Open Access News

The issue of access to raw or fundamental scientific data must be distinguished from the one of access to Scientific Literature....Our position on this matter is unambiguous: the fact of making digital data accessible would allow a better peer review while offering to other scientists, who are not able to duplicate the same experiments or same calculations, the possibility of taking part in an inclusive way to the world research dynamical movement, while, of course, fully acknowledging former works. It means that Open Access to scientific articles as well to raw data, shall be guaranteed to all, whenever the data and scientific information being disclosed in articles, as is very often the case, are the result of research works supported by public or philanthropic funds....The online publication cost is very low, and printings costs have kept decreasing. Paradoxically, the very prices of subscriptions to scientific journals, have kept increasing as librarians are denouncing. It is thus not astonishing that the large scientific publishing organizations are reporting considerable profits. Who thus pay the bills? All the society ! Not only the scientific community which must repurchase freely donated material, but also all the private and association sector which should be entitled to freely benefit from this aid from public authorities and philanthropic institutions. Why should this situation be allowed to continue to exist ? Would historical inertia not be held responsible ? Fortunately, a movement exists, a movement in the true direction of History, the Open Access movement which is represented during the WSIS by the Working Group on Scientific Information, and which proposes various solutions to get out of this current situation as fast as possible....One may also recommend Open Access journals, without publication charges, and which would be subsidized or implemented by national and international organizations. Another solution, nonexclusive of the others, would be, as some are preaching it, to access, in Open Archives, to the preprints or reprints of articles published in subscription journals?...It is clear that financially handicapped scientists, fighting for their intellectual survival, cannot and shall not accept to be considered as second class researchers, and to have free access only to six months old archives. More inclusive and innovating policies should and could be implemented....Open Access is an essential condition of an evolution towards a society of shared knowledge, and this is not a concern only of intellectual or philosophical nature, because the consequences of the current system are quite simply dramatic, even tragic. The current system goes against the efforts of all governments, whoever they are and wherever they are, to reinforce their economies, which, everywhere, are struggling at the beginning of the third millennium....In economical terms, the Keynesian multiplier effect is seriously dampened, and public expenditures are playing a much less effective role than has been forecast. The current system, if it were to persist, would be some sort of a forced rent or toll on scientific information, and would constitute also in this way a forced contribution from all innovating entrepreneurs whose researchers are also freely donating the contents of their publications as members of the scientific community. In countries in the "South", the damage is even larger, because the access cost to this costly information becomes an annihilating factor, and then we find before us a digital divide at the content level which adds up to the digital divide at the level of access means.