it might be worth checking the Whois record for openscience.com. In doing so I discovered that the domain is in the name of De Gruyter, the Berlin-based legacy publisher, which had acquired Versita in January 2012.
Open access to publicly-funded research journal articles has been growing steadily across the world over the past ten years, and the value of unrestricted use and re-use of research results to current and future researchers is widely acknowledged.
Peer review is one of the oldest and most respected instruments of quality control in science and research. Peer review means that a paper is evaluated by a number of experts on the topic of the article (the peers). The criteria may vary, but most of the time they include methodological and technical soundness, scientific relevance, and presentation.
Many aspects of China's academic publishing system differ from the systems found in liberal market based economies of the United States, Western Europe and Australia. A high level of government intervention in both the publishing industry and academia and the challenges associated with attempting to make a transition from a centrally controlled towards a more market based publishing industry are two notable differences; however, as in other countries, academic communities and publishers are being transformed by digital technologies. This research explores the complex yet dynamic digital transformation of academic publishing in China, with a specific focus of the open and networked initiatives inspired by Web 2.0 and social media. The thesis draws on two case studies: Science Paper Online, a government-operated online preprint platform and open access mandate; and New Science, a social reference management website operated by a group of young PhD students. Its analysis of the innovations, business models, operating strategies, influences, and difficulties faced by these two initiatives highlights important characteristics and trends in digital publishing experiments in China.
Nature Publishing Group will next spring launch Scientific Data, an open-access, online-only journal for detailed descriptions of data sets (http://nature.com/scientificdata). This week, Scientific Data announced its first call for submissions (see go.nature.com/1gnd1j). The doors are now open for scientists to submit ‘Data Descriptor’ manuscripts — a new article type that is designed to describe scientifically valuable data sets in a way that will promote data sharing and reuse.Nature.
Every publication makes mistakes. Great publications learn from those mistakes, and the best publications also learn from the mistakes of others. So imagine my surprise at seeing two legendary publications make compounding mistakes by taking serious missteps with their communities. I'm talking about Popular Science and Scientific American, two of the oldest and most revered publications for the popularization and support of the scientific enterprise. Both publications will easily survive these missteps, but they are leaders in the field, and those who follow their recent moves will be led astray.
ars technica.
I was recently asked to talk about the idea of “open”, and I realized the term is used in at least eight different ways. The distinct interpretations are all important in different but interlocking ways. Getting them confused leads to a lot of misunderstanding, so it’s good to review them all.
It’s easy to say everything should be published as quickly as possible, but it could lead to crushing careers before they ever get off the ground.
The present invention provides a data communication managing system. The system includes a first network segment client, a second network segment client, and a center unit. The center unit includes a manage unit and transmit data with the first network segment client and the second network segment client, respectively. The manage unit includes a transmission management part which is used to disallow the data transmission between the first network segment client and the second network segment client.
But just how much pressure is there for academic research to become open access? One source of pressure causing trends toward open access is boycotting, most notably and recently involving Elsevier, the largest scientific publishing company in the world.
Key findings include:
- The number of open access authors has grown significantly.
- Quality and profile of open access publications remains a concern.
- There are indications of author confusion around funder mandates.
- Respondents overwhelmingly preferred the more permissive licenses.
- Considerable differences emerge between early career professionals and more established colleagues when comparing funding and payments for APCs.
With the launch of NGA Images, the National Gallery of Art implements an open access policy for digital images of works of art that the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are now available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial. Users do not need to contact the Gallery for authorization to use these images. They are available for download at the NGA Images website (images.nga.gov). See Policy Details below for specific instructions and notes for users.
The sting operation on publishers doesn't point to the real crisis, says Curt Rice – the meltdown of the peer review system The Guardian.See also some responses here, here (in German) and here. And for where it all started: 'Who's Afraid of Peer Review?'.
The accelerating pace of scientific publishing and the rise of open access, as depicted by xkcd.com cartoonist Randall Munroe.