Open your minds and share your results. There is a compelling case for having open access to scientific papers, to enhance the efficacy and reach of scientific communication. But important though this is, the open-access debate has drawn attention away from a deeper issue that is at the heart of the scientific process: that of 'open data'. In an attempt to focus much-needed attention on this subject, I chaired a group that produced Science as an Open Enterprise, a policy report from the Royal Society in London, published last week. Open enquiry has been at the heart of science since the first scientific journals were printed in the seventeenth century. Publication of scientific theories — and the supporting experimental and observational data — permits others to identify errors, to reject or refine theories and to reuse data. Science's capacity for self-correction comes from this openness to scrutiny and challenge. Modern techniques to gather, store and manipulate data make this more difficult.
What about costs? Funding agencies are standing in way of open access to research results, publishers say. Open access will be crucial to maintain public confidence in science | Professor Peter Coles | Science. If researchers don't break free from the current system, the already fragile relationship between science and society may disintegrate. Photograph: Ho/Reuters The Guardian's recent articles about the absurdities of the academic journal racket have brought out into the open some very important arguments that many academics, including myself, have been making for many years with little apparent effect.
Now this issue is receiving wider attention, I hope sufficient pressure will develop to force radical changes to the way research is communicated, not only between scientists but also between scientists and the public, because this is not just about the exorbitant cost of academic journals and the behaviour of the industry that publishes them. It's about the much wider issue of how science should operate in a democratic society. Recent advances in digital technology should have made the publication and dissemination of research much cheaper. Les autres modèles économiques des licences libres. La dessinatrice américaine Nina Paley a publié 20.000 de ses minibooks grâce aux dons de contributeurs.
OpenUtopia ressuscite l'oeuvre de Thomas More. Le tout créant d'autres modèles économiques. Etat des lieux de projets en cours. La question revient souvent à propos des licences libres de savoir si elles sont réellement capables de s’articuler avec des modèles économiques viables pour la production de biens culturels, autrement que par le système de monopole exclusif du droit d’auteur « classique ». La semaine dernière, j’ai reçu par la Poste une preuve tangible que de tels modèles économiques peuvent exister, en associant licences libres et crowdfunding (financement participatif), ce système dans lequel le créateur demande en amont au public de contribuer à la réalisation d’un projet en donnant une somme d’argent laissée à son appréciation. L’originalité du projet résidait dans la « licence » retenue par Nina Paley pour ses ouvrages : le Copyheart qui se résume à ceci : Aurimas Rimša.
European Commission backs calls for open access to scientific research | Science. Free access to British scientific research within two years | Science. The government is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet. Under the scheme, research papers that describe work paid for by the British taxpayer will be free online for universities, companies and individuals to use for any purpose, wherever they are in the world. In an interview with the Guardian before Monday's announcement David Willetts, the universities and science minister, said he expected a full transformation to the open approach over the next two years. The move reflects a groundswell of support for "open access" publishing among academics who have long protested that journal publishers make large profits by locking research behind online paywalls.
"If the taxpayer has paid for this research to happen, that work shouldn't be put behind a paywall before a British citizen can read it," Willetts said.