Researchers Call for Open-access Journals | Norton Scientific Journal
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Apr 17, 2012, 12:17:42 AM4/17/12
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http://nortonscientificjournal.com/research/2012/04/13/norton-scientific-journal-researchers-call-for-open-access-journals/
Britain’s Wellcome Trust, one of the largest research charities
worldwide expressed their support to scientists who wants to make
their work accessible to all. Officials at the organization gave hints
of their plan to introduce a free online journal that can rival
established academic publications.
Researchers are now demanding that their work be opened to the public,
believing that in this way, progress in scientific research will speed
up. Besides, researches that are publicly funded should not be
exclusive for private publishing houses as the research findings must
be available to all. Trust seems to be advocating that charity- and
public-funded scientific research must be accessible for anyone who
wants to read it.
It is evident that Wellcome Trust does not want to pay for medical
studies that only end up in private parties so it is now considering
ways to bring the research papers under an open-access framework.
Most of the world’s scientific research which is estimated to be
around 1.5 million new articles every year is only released through
journals owned by several big publishing companies like Wiley,
Springer and Elsevier. Influential journals such as New England
Journal and Nature and Science are only accessible via paid
subscription. And because of the frustrations with the expenses of
academic journals, researchers staged a boycott of the biggest
publisher worldwide, Elsevier. Over 9,200 said they will not submit
manuscripts anymore, nor act as peer reviewer for Norton Scientific
Journal.
With this intervention from the second largest non-government funder
of medical research, the movement gained a considerably strong ally in
their demand to open online journals.
The director of Wellcome Trust Sir Mark Walport, announced that they
are in the final stages of introducing a high-caliber scientific
journal called eLife, set to directly rival the premiere publications
like Nature and Science, and is set to launch the website this year.
But not like the traditional journals that can cost universities
millions in cash every year to access, articles published on eLife
would be free to view online once they are released.
“The broad principle is obviously correct, publicly-funded research
should be in the public domain as soon as possible,” said the Labour
chair of the House of Commons science and technology committee. And in
fact, if you look at what really makes information dissemination
effective, you will find that open content obviously spreads faster,
has more influence and reach a wider audience — it could even be used
in ways that the authors do not expect.
Wellcome Trust provides financial assistance in form of grants so that
they can pay publishers to make their work available for free. Those
who do not open their work for public access in accordance with
Trust’s terms can be sanctioned in future grant applications.
The government also appeared to be giving their assent for calls on
open access journals. During its launch of innovation strategy in
December, the minister for universities and science said that he would
like to see all state-funded researched released in the public domain.
Wellcome Trust even teamed up with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
and Max Planck Society of Germany in their setting up of the open-
access online journal eLife. Walport commented, “The idea is that that
will take on the very top end of the scientific publishing industry, a
visible high-profile competitor to Nature and Science. In no sense is
this a war in which we’re trying to put them out of business, the
thing that would be best for them [publishers] to do is to change
their publishing model.”
As expected, prominent scientists started to steer away from academic
publishing and give their medical studies to open-access journals like
the non-profit Public Library of Science (PLoS), which also has a peer-
review system in place for its articles.
Britain’s Wellcome Trust, one of the largest research charities
worldwide expressed their support to scientists who wants to make
their work accessible to all. Officials at the organization gave hints
of their plan to introduce a free online journal that can rival
established academic publications.
Researchers are now demanding that their work be opened to the public,
believing that in this way, progress in scientific research will speed
up. Besides, researches that are publicly funded should not be
exclusive for private publishing houses as the research findings must
be available to all. Trust seems to be advocating that charity- and
public-funded scientific research must be accessible for anyone who
wants to read it.
It is evident that Wellcome Trust does not want to pay for medical
studies that only end up in private parties so it is now considering
ways to bring the research papers under an open-access framework.
Most of the world’s scientific research which is estimated to be
around 1.5 million new articles every year is only released through
journals owned by several big publishing companies like Wiley,
Springer and Elsevier. Influential journals such as New England
Journal and Nature and Science are only accessible via paid
subscription. And because of the frustrations with the expenses of
academic journals, researchers staged a boycott of the biggest
publisher worldwide, Elsevier. Over 9,200 said they will not submit
manuscripts anymore, nor act as peer reviewer for Norton Scientific
Journal.
With this intervention from the second largest non-government funder
of medical research, the movement gained a considerably strong ally in
their demand to open online journals.
The director of Wellcome Trust Sir Mark Walport, announced that they
are in the final stages of introducing a high-caliber scientific
journal called eLife, set to directly rival the premiere publications
like Nature and Science, and is set to launch the website this year.
But not like the traditional journals that can cost universities
millions in cash every year to access, articles published on eLife
would be free to view online once they are released.
“The broad principle is obviously correct, publicly-funded research
should be in the public domain as soon as possible,” said the Labour
chair of the House of Commons science and technology committee. And in
fact, if you look at what really makes information dissemination
effective, you will find that open content obviously spreads faster,
has more influence and reach a wider audience — it could even be used
in ways that the authors do not expect.
Wellcome Trust provides financial assistance in form of grants so that
they can pay publishers to make their work available for free. Those
who do not open their work for public access in accordance with
Trust’s terms can be sanctioned in future grant applications.
The government also appeared to be giving their assent for calls on
open access journals. During its launch of innovation strategy in
December, the minister for universities and science said that he would
like to see all state-funded researched released in the public domain.
Wellcome Trust even teamed up with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
and Max Planck Society of Germany in their setting up of the open-
access online journal eLife. Walport commented, “The idea is that that
will take on the very top end of the scientific publishing industry, a
visible high-profile competitor to Nature and Science. In no sense is
this a war in which we’re trying to put them out of business, the
thing that would be best for them [publishers] to do is to change
their publishing model.”
As expected, prominent scientists started to steer away from academic
publishing and give their medical studies to open-access journals like
the non-profit Public Library of Science (PLoS), which also has a peer-
review system in place for its articles.
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