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reports on how to protest against a Cambridge mathematician led to require open access to scientific knowledge

all started with a blog entry thwarted by an eminent mathematician. Tim Gowers and his colleagues had been complaining to each other for several years about the rising costs of academic journals.

They, like many other researchers, were upset that the work done by peers, and largely funded by taxpayers, sitting behind the paywalls private publishers charged by universities in the UK hundreds of millions of pounds a year for the privilege of access.

had spoken last year that major scientific could go out in public to highlight the problem and scientists rally to speak against the publishers, but nothing happened quickly.

Thus, in January this year, Gowers wrote an article on his blog saying that from now would refuse to submit the revision or any academic journal published by Elsevier, the largest publisher of scientific journals in the world.

not expect what happened next. Thousands of people read hundreds of post and left positive feedback. In one day, an officer has created a website, The Cost of knowledge, allowing academics to register their protest against Elsevier.

The site now has nearly 9,000 signatories, who have all promised to refuse any peer review, submit or make editorial work for publications of Elsevier. "I did not expect to make a splash," said Andrew Gowers. "At first I was surprised by how quickly they have ruined everything."

Gowers, a mathematician at Cambridge University and the winner of the prestigious Fields Medal had been nailed to academics who were fed more and more with the field that publishers have little gained with the publication and distribution of scientific research worldwide.

The current publishing model is broken science support a growing number of supporters of open access publishing, a model in which all scientific research funded by taxpayers available for free on the web.

paywalls costly not only lose the funds of the college, they say, but slower scientific discovery and the future of creating obstacles to the interested public to politicians and patient groups need access to primary research for exercising their democratic rights.

Stephen Curry, a structural biologist at Imperial College London, said that scientists need to reach a new agreement with publishers adapt to the online age, and that "for a long period, we have taken for a walk and it's ridiculous. "

He adds: "We face important political decisions in a number of issues: climate change, energy production, cloning, stem cell technology, genetically modified foods - not we expect to deal correctly unless we have access to scientific research in each of these areas. "

Academic Publishers UK universities charge about £ 200 a year for access to scientific journals, nearly a tenth of the £ 2.2 billion distributed to them by the government, by means the board of finance operating costs of basic academic research.

Despite the recession, these offices helped academic publishers operate with profit margins of 35% or more for their raw materials and the work of thousands of taxpayer-funded charity, scientists free.

The three major publishers - Elsevier, Springer and Wiley - own most of the world is more than 20,000 journals and represent about 42% of all journal articles published. And, as library budgets in recent years in the UK and North America remained stable or declining, journal prices have increased by 5-7% a year or more.

a separate subscription for one of the most expensive magazine Elsevier, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, costs more than ? 18,000 (£ 15,000) per year. Most universities buy packages of magazines, however, so you can quickly set up bills of over £ 1 million each to access journals on request.

"As scientists, we let ourselves be pushed around a lot," said Curry, who recently stopped Elsevier Review and resigned as an academic publisher Elsevier journal.

"We give all this work for free to publishers and I think just be aware of the huge profits involved, I am much less willing to donate my time ... I'm more inclined to say I will devote my time and effort to open access journals are more strongly. "

price, however, is only part of the question. Researchers and librarians also wonder why the editors should have exclusive control of how research is distributed and shared. "We believe it is wrong and what is not the most efficient operation of scholarly communication," says David Prosser, Executive Director of Research Libraries UK.

"To be effective, scientific information must be as wide as possible. We have seen a growing body of evidence showing that if we move to a world of free access, there are benefits not only the scientific process, but also greater economic benefits. "

Until the advent of the web, print magazines are the easiest and fastest way to cope with the increasing amount of research in a growing number of universities around the world. But as the numbers of journals grew, publishers have become the de facto guardians of scientific knowledge, the restriction could see the latest ideas in place to allow ideas to spread as far as possible.

Academic

present the results of their research projects in a magazine, whose editors, and then send the manuscript to other academics in the same field for the purpose of peer review.

If the item passes this stage, publishers often require researchers to pay hundreds or thousands of pounds, if you spend a certain number of pages or if you want to include color diagrams. Once these costs are paid, the research has been published and available in print and online, to anyone willing to pay for access. Organization of the whole process clearly requires effort, but justifies the huge profit margins that publishers do?

Gowers said that publishers rarely make explicit that the peer review based on the quality control is done voluntarily and publishers make profits on the back of this volunteer work.

"academics write papers, referee academic papers, researchers will select the works to be published - it's almost as if the publisher simply need except, perhaps, the role of the organization and provide the name of the magazine that gives him a certain reputation. "

Nature, one of the largest in the world of interdisciplinary scientific journals and the property of the Macmillan Publishing Group, subscriptions to access charges all its magazines and websites.

In an editorial published in January, the magazine has championed the value to the scientific approach, saying that the publication of original research papers require publishers to "make a careful assessment of the scientific community , and the stage of arbitration involves many revisions deliberation, discussion and occasional that significantly improve the impact strength and scientific management. "

Elsevier ArXiv.org is a website long as anyone can publish a research manuscript that they like and make it accessible to the world for free. In some subjects, including physics, almost everything you see here before it goes to peer review and before publication in a scientific journal.

other open access model comes from the Public Library of Science (PLoS), an organization based in San Francisco.

The organization publishes several magazines in class, including PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, PLoS and more generally, a magazine that is published on any topic that could be classified as Scientific and accept all proposals that findings are supported by the data presented.

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