Saturday, October 27, 2012

Is open access comical?

There is a video clearly explaining the case for Open Access to research journals. It is illustrated by Ph.D comics. I thank Tony Wright for bringing it to my attention.



A previous post The insatiable greed of commercial journals discussed some of relevant political background in the USA.

To curtail the influence the role of commercial journals, I think the least we can do is aim to mostly publish in journals run by professional societies such as American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society.

I also think research groups should be putting their "raw" research data sets online so others can analyse them independently.

I welcome comments.

3 comments:

  1. I agree with you that publishing in professional societies is a better option they are non-profit organizations. However - at least in the case of the ACS - I really don't think they behave much like non-profit organizations:

    1. The ACS also greedy
    2. Treat their customers with disdain
    3. A sizeable part of the profits are used for things like law-suits

    I've started to publish as much as possible in PLoS ONE - one of the few publishers with the heart in roughly the right place.

    Don't get me wrong though, choosing ACS over, say, Elsevier is definitely a step in the right direction.

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  2. Jan,
    Thank you for your comment.
    I looked at the blog posts you recommended about ACS.
    They are illuminating and discouraging.
    ACS also hates the arXiv. If you put your paper there ACS wont publish it.

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  3. Actually, the ACS journals I have contacted so far have been OK with it. However, they certainly don't advertise the fact in any way - on the contrary. Strange for a society whose stated mission is, in part, "to increase and diffuse chemical knowledge"

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