An interesting conversation arose in the comments to Matt’s last post — interesting to me, at least, but then since I wrote much of it, I am biased.  I think it merits promotion to its own post, though.  Paul Graham, among many others, has written about how one of the most important reasons to write about a subject is that the process of doing so helps you work through exactly what you think about it.

Barrier-based publishers have been shouting and stomping around a lot recently.  Kind of like a Vogon guard.  But we’re trying to see the situation from their point of view.

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In a comment on the last post, an Elsevier employee wrote: Elsevier’s support for the Research Works Act comes down to a question of preferring voluntary partnerships to promote access to research, rather than being subjected to inflexible government mandates like the NIH policy, which seek to dictate how journal articles or accepted manuscripts are disseminated without involving publishers. While we do appreciate that you’re trying

The Elsevier boycott at The Cost Of Knowledge is the most visible sign of the recent uprising against exploitative publishing practices, but it’s far from the only one.

A couple of days ago, we noted that PLoS ONE publishes more open-access articles in a month than all of Elsevier’s 2637 journals put together publish in a year.  This time I would like to consider why that is. I am genuinely interested here, and I’d like to hear from people who have considered publishing their own work as open access in an Elsevier journal.

A few weeks ago, software developer and pioneering blogger Joel Spolsky made an important point about SOPA/PIPA which has stayed with me: And of course the same thing applies to the RWA.

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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.