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How many open-access papers are getting published these days? And who’s doing it? Inspired by a tweet from @labroides (link at the end so as not to give away the punchline), I went looking for numbers. We’ll start with our old friends Elsevier, since they are the world’s largest academic publisher by volume and by revenue.
I have just sent this letter to the Editorial Office of the brand new open-access journal Biology Open, which has just published its very first issue. I feel like a bit of a jerk sending a criticism when they’re just up and running, but I think it’s the best thing in the long run. I will let you know what they say if/when they reply. Update (28 March 2012). They did: read all about it.
I read an article on the Times Higher Education website: Research intelligence – The emeriti seizing a late licence to roam . It’s about how many retired academics are finding that, freed from the administrative responsibilities of their university jobs, they are able to be more fruitful in their research after retirement. Interesting stuff, so I wanted to read the paper that the article is based on: Thody, Angela. 2011.
Like many scholarly publishers that work primarily on the subscription model, Elsevier allows authors to opt in to open access by paying a fee, currently $3000. (While that’s more than twice the $1350 that PLoS ONE charges, it’s comparable to the $2900 that PLoS Biology charges, identical to Springer’s $3000 fee, and slightly less than Taylor &
A short one this time, honestly. I’ve written plenty about the Research Works Act, both on this blog and in The Guardian . Those writings have mostly focussed on the practical implications of the bill. But those aren’t the real reasons that it invokes such rage in me. That comes from this definition (from the text of the bill): So if Randy Irmis gets an NIH grant to research some subject;
I’ve had it up to here with this misconception. I just read it yet again, this time in a letter to the editor of the New York Times in response to Michael Eisen’s recent piece in that paper on the RWA. The letter says some good things, but then right in the middle we have this: This is just one more example of a pernicious and persistent assumption.
Although I’m on record of being no fan of the tabloids, there’s no doubt that they are hugely influential. So it has to be good news to find that in the last few hours, both Nature and Science have publicly come out against the Research Works Act.
Just a quick note that my article Academic publishers have become the enemies of science is now up on the Guardian’s Science Blog. Spread the word! (You’re welcome to comment here, of course, but if you post your comments on the Guardian site, they will be much more widely read.
