• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

What is open access in science?

Joined
Sep 18, 2008
Messages
1,941
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
512
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
It's something that I care deeply about, but seldom have the time to explain to the lay person. This popped up today on my twitter feed, and is an excellent primer on open access.

 

entropie

Permabanned
Joined
Apr 24, 2008
Messages
16,767
MBTI Type
entp
Enneagram
783
I dont get past minute 2 without getting bored hard. I'll just imagine what it could mean.
 

SpankyMcFly

Level 8 Propaganda Bot
Joined
Nov 19, 2009
Messages
2,349
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
461
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
I dont get past minute 2 without getting bored hard. I'll just imagine what it could mean.

I'll one up you and not even view it and take your word for it :D I imagine it means 'free stuff'.
 

Coriolis

Si vis pacem, para bellum
Staff member
Joined
Apr 18, 2010
Messages
27,230
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
This is important. I agree entirely with the views expressed in the video. In recent years most of my own publications have been in an open-access journal, but most journals in my field continue to require expensive paid subscriptions.

Another problem I see especially with the academic angle is the need for open-source textbooks. The cost of textbooks is out of hand, especially in the US. Many of our grad students can get common texts at a fraction of the cost when they go back to India, etc. for vacation. For basic subjects and introductory courses, there are many suitable free textbooks online, but I don't see too many schools using them yet.

And no, it is not so much "free stuff" as simplification of the payment structure so actual expenses of publication are covered in a way that doesn't limit access to researchers and students.
 

á´…eparted

passages
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
8,265
PhD comics is wonderful. Not just for the entertainment either. In recent years they started to focus more on scientific issues as it intersects with the public. I hadn't seen this one before and I am glad I watched it.

In my field (organic chemistry), it has always floored me at how expensive journals are. I'm really lucky that my university has a very extensive journal library/access, and has an amazing interlibrary loan program. The video mentioned that the journal Tetrahedron has a $40,000/y subscription fee. I've used that journal a number of times. My department ended up buying the books instead because of it. The newer journal articles are electronic online, but need to be ILL'ed in order to access all but the most recent ones. Granted, Tetrahedron is not a very good journal, and the vast majority of chemists won't publish in it. Worse is Tetrahedron Letters; that journal is almost a joke. It's amazing to me that it costs so much money. It does not cost that much for the publishers to do. Further, nearly ALL scientists don't want pay walls. They did the research, they published the results so they can tell the world. That's the point of science. Learning.

I am glad that there are journals like PNAS, and I hope organizations start following in their footsteps, or scientists start to migrate to open access journals. It will take a collective effort, becasuse as the video says there's so much pressure to publish in high impact journals like Nature.

It's so complicated though, and it comes down to funding really. Funding is very tight right now, and in order to get funding, you do need to publish in high impact journals to prove your worth and impact. It's ironic and sad that it comes full circle back to money.
 

Obfuscate

Permabanned
Joined
Aug 20, 2016
Messages
1,907
MBTI Type
iNtP
Enneagram
954
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
this was an excellent summation...
 

Firebird 8118

DJ Phoenix
Joined
Sep 22, 2012
Messages
3,134
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
279
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
So it's basically the equivalent of open-source code in the field of computer science :D cool! :rock:
 
Joined
Sep 18, 2008
Messages
1,941
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
512
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
An update here. Elsevier is a plague on science.

Scientists in Germany, Peru and Taiwan to lose access to Elsevier journals : Nature News & Comment

Thousands of scientists in Germany, Peru and Taiwan are preparing for a new year without online access to journals from the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier. Contract negotiations in both Germany and Taiwan broke down in December, while Peru’s government has cut off funding for a licence.

“It’s very unpleasant,” says Horst Hippler, spokesperson for the DEAL consortium of state-funded universities and research organizations, which is overseeing negotiations in Germany. “But we just cannot accept what Elsevier has proposed so far.”

Universities regularly complain about the rising costs of academic journals, and sometimes threaten to cancel their subscriptions. But negotiators usually strike a deal to avoid cutting researchers off. Last year, for example, a consortium of 14 universities in the Netherlands threatened to boycott Elsevier if it could not agree that articles by Dutch authors would be made open access. In the end, it thrashed out a compromise: 30% of its Dutch papers will be open access by 2018. And this month, a Finnish consortium that could not agree on terms with major publishers including Elsevier settled for a one-year extension deal while talks continue.

That hasn’t happened in Germany or Taiwan. In Germany, the DEAL consortium was supposed to broker its first nationwide licence agreement for the beginning of 2017. It wants all German-authored articles to be made open access. But Hippler says that Elsevier’s proposed contract cost too much, and didn’t include an open-access clause. Negotiations ended in December without agreement; Hippler says they are likely to resume in January. An Elsevier spokesperson declined to comment.
 
Top