...Since leaving the lab nearly four years ago, my empathy with those without ready access to the scientific literature has grown. With the exception of a pitifully small handful of publications I subscribe to, I now have to beg copies of interesting-looking papers from better-connected colleagues. And I’m not alone in this...
I manage —I have enough friends who can get hold of relevant papers. And could always work something out with a willing research institution if the going got really tough. But what about others who want a first-hand account of what is going on in science and technology —from the curious citizen to the budding scientist? There’s this ideal that scientific knowledge should be available to everyone —a “Scientific Commons.” Yet most people are forced to rely on second hand accounts of breakthroughs, filtered through institutional press offices and journalists....
At this point you may be wondering what lit my fuse and led to this tirade....What really set me off though was this passage in the paper [by Barbara Harthorn et al., which is TA in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research]:
‘These initial results [of the nanotoxicology literature survey] have significant implications for toxicologists, regulators and social scientists studying nanotechnology and society. The diffuseness of the scholarly literature may challenge the abilities of the public and civil society to stay informed about the toxicological implications of nanomaterials, as keeping up to date with the literature requires subscriptions to a proprietary database, and not just access to a single or a few journals.” (Emphasis added)
How ironic that most people will not have direct access to a paper that flags this as a problem!
Fortunately, things are changing. The number of open access journals is increasing....
Change will not be easy. The established scientific publishers have supported peer review science for decades —centuries even in some cases— so as well as a mountain of institutional inertia to overcome, there is also something of a debt of gratitude within the academic community that comes into play. Yet old-style publishing where the reader pays for the privilege of access is becoming increasingly untenable. There is a growing non-academic population clamoring for access to new information. And at the same time paradigm-shifting changes in information technology are undermining conventional publishing practices at an alarming rate. The combination of the two suggests that scientific publishers will eventually need to re-invent themselves if they want to survive....
But in the meantime, there are an awful lot of people out there who are still denied access to scientific information. And at a time when science and technology are increasingly important for a smooth running society, that cannot be good.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/08/2009 05:02:00 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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
