Q: At Stanford you were involved in the Public Library of Science. What is the future of scientific research being available to the public?
A: When PLOS began, I was still editor-in-chief of Molecular Biology of the Cell, and my support for PLOS was mirrored by the policies of the American Society of Cell Biology. What I [share] is the belief that...all the research that is published, done with public money, ought to be publicly available. I think it's a proposition that speaks for itself. If it's required that the eager beavers get data a few months before everybody, I think that is an acceptable compromise. Let's say three months out, we all agree that everything should be public. As an aside, I rarely read any paper the moment it comes out. If I get to it within three months it's a miracle! So I guess I don't see it as big a problem as everybody else does. At the same time many studies suggest that the economic value of the journal and exclusivity to the journal decays after three to five months to nothing, and therefore this should not be as contentious an issue as it seems to be....I am a big supporter of PLOS.
(Thanks to Jason Bobe.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/12/2004 08:25:00 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.
