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Open access: The true cost of science publishing

Open access: The true cost of science publishing
Michael Eisen doesn't hold back when invited to vent. “It's still ludicrous how much it costs to publish research — let alone what we pay,” he declares. The biggest travesty, he says, is that the scientific community carries out peer review — a major part of scholarly publishing — for free, yet subscription-journal publishers charge billions of dollars per year, all told, for scientists to read the final product. “It's a ridiculous transaction,” he says. Eisen, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that scientists can get much better value by publishing in open-access journals, which make articles free for everyone to read and which recoup their costs by charging authors or funders. But publishers of subscription journals insist that such views are misguided — born of a failure to appreciate the value they add to the papers they publish, and to the research community as a whole. The past few years have seen a change, however. The cost of publishing

December 31, 2012 Dramatic Growth of Open Access Updated Jan. 1, 2013 thanks to very helpful informal peer review from Pablo de Castro (E-LIS figure and explanation for discrepancy in growth rates of OpenDOAR and ROAR). 2012 was another awesome year for open access!. This post highlights and celebrates just how much open access is available already. The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) cross-searches over 40 million documents in over 2,400 repositories - nearly double the number in just 3 years, demonstrating yet again strong growth in open access archiving. The Directory of Open Access Journals, in addition to listing fully open access journals, provides an article-level search that is available for a growing percentage of DOAJ journals. A heartfelt thanks to everyone around the world who is making open access happen - all of the scholars sharing our work, readers, advocates, repository managers, publishers, librarians, and others. Notable annual growth by percentage The numbers A perspective

Tour d'horizon « Par "accès libre" à [la] littérature [scientifique], nous entendons sa mise à disposition gratuite sur l'Internet public, permettant à tout un chacun de lire, télécharger, copier, transmettre, imprimer, chercher ou faire un lien vers le texte intégral de ces articles, les disséquer pour les indexer, s'en servir de données pour un logiciel, ou s'en servir à toute autre fin légale, sans barrière financière, légale ou technique autre que celles indissociables de l'accès et l'utilisation d'Internet. La seule contrainte sur la reproduction et la distribution, et le seul rôle du copyright dans ce domaine devrait être de garantir aux auteurs un contrôle sur l'intégrité de leurs travaux et le droit à être correctement reconnus et cités. » Définition issue de la "Budapest Open Access Initiative" (BOAI, 2002). L’Open Access tire son origine d'une mobilisation de la communauté savante (chercheurs, bibliothécaires...) en faveur d'un accès libre et gratuit à l'information scientifique.

tualités Open Access is a wonderful opportunity for researchers, innovators, teachers, students, media professionals and the general public. It encourages the circulation of knowledge on a planetary scale and thus contributes to academic and scientific discoveries, innovation and socio-economic development (UNESCO Declaration, 2012). Open Access for researchers and universities It has now been proven that publications deposited on Open Access are cited much more than those which are less accessible because they have to be paid for. At the level of ORBi, an article deposited on Open Access is downloaded on average 2 times more than those on restricted access. The advantage of OA in terms of impact for researchers is thus undeniable and testified (see the studies carried out by Open Citation Project), but there are many other benefits as well. Open Access for the citizens Public research institutions are in part funded by the taxes paid by the citizens. See also

Quick guide to 10 recent open access policy and positioning statements 1. G8 Ministers of Science statement (June 2013) The first ever meeting of G8 joint Science Ministers and national science academies issued a statement in June 2013 that focused heavily on open access. In the section on ‘Open Scientific Research Data’, the Ministers said that they are “committed to openness in scientific research data to speed up the progress of scientific discovery, create innovation, ensure that the results of scientific research are as widely available as practical, enable transparency in science and engage the public in the scientific process.” In the section on ‘Expanding Access to Scientific Research Results’, the ministers said they “recognise that there are different routes to open access (green, gold and other innovative models) which need to be explored and potentially developed in a complementary way”. 2. The Global Research Council released an Action Plan towards Open Access to Publications during their 2nd Annual Global Meeting, in Berlin in May 2013. 3. 4.

The Philosophy of Open Access The Philosophy of Open Access It’s fair to say that most who know about Open Access (OA) in reasonable detail will be aware of the name Professor Peter Suber. “I work for the free circulation of science and scholarship in every field and language. In practice that means research, writing, organizing, and pro bono consulting for open access to research. I wear several hats: Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Senior Researcher at SPARC, Open Access Project Director at Public Knowledge, and Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College”. In contrast to previous interviews, this one covers in some detail the philosophy of OA. Peter Suber Suber describes how he became, as he puts it, “the expert” in OA "...And for the first two years of the newsletter’s existence, I kept saying to myself, somebody else should do this. Also worth a mention is Peter Suber’s extensive “Guide to Philosophy on the Internet”. Suber continues:

Open Access Embargoes — How Long Is Long Enough Embargo (Photo credit: kendrick) Many subscription-based science publishers offer some form of free access to journal articles, usually after an embargo period that can range between two months and 36 months after publication. These embargo dates were set more than a decade ago in most cases, with little supporting data and with little fear that giving away free content would put their business models at risk. In a widely influential piece published over 10 years ago in Nature Web Debates, Martin Richardson, then Journals Publishing Director for Oxford University Press, released one of the first usage studies for electronic journals, plotting how the vast majority of article readership for the The EMBO Journal takes place within the first three months of publication. This piece of information shouldn’t have come as a surprise to science publishers, most of whom observe the same pattern in their own journals. Should they begin to start worrying? Like this: Like Loading...

Open access: du rêve au cauchemar? L'avis de J-C Guédon Ce matin, la revue Science révèle que plus de 150 revues en open access (accès libre), sur 304 sollicitées, ont accepté un faux article scientifique concocté par un journaliste. Je relate dans cette note (Open access: du rêve au cauchemar ) cette histoire qui met en cause, a minima, les revues électroniques reposant sur le paiement par l'auteur massivement créées ces dernières années. Un problème sérieux pour la qualité du système scientifique mondial et la confiance en la science. L'article de Science est ici. Pour aller plus loin, voici une interview de Jean-Claude Guédon, historien et sociologue des sciences à l’Université de Montréal , qui fut l’un des signataires de la Déclaration de Budapest, en février 2002, souvent considérée comme l’origine du mouvement en faveur de l’open access des publications scientifiques. Jean-Claude GuédonL’open access est-il passé du rêve au cauchemar ? Aviez-vous anticipé cela lorsque vous avez rédigé la Déclaration de Budapest ?

Onze malentendus sur le libre accès | Le comptoir de l'accès ouvert Dans son livre Open Access, Peter Suber revient dès l’introduction sur ce que le libre accès n’est pas. Onze malentendus à dissiper et qui reviennent régulièrement lors de conversations portant sur le sujet. Petit passage en revue librement inspiré du chapitre introductif : Le libre accès n’est en aucun cas une façon de contourner l’évaluation par les pairs. Imprimer ce billet Mots clefs : promotion Posté dans : Billets, Lectures / Readings Un Open Access sans licence libre a-t-il un sens ? Voilà un moment déjà que je voulais écrire sur les rapports entre l’Open Access et les licences libres, et une affaire survenue à propos du site MyScienceWork la semaine dernière me donne une excellente occasion de le faire. Open Access (storefront). Par Gideon Burton. CC-BY-SA. Enclosure informationnelle Stéphane Pouyllau, qui travaille au CNRS sur les projets ISIDORE et MediHal, a épinglé sur son blog les pratiques du portail MyScienceWork, dans un billet intitulé "Le libre accès privatisé ?". [...] il n’est même pas signalé l’origine des publications : ni source, ni référence d’éditeurs, et donc HAL-SHS n’est même pas mentionné ! Stéphane Pouyllau critique ce procédé qui permet à MyScienceWork d’engranger des données personnelles fournies par ses utilisateurs sans pointer en retour vers la source des ressources moissonnées par le moteur : Sur le fond, je suis d’accord avec l’analyse de Stéphane et il me semble qu’on peut le remercier pour sa vigilance. Au vol ? 9. Par Opensource.com.

Happy 2012 Open Access Movement! December 31, 2011 Dramatic Growth of Open Access. Highlights There are over 7,000 peer-reviewed fully open access journals as listed in the DOAJ, still growing by 4 titles per day and over 6,000 of these are in English, as listed by Open J-Gate. Electronic Journals Library keeps track of more than 32,000 free journals. There are over 2,000 repositories, linking to more than 30 million items, growing at the rate of 21 thousand items per day, which can be searched through the snazzy new Bielefeld Academic Search Engine search options. PLoS ONE, having become the world's largest journal last year, outdid themselves by doubling the number of articles published this year. Details and commentary As eloquently explained by Paul Stacey, 2011 was the year of open, or as Katarina Lovrecic suggests, everything OA seems to be coming up roses. Caroline Sutton and Peter Suber reported on growth in scholarly society open access publishers in the December 2011 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Following are a few figures for the year.

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