Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
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Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#2A good development - depositing papers in OA journals is extremely expensive and internationally, most funding bodies requiring OA don't give you money to publish OA. For example, Nature Communications charges around $5,000 for a single paper; I can send a student to an overseas conference for that kind of money!
Public repositories like arxiv or biorxiv are free.
Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#3Now we need to get the Nobel Committee to say they will only read open source papers - this is a valid option as the paywalls have denied most of the world's 'second tier' countries access for their scientists (to say nothing of interested science readers wherever they are) so going open source will only add to the common pool of knowledge
Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#4A good development - depositing papers in OA journals is extremely expensive and internationally, most funding bodies requiring OA don't give you money to publish OA. For example, Nature Communications charges around $5,000 for a single paper; I can send a student to an overseas conference for that kind of money! Public repositories like arxiv or biorxiv are free.
I could not agree more: this is a good thing. Studies funded by public money should be freely available by default. This is a great decision and I hope major funding agencies in the USA follow this example.
As a practicing scientist, I ostensibly have access to a rich variety of journals from my employer. However, I've found journal access to be difficult during WFH/COVID. My default is to look for an open access paper, before jumping to the digital library. I've also had a few cases where the digital access seemed not to be working, which only put up barriers to my work.
Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#5Now we need to get the Nobel Committee to say they will only read open source papers - this is a valid option as the paywalls have denied most of the world's 'second tier' countries access for their scientists (to say nothing of interested science readers wherever they are) so going open source will only add to the common pool of knowledge
It’s truly horrific that as an interested layman I am completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers. And to think about what they did to Aaron Schwartz…
Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#6Seemingly as part of the same push, the UKRI announced funding for an open research project I've worked on before: Dr Alex Freeman's Octopus [0], a more radical software platform that splits research projects into smaller components. It's good to see that the openess of research is finally getting to be a priority of the funding bodies.
Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#7Now we need to get the Nobel Committee to say they will only read open source papers - this is a valid option as the paywalls have denied most of the world's 'second tier' countries access for their scientists (to say nothing of interested science readers wherever they are) so going open source will only add to the common pool of knowledge
It’s truly horrific that as an interested layman I am completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers. And to think about what they did to Aaron Schwartz…
> It’s truly horrific that as an interested layman I am completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers.
You can usually find a pre-print by Googling the title.
Or ask the author for a copy.
(You shouldn't have to do this, but you can until all papers are open access anyway.)
Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#8Now we need to get the Nobel Committee to say they will only read open source papers - this is a valid option as the paywalls have denied most of the world's 'second tier' countries access for their scientists (to say nothing of interested science readers wherever they are) so going open source will only add to the common pool of knowledge
It’s truly horrific that as an interested layman I am completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers. And to think about what they did to Aaron Schwartz…
Well you are, if you're willing to pay. Or just use Sci-Hub as it seems even many professional researchers do.
Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#9Slowly and almost imperceptibly if you look at it day-to-day, public research repositories like arxiv and biorxiv, along with public code repositories like github and gitlab, are becoming or maybe already are the world's most important academic "journals."
All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; good work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly ignored. Reviews take place over the Internet via both public and private forums.
Gatekeeping power lies more and more in the hands of a global, distributed scientific community open to anyone willing and capable of doing and reviewing the work. It's fabulous IMHO.
Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
#10Now we need to get the Nobel Committee to say they will only read open source papers - this is a valid option as the paywalls have denied most of the world's 'second tier' countries access for their scientists (to say nothing of interested science readers wherever they are) so going open source will only add to the common pool of knowledge
It’s truly horrific that as an interested layman I am completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers. And to think about what they did to Aaron Schwartz…
think you can email most researchers and get a copy. doesn't count as publishing