While [the Royal Society] declares that "Funders should remember that the primary aims should be to improve the exchange of knowledge between researchers and wider society" in the same breath they state "We think it conceivable that the journals in some disciplines might suffer. Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?". Why? Wake up. Why should I pay for it, in the first place? First of all, scientists publish their papers for prestige (fame) first, to get their data to the scientific community second, and for personal profit a distant third....It's the journal publishers who are profiting, not the authors, and definitely not the public. Paying for a journal made perfect sense in the print and paper media....Money saved from publishers greedy hands can be used either to make content cheaper and more accessible to everybody....Second, isn't science supposed to serve humanity?...So if you really want to 'improve communication between scientists and the wider society', stop charging for your articles - especially since the primary contributors don't care either way....Sure, some business model is needed - but there are many choices 'to have the cake' and 'eat it', as long as you don't think of publishing a journal as a profit enterpise....I see no problem at all with in the scientific industry moving to free content. In such a move, everbody wins - well, everybody except the publishers. They were needed and did their job before the advent of the net. Now it is time to thank them for their job and tell them goodbye. From a useful tool they have become a parasitic relic of the past - and the sooner academic publishing realises it, the better for all of us. Let's hope Royal Society stops looking into the past and does something more useful then trying to see who if Einstein is more popular then Newton (and they call this 'science'? sheez). Definitely not a proud day for the Royal Society.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/26/2005 06:04:00 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.
