Have a Good NEWS

Search

which is funded by the public must be accessible to all - an approach to open access methods of the publication is in progress

As a scientist and as a citizen want to see universal adoption of the open access model of scholarly publishing, because it will be better for science and the best for society.

open access, where costs are met in advance by the author and the documents are free for readers, could improve the science, which makes all the published results and ideas available to researchers around the world and thus fuel the engine of discovery. Currently, too many of our research is locked behind paywalls that limit access and progress since.

Change ownership of the scientific literature outside of commercial publishers, open access also provides a clear recognition that most of its value comes from the scientific publishing and business-funded . This is a delay correction, which will also facilitate the dissemination of scientific information beyond the scientific community and the general public, through taxes and charitable giving, has the moral right of their products.

In a connected world, people increasingly realize they need - and deserve - access to scientific literature that have been paid if the patient groups seeking the latest medical research or citizens who try to deal with research involving public policy on important issues such as climate change, the use of drugs or genetically modified foods. We can say that most members of the public would not be able to understand the primary scientific literature, even if they had free access, but the mere fact of its availability - through a transition to open access - should encourage a healthy demand more acceptable public reports of scientists they support. Direct exposure to the scientific community for the public's appetite for research results could even have positive effects on the development of research priorities.

Consequently, despite all the science funded in the UK must now be published by one of the roads open, deposit rates remain low. The research councils have recently begun monitoring compliance rate, so that figures are hard to find, but some reports indicate that there may be as low as 5%. The Wellcome Trust, a charitable organization of medical research has shown that significant simplification of the funding mechanism that allows authors to recover the costs of open access can increase performance dramatically. Yet, trust is disappointed to learn that the compliance rate among its funded scientists are only about 55%.

The absence of strong incentives or sanctions donors promotes a lackadaisical attitude of scientists, who must also bear some responsibility for the slow adoption of open access. While most would agree that open access is good, you can forget that, during the arduous process of pasturing of new results in the literature. For many, the distractions of negotiating with the referees to deal with multiple rounds of submission and rejection in different journals may mean that the last step in the sorting rules for open access, simply falls into oblivion .

The situation is compounded by the variation in the terms and conditions for open access among publishers and even between different journals from the same publisher. It is difficult to maintain and many scientists are simply unaware of the options available to them. Too many think that the publication in journals of higher rank, by their nature or science, which is widely seen as vital for success in financing and promoting applications, it is incompatible with the modes of publication free access. But this is simply not the case. Not only high-ranking journals for open access (though often through sub-optimal routes that involve a period of six to 12 months), but the stability of open access journals and the quality of serious (eg Public Library of Science), in which each document is free for readers, is growing rapidly.