The internet was all aflutter last week because Elsevier has sent thousands of take-down notices to Academia.edu, a social networking site where many researchers post and share their published papers. This marks a significant change of tack for Elsevier.

Tense, nervous headache? Feelings of confusion? Mood swings from warm optimism to a gnawing sense of futility? You’ve been reading about open access again, haven’t you? I know because I have and I recognise the symptoms.  Open access week came and went in the latter part of October and brought with it a plethora of events, publications and blogposts. The worldwide verbiage on this topic increased once again.

Nature has an interesting news feature this week on impact factors. Eugenie Samuel Reich’s article — part of a special supplement covering various aspects of the rather ill-defined notion of impact — explores whether publication in journals such as Nature or Science is a game-changer for scientific careers. The widely-held assumption is that they are.

The UK House of Commons has its dander up. Having bloodied the prime minister over Syria in the past fortnight, the select committee of MPs that oversees the work of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has issued a report that is heavily critical of the government’s policy on open access (OA). The report was published early this morning so I have had time only to skim through the conclusions and recommendations, but it makes

“…price rises coupled with high profits, mis-selling scandals […] and a lack of transparency over bills have destroyed consumers’ trust […], a committee of MPs has said in a report that also criticises the sector’s watchdog for failing to take … Continue reading →

This post has been written simply to point you to an interesting series of interviews that Richard Poynder has published on his blog with a range of stakeholders in the open access arena. So far he has mostly interviewed advocates, but as anyone knows who has spent more than twenty minutes on this topic, open access is a broad church.

Having devoted a fair number of the words on this blog to open access over the past year and a half, I have found myself invited to an increasing number of meetings on the topic. Whether run by RLUK, the Royal Society or the LSE, these meetings have invariably been interesting, but they often seem to bring together many of the same people, mostly from libraries, funders, publishers and learned societies.

Twelve months after the publication of the Finch Report, during which the new RCUK policy on open access has been published, dissected, debated (including by committees in both Houses of Parliament), revised and implemented, it seems an apposite moment to step back and take stock. A collection of essays published today under the title Debating Open Access presents one attempt to do just that.

Regulars at this blog will be familiar with the dim view that I have of impact factors, in particular their mis-appropriation for the evaluation of individual researchers and their work. I have argued for their elimination, in part because they act as a brake on the roll-out of open access publishing but mostly because of the corrosive effect they have on science and scientists.

This is a guest post by Pete Binfield and Jason Hoyt, co-founders of the open access journal PeerJ. I don’t make a habit of running posts from private companies here at Reciprocal Space but have been impressed by the innovative model of open access publishing that PeerJ represents and was glad to be able to provide them with a forum to expound on their publishing philosophy. No payment was made or requested.