“Younger faculty tend to be concerned that if they get involved [in
interdisciplinary work], their colleagues in the departments in charge
of promotion and tenure will feel they haven't lived up to the
standards of the discipline.” Other problems, he says, include finding
places to publish — “it's much easier for people to get published in
traditional disciplinary settings” — and finding an audience. A
physicist could, say, publish a paper on stock-market patterns in Physical Review E, but how many economists will read it is another matter."
How many economists would subscribe, have access to or search a physics journal? Probably not many. However, research published in open access journals requires no subscription, is available to all and - due to the full-text being available online - is indexed by regular search engines, as well as the more specialist A&I databases. Serendipity is afoot. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 2/29/2008 02:06:00 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.
