Knowledge belongs to everyone! Publicly funded research should be freely accessible worldwide. The future of science is here, many universities are already committed to open science. I share this interesting document from Vereniging van Universiteiten (VSNU) on academics' new reward and recognition system. Goodbye to the valuation of research based on the impact factor. What do you think?
Credits: https://vsnu.nl/recognitionandrewards/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Position-paper-Room-for-everyone%E2%80%99s-talent.pdf
Science results must be all open access, mainly when they are financed by public funding.
But that is not happening today. Many journals ask for a very high quotation to publish your paper as open access. Then all the benefict of the access to this new knowledge is not for the society if you don't pay an average of 3000 USD, to publish something already financed by the society. Then the big profit is not for the research center or university that obtain the results, but for the publishers.
Today, I see that more than 50% of Elsevier journals are migrating to open access asking for a payment between 3000-5500 USD for a single paper, and is still not fully open access in some cases. And many research groups can not afford that.
We are still far from solve this problem as society.
In many counties and universities, the databases and journal quarterly where you are publishing matters, without analyzing if is public or not.
And normally several financial entities do not cover the financing of publication fees.
Then, initiatives are welcome but the problem is even more deeper today.
Concerning "Goodbye to the valuation of research based on the impact factor": See also this European initiative; one of the three demands is that "All actors in science governance must redesign their decision-making and evaluation instruments and overcome their fixation on bibliometric indicators", which I fully support: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Petition_Stop_Tracking_Science
See also these related discussions:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Death_of_impact_factor_system
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_Impact_factor_to_be_avoided_from_journal_metrices_soon
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_could_be_a_next_scientific_quality_evaluation_approach
Looks like all the major publishing houses are moving towards open access as the preferred option than 'full institutional/individual subsciption'. Many are currently 'touting' the 'hybrid' option between both - but I think that such models will be short-lived
Concerning the costs for open access: Besides publishing in a journal without page charges (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Scientific_Journals_with_Open_Access_and_no_APC_free_charges_for_authors), there are several possibilities to find funds for publishing or even for open-access publishing. See., e.g., this information: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/funding
However, this is indeed a problem, especially for developing countries. See, e.g., this discussion: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_impact_of_high_article_processing_charges_on_research_publication_activities_in_low_and_middle_income_countries
The publication costs (which may be high also for non open access) have been intensively discussed in RG before. See, e.g., the following discussions:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_many_researchers_think_publishers_journals_should_pay_for_their_content_and_also_for_peer_review
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_article_processing_charge_and_why_the_publication_fee_is_charged_to_Author
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Article_Processing_Charge
https://www.researchgate.net/post/A_research_paper_costs_more_to_publish_than_a_Car
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publishing_open_access_for_1000
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_ACTUAL_COST_OF_A_PUBLICATION
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-much-does-someone-pay-to-publish-in-this-journal
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_does_Nature_Open_Access_charge_so_much_to_publish
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_opinion_on_the_journals_where_you_pay_a_fee_to_be_able_to_publish_your_paper
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Journal_Publication_fee
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-it-fair-for-peer-reviewed-international-Journals-to-charge-exorbitant-processing-fees
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publication_game_and_charges_inflation
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_think_that_the_academic_publishing_industry_exploits_scholars
Thanks Wolfgang R. Dick ! your contribution to this discussion has been really helpful. All of us researchers should have this information to push open science forward.
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