The October 14 issue of Current Biology contains a wide-ranging interview with Greg Petsko, Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry and Director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center at Brandeis University. (Accessible only to subscribers.) At one point CB asked him about open access.
[CB] What do you think about the 'electronic revolution' and the push for free access to papers?
[GP] I support it so strongly that I'm on the editorial board of the Public Library of Science and also a member of the editorial board for the open access Journal of Biology. I like the idea of authors owning the rights to the material in their own papers, and making that material freely available for any reasonable use by others. That seems to me to be in keeping with the spirit of science. I have no objections to publishers making money --they still will in this model-- but the present system seems to me to restrict access to information too much, especially for people in third world countries. Open access will only work, though, if the best people in the field choose to publish their best work this way. Funding agencies must provide support for scientists to buy into open access publishing; and grant review bodies and tenure and promotion committees must get away from the Nature-Science-Cell mindset about where one has to publish in order to succeed.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/23/2003 09:01:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
