I spent last week in Cuba....I had the opportunity to talk to a range of scientists and to see the conditions they work under. One of the strong arguments for Open Science (literature access, data, methods, notebooks) is that it provides access to scientists in less priviledged countries to both peer reviewed research as well as to the details of methodology that can enable them to carry out their science. I was therefore interested to see both what was available to them and whether they viewed our efforts in this area as useful or helpful. I want to emphasise that these people were doing good science in difficult circumstances by playing to their strengths and focussing on achievable goals. This is not second rate science, just science that is limited by access to facilities, reagents, and information.
Access to the literature
There is essentially no access to the subscriber-only literature....
I talked to a few people about our protein ligation work and they were immensely grateful that this was published in an open access journal. However they were uncertain about publishing in open access journals due to the perceived costs. While it is likely that they could get such costs waived I believe there is an issue of pride here in not wishing to take ‘charity’....
Overall though, it is clear that access to the peer reviewed literature is a serious problem for these people. Open Access publishing provides a partial solution to this problem. I think to be effective it is important that this not be limited to self archving, as for reasons I will come back to, it is difficult for them to find such self archived papers. It is clear that mandating archival on a free access repository can help.
Access to primary data
Of more immediate interest to me was whether people with limited access to the literature saw value in having free access to the primary data in open notebooks. Again, people were grateful for the provision of access to information as this has the potential to make their life easier....
There were two major concerns; one is a concern we regularly see, that of information overload....The other concern, relating to them adopting such approaches, was one that we have seen over and over again, that of ‘getting scooped’. Here though the context is subtly different and there is a measure of first world-developing world politics thrown in. These scientists are, understandably, very reluctant to publicise initial results because the way they work is methodical and slow. Very often the key piece of data required to make up a paper can only be obtained on apparatus that is not available in house or requires lengthy negotiations with potential overseas collaborators. By comparison it would often be trivially easy for a developed world laboratory to take the initial results and turn out the paper.
The usual flip side argument holds here; by placing an initial result in the public domain it may be easier for them to find a collaborator who can finish of the paper but I can understand their perspective....
The catch…
[There is] a very simple problem: bandwidth....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/14/2008 11:48:00 AM.
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.
