In the era of common internet communication seems to be normal that knowledge (science) treated as common human heritage and accessed for all, might be the best tool for breaking several barriers and making global progress.
Costs of electronic publications are incomparably lower than those in traditional paper production. Meanwhile only small part of renowned editors decided to give opportunity to open access for scientific publications, other as Springer proposes to open choice option after payment of 3000 US$ fee for one publication. Most authors in the world are employed in different state universities, where salaries are dramatically low, and no chance to pay such costs by them.
Should governments support these costs of editors (if are really necessary) to open access to knowledge for their citizens? Is the place for common open access publishers competitive for monopolised market of high ranked journals? Should governments initiate discussion about common open access for science regulations, instead of ACTA law conspiracy?
I guess that most of the time, specially for grad students, paying fees to access an article is insane. And usually, we pay for the ones most important to our discussion...
Maybe could government support some articles for all public or Springer, Wiley... let some free for users that are registered but don´t log as institution.
That is an issue for sure Dr. Mamcarz. For we researchers, it is certainly important to have access to the latest reports and findings. If the information is not readily accessible to the readers, then there is no point in taking up any investigation. I do support this idea of making all the publications open to all. Governments/ Authorities should come forwards and make it a point of discussion in international forums for science regulations.
Many papers I found are not accessible but very relevant to my research. If I cannot pay them, I will not have those papers to cite in my paper. This will not be a good paper. So, to maintain quality of all newly published papers(specially graduate students' paper), it seems important to them having access to any relevant articles.
I've been in the research for many years and this is still my problem. We cannot deny that some universities have no access to some of the most important journals. Our university is a primer university in our region but we still we cannot afford to subscribe to online journals because of its high price. In my case where I usually download literature i only rely to some open access but there are times when the most important articles are with price. And sometimes I have to send email to some colleague from other university and ask to download a particular article. For me, these scientific publications should be open access.
Open access information is he in thing in this age.We are in the information age and as scientists and researchers we need quick, fast and accurate information and access at no additional cost. It is a most welcome development.
From a developing country point of view, this would be a very wonderful idea. In my undergraduate training we had free access to some scientific journals through HINARI. This really helped us so much. However, most of the renown journals such as Jstor and Sciencedirect and many more were restricted.
I am very sure, most scientists in low and middle income countries are constrained by payments. Even if they could afford the money, credit cards, mastercard, Visacard,paypal and all the cash transfer portals are unheard of in this part of the world. That is even before we consider the access to reliable internet services. I know most people who only have internet for just a few minutes and only in cybershops. Now imagine you see a wonderful and resourceful article online but unfortunately you can't access it. This is the dilemma we face.
Thus, you idea, Mamcarz, is a very good one.
I wish on top of all the aid that is sent this way, knowledge was included. It would be more like teaching a man how to fish rather than giving him fish.
To be a little more precise... Of course, there are different "angles" of this discussion, depending on interests of particular partners of scientific scene. I am not representing publishers, but researches and readers of scientific publications. There is rather disappointing, when to publish in several journals, I have to transfer my copyrights to publishers (without any profits to me), and next to be faced with situation, when uploading of PDF of my own research to internet without publisher's knowledge might be treated as breaking the law. As a scientist working in XXI century, in times of global and rapid communication I wish to disseminate results of my research as widely as possible without any limits, and as reader - to have not limiting access to other publication on the same way. This is only my personal interest. Freeing scientific information might be also real possibility for society (tax payers) to follow scientific progress in different fields. It is very sad, that times of largest development of global science and communication, are also times of largest concentration of copyrights in science by predatory publishers, connected witth several limitations to access to publications. Because no control in this area, it opened widely doors to new wave of "publishing houses" encouraging us to publish after paying of relatively lower costs in comparing to those renowned, but without taking care on quality. All these facts clearly show, where are limiting factors for global development of science. I guess that these actual regulations used for example to disseminating knowledge in the past, how to make and use the wheel, would a factor backing us to Inca Empire times.
In Computer Science, (almost?) all important publishers don't publish open access, although some are offering the option for a triple fee. However, the two essential journal publishers (IEEE and ACM) both allow authors to publish author versions of the same paper. This essentially makes open access obsolete - author websites and archive.org mean that virtually anything is available.
How is this in other fields? Do your copyright transfer statements allow you to publish an author version on your website, or your institute's eprint archive?
Open access journal (OAJ):
The aim of research is to provide a better life to our societies, hence the OAJ will contribute effectively to distribute the knowledge. If the research outcomes aimed to be distributed then why we should LOCK the access to these outcomes? Is it because the scientific reputation of classical scientific journals? There are a lot of OAJs available, some of them building a good scientific reputation as the classical ones and that started attracting famous researchers to publish their work.
Many of OAJs publish for FREE while some of them take a figurative amount of money. The latter cost is nothing compared to the total research cost including researchers' salaries. On the other hand, classical journals make money from researchers publications without paying them back! While these journals sell the access to universities and institutions. Finally, I think even classical journals will follow the OAJ path soon.
It seems to me that just as many conference/societies charge different rates for registration/membership based on presumed income levels (and offer scholarships/assistance for participants from lower income countries) journals should offer similar sliding-scale arrangements so that they can cover operational costs while giving more access to lower-income researchers and institutions and garnering more potential submissions (researchers aren't likely to submit to journals few of their colleagues will be able to read).
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