That's the way should be, Open Access. However, as authors we also have to be carefully, when based in developing countries or resource-constrained settings, because many OA journals charges to be in that way to authors, the so called Author Processing Charges (APC), which could cost a lot, and most time not covered in our countries. We need OA journals whose do not charge authors or do not charge authors from developing countries.

That's the way should be, Open Access. However, as authors we also have to be carefully, when based in developing countries or resource-constrained settings, because many OA journals charges to be in that way to authors, the so called Author Processing Charges (APC), which could cost a lot, and most time not covered in our countries. We need OA journals whose do not charge authors or do not charge authors from developing countries.

The ethical argument for Open Science (Open Access, Open Data, Open Code, Open Notebooks) has now been won, remains to solve the practical issues with long-term sustainability in mind.

Lower income countries don't have to wait for that solution to support the process. GREEN Open Access is free and well adapted for authors in the developing world to get noticed, while the open access solution emerges from current business models. Waiting would be a strategic error.

For the developed world, Open Science, Open Innovation, and Open Educational Resources support all the main strategic objectives of (most) research institutions (see https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140711123319-9617500-3-tips-for-knowledge-managers-to-make-openscience-mainstream?trk=prof-post), as well as underpinning personal research impact as part of the Research Evaluation Frameworks. So, the discussion needs to start shifting rapidly from "whether we should" to "when do we start".

Go Harvard!  So typical of it to be making an ethical stand for a venal reason!  Getting academia off the journal habit and into self-regulated, crowd-sourced evaluation and publication systems requires a little bit of technological innovation and a lot of cultural change.  First and foremost, we academic writers have to get used to not seeing our work in print.  Ah, remember the good old days when a stack of offprints would come in the mail!  [sigh].  However, any of the major universities, if they devoted a teensy proportion of their resources, to generating platforms for qualified crowd review, could end in an instant  the strangle hold that academic publishers now have over our intellectual lives.  I hope this signals Harvard's intent to put a modicum of effort into breaking this logjam.  But I am not holding my breath.

N

Right to knowledge and there researches of others is paramount significance for development and reducing scientific, technological and economic inequalities in the world. Open depositories of universities, Open Access Journals and Open Lectures or Notes are a viable solution to make research available to all.

And this you can do in RG!

In developing countries require us to publish in high impact journals, which are mostly the charge for the submission of an article, and in turn have to pay to access the databases, incredible! Luckily scholars at Harvard University were in favor of open access: hope that our local leaders are also in favor of this initiative.

Dear Dr. Lambrechts,

I agree that RG is a good start.  But authors now have to choose to post most of their already-published stuff quasi-illegally, which is a bummer for us law abiding citizens.  

As to new material, I think  RG could do a lot more to provide a structure for qualified review..  Let say, that you were to get together a group of functional ecologists and announce yourselves as the review board for papers in functional ecology.  As a "board" you could have an identity on RG.  Now, you colleagues have a chance to "qualify" you as a review board by affirming (or refusing to affirm) you qualifications for doing that work.  Depending on the success of that process, authors would now start to send you papers for qualification by your board.  Any paper sent to the "board" would be added to the board's list of papers as "submitted";  the board would rate the submissions in the same manner is journal editors now do ... by soliciting reviews, etc. and once reviewed, a submitted paper would carry a board  rating.  Readers like me could now search papers using the ratings as a criterion.  So, if I wanted only the "best" work, I could set my browser  to, say, ten stars (or ten mortar boards, or whatever)   If I wanted to make sure I saw everything submitted to your board, I would set my browser to one star (etc).  Meanwhile, the process of qualifying your board of reviewers continues. Readers rate the papers, and the "reputation" of the board is enhanced with every highly rated and/or frequently read paper.  And, to answer to Dr Ceballos's, problem, universities could demand that papers from their faculty be only submitted to highly rated boards or, that Authors withdraw any papers from boards when the paper received less than 8 mortar boards, or even, when the sum of the rating of the paper and the board to which it was submitted was less than, say, 15 mortar boards. 

If RG cared to set this up, it would take about a week, and I don't see why the journal industry wouldn't collapse a week later.

I haven't found RG particularly permeable to new ideas.  Have you?

N

The views mentioned above are very exciting, but there can be some big obstacles ahead that need to be tackled first and could take time to implement. For instance this rating system, although a good idea in principle, doesn't take into account bad reviews on purpose to discredit researchers' competing work or by colleagues with a personal/professional grudge. Moreover, how do you regulate about good reviews by "friends"? Authors could personally affect the rating with their contacts and networks. Lets say my experience of reading reviews on a hotels search engine always has extreme ratings regardless of country, quality of establishment etc.

Of course the current review system of journals has also been exposed as having some big flaws (a study re-submitted some published articles and many of them were rejected) and therefore the ratings system can be a good alternative idea, but it does require stronger foundations

I think there should be open access, but I also think there should be a system in place to compensate the writers of the research, much like is done in the music industry through BMI or ASCAP, anytime a song is downloaded or played.  The author gets a small royalty.  I think academic researchers could get this too, such as if a library becomes part of a system where each time an article is used in a collection of articles for a class or can be downloaded from class materials through a service like Blackboard, the writer gets a small royalty.  

I apologize for a rhetorical flaw in my original post; I have tried to correct it.

Yourgos -- I appreciate the problem you point to but I don't think it is any more serious for an open access system than it is in the current system.  If CAFE became an old boys network, then NEWCAFE could quickly emerge, a review committee formed by people excluded from the blessings of CAFE.  Notice that under this system, CAFE would be obligated to list (with appropriate star -- or mortar board-- ratings) EVERY paper submitted.  I would hope, also, that reviewers comments themselves would be published and qualified along with the papers, although  different review committees might take different strategies.

Gini -- I agree that the internet provides a wonderful opportunity to aggregate income for creative individuals, but I am deeply uneasy about building the academic "marketplace", the "market place of ideas" as a system for making money.  This is a way in which I may just be old-fashioned.  I find appalling  the venality of contemporary academic institutions.  When you send research to a journal, your primary concern should not be whether you get a few bucks in royalties, but whether your data is the last standing when the dust settles a hundred years from now.  However, nothing in the present proposal prevents review committees  from becoming  royalty aggregator.  I just would give it a lower qualification, if it did so. 

N

Many academic scholars are struggling financially.  Many work part-time as adjunct professors or find themselves out of jobs due to financial constraints in universities.   Some depend on their writing income to help survive.  That's why I think it is important for researchers to be able to earn money from their writing, too.

Gini,

Yes ... but ... isn't that just s symptom of a larger problem?  There was a moment in California history when Ronald Reagen rejected the idea of higher education as a public good and since that moment,  money has ruled University life.  When I first became a professor, I didn't expect to be paid much and I expected to be free to pursue intellectual life as I saw fit.  That was the deal.  No more now.   Now professors conspire to be rich and their less successful colleagues have less freedom to teach and study what they judge important. 

I am happy to have you get royalties for the books you write, but I think everything in the scientific review process, including the papers themselves, should be done For the Good of Science. 

Money IS the root of all evil.

N

I'm not saying the review process should be affected, but if articles are published and redistributed through downloads or sales, then I think writers should be paid.  Unfortunately, not everyone has the luxury of a secure well-paid academic position or independent income that they can freely research and give away their material.  This is income is not to live a life of luxury, but a matter of economic survival for some researchers.

without any doubt - as far as I am getting my money from public, I am responsible to give my results back to the public ...

Hello,

Being inmmersed in the whole movement of Responsible Research and Innovation, of which Open Access is one key aspect, I can only say that scientific knowledge must be as free and as accesible as possible. The first reason is that this kind of approach will tend to benefit society, as the potential turnover of discoveries into useful applications increases as more thinking minds have access to knowledge. Then you have the obvious reason that impulses the European Commission initiatives on OA: if you pay research with public money, there's no reason to turn the results into a private issue, at least public investment should pay off in public good. For example, maybe one small company in a corner of Spain can develop a product (let's say... a cure for cancer) based on a research conducted in a remote laboratory in Sweden... but only if the results are easily accesible. And then, of course, there's the notion that impulses the careers of many researchers: Knowledge is One and Universal, and our efforts to contribute to it should be rewarded making them Universally Available. We all have the right to know, and the only reason to retain knowledge is to gain power over others: in my view, Open Access pulls towards equality and justice, restrained access pulls towards power control and inequality (which, as we know, is the current drive for markets).

Just one last remark: to be complete, Open Access should be meaningful. It is no use to set your results free if they cannot be understood by the recipients. Bear this is mind when you think of "giving back to the public".

I'm looking forward to see more opinions on this question, thank you Alexander for posting it

One link you might find useful: www.openaire.eu

https://www.openaire.eu/

Below is the answer I posted to

Do you agree that the digital revolution can fix scientific publishing and speed-up discoveries?

Publishing has become an end and a requirement in some professions. The criterion for publishing has become statistical significance. Statistical significance is an exceedingly low hurtle that is easily surmounted by manipulation and choice of statistical test. Publishing has become meaningless. There is not a need for more publishing. There is a need for quality publishing.

I propose a simplistic system for quality, open publishing.

Establish the rules for acceptance:

A clear statement of intent

A clear statement of necessary results that will demonstrate the outcome

A clear statement of background and assumptions

Presentation of all data and calculations

A thorough discussion of methods, equipment, and procedures such that the result can be replicated

A clear statement of the conclusion that shows the result met the requirements for demonstration

The proposed publication is submitted to an editorial board comprising voluntary editors with knowledge and experience in the field (editor may be selected by the author).

The publication is posted for open peer review. Reviews are posted after approval by the editor, author and reviewer.

Author responds to review.

Peer review continues until editor and author are satisfied.

Publication moves to final posting.

Publications can be expanded at a later date following the same process and the revised publication posted with appropriate back and forward references.

Dear Joseph Alvarez, and others

It seems to me that, in this short correspondence on this thread, we participants have assembled all the essential elements of an open access system of cloud journals.  It requires only a "host" and a little formalization. 

So, where is RESEARCH GATE in all of this?  In the end, is Research Gate the platform for a true open access research moment, or is just a way of exploiting scientific vanity for private gain?  Has anybody ever managed to get in touch with Research Gate?  To find out what they have in mind?  To suggest a path forward? 

Please, let's pool our thinking here.

Nick