David Adam, Scientists take on the publishers in an experiment to make research free to all, The Guardian, October 6, 2003. On the upcoming launch of PLoS Biology. Excerpt: "In the highly lucrative world of cutting-edge scientific research, it is nothing short of a revolution. A group of leading scientists are to mount an unprecedented challenge to the publishers that lock away the valuable findings of research in expensive, subscription-only electronic databases by launching their own journal to give away results for free."
Quoting Vivian Siegel, executive editor of PLoS: "The goal of this journal is to become the first destination for research in the life sciences and to compete head-on with the existing high-profile journals. It's about doing something you believe in rather than doing things the way everybody else does them and I think that's the hallmark of the best scientists." Quoting Alan Leshner, publisher of Science: "We're all scientists and we like experiments, well here's an experiment. And if it works then we'll all take the lessons from it." Quoting Jan Wilkinson, head librarian at the University of Leeds: "We need to get academics to recognise the craziness of what they've been doing. They do all this work and then they just hand it over for free, and then the publishers sell it back to us at these rip-off prices."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/06/2003 08:08:00 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.
