R. Stephen Berry is James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago....Dr. Berry is an accolades fellow with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, and member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1997, he received the J. Heyrovsky Honorary Medal for Merit in the Chemical Sciences, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and in 1993 was honored with the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Senior Scientist Award....
Do you see open access benefiting science?
I only see good....
What are some of the challenges and changes to publishing in your field?
There are some publishers that have been slow to give easy access to their publications on the Internet. This is a suicidal course for publications. Some of them see putting it up on the Internet as a way of losing revenue. People that take that view miss the important point. The value and attraction of a publication depends on it being accessible to readers. Unless it is accessible, they will lose authors, readers and they’ll die. I don’t think it’s a matter of choice....
What do you think of the proposals to require more open access to publicly funded research?
My own feeling is that the focus on research results supported by government funds or funds from nonprofit institutions is almost mandatory....The whole justification for such research is the public goods it produces. A public good is one that an economist defines as something whose value does not diminish with use. Scientific public goods are unusual in that their value increases with use. The more they’re used, the more valuable they become....
[T]he only way that the funder of the research can achieve their goals is to do whatever it can to get results disseminated as widely as possible....
What recent improvements or changes in this area are encouraging?
The pressure on those resisting some form of open access is getting greater and greater....[H]ow a publisher will maintain their economic viability and still offer open access is a challenge publishers will simply have to come to terms with....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/23/2007 06:05:00 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.
