Abstract: publishing industry is evolving rate idly, and scientific publishing is not immune. Like book publishers, traditional publishers of scientific are struggling to get on top of a wave of cultural change driven by technological developments. information revolution sparked by the Internet has spread to scientific publishing, with many arguing that scientific should not be locked away in costly journals but should be freely accessible to everyone. concept has particular resonance in the case of funded by governments. In the United States, open-access advocates assert that papers based on such should be made freely available to those who pay the bills--American taxpayers. Opponents of open access argue that journals and other publishers represent important gatekeepers. Peer review processes ensure that published is relevant, accurately reported, and of high technical quality. Those processes cost money and, by undermining the subscription model, open access threatens the revenues that have traditionally funded scientific publications. argument may appear to affect academic institutions more than industry, but the issue is one that industrial R&D executives shouldn't avoid. Research industry managers need to be aware of it, says Michael Carroll, Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University's Washington College of Law and a strong supporter of open access. The whole goal is to improve the technical quality for research. That technical quality frequently results from collaborative projects between academia and industry funded by government. While contracts for those projects typically protect companies' intellectual property, publications that result from them fall under the open-access requirement. On the other hand, not all open-access journals are equal. Perhaps as many as one in five do not require peer review of the articles they publish--a fact that casts doubt on their scientific credibility. Rapid Growth Open-access journals represent a growing segment of scientific publications. In 2011, the latest year for which figures are available, the number of articles published in open-access journals exceeded 300,000, three times the 2005 figure. Government agencies have played a strong role in the movement. Since 2007, papers reporting on work funded by the National Institutes of Health have been available gratis through the National Library of Medicine. And the Office of Science and Technology Policy, headed by presidential science adviser John Holdren, has called on research-related government agencies to develop their own public access policies. movement is not restricted to the United States. British government, following the recommendations of a working group headed by Dame Janel Finch that released its report in 2012, has committed to making all publications from government-funded freely available from April of this year. Pressure for wider use of open access is also increasing. open-access journal PLoS (for Public Library of Science) has attracted growing numbers of submissions. And in June 2012, a petition filed under an initiative of the Obama Administration's Office of Public Engagement that called for free, timely access over the Internet to journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research gained the 25,000 signatures necessary to require a response from the Administration. Administration is now considering its response. Overall, says Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition and an organizer of the petition, We have seen an uptick in interest at a speed we never anticipated. That uptick applies to traditional publishers, as well. Open access isn't viewed as an outlier, says H. Frederick Dylla, executive director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), an organization of scientific societies. …
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot