Archive for the ‘Discussion’ Category

External Pressure to Produce Internal Change

Dec 2, 2008 Discussion

Some stalwarts of the anti-OA camp remain unwavering in their opposition.  Chief among these are the likes of Nature, which produced editorials highly critical of the OA movement.  While OA has made significant strides, especially with the great success of OA publishers such as PLoS and Biomed Central, its progress is slow.

The forces at work are in a near stalemate, locked in an internal struggle within the scientific community.  We find ourselves at a tipping point, perched upon the peak of the mountain of choice.  On one side we are presented with the barren desert of the closed access status quo; on the other we have the verdant forest of OA progress.  However, neither combatant can generate sufficient momentum to surge over the edge.

Into this quagmire must the public come.  Take, for example, a plumber (whom, according to Sarah Palin, represents the American “Common” Man).  Now this plumber, lets call him John to avoid any confusion with the “real” plumber, he hears a mention of the OA debate and is overwhelmed with apathy — an expected result.  Not only does the topic initially seem uninteresting; to him, it is like a war between the Zorgons and Blastothons on the planet Marsas. (This shabbily written example is purely fictitious.  Any resemblance to actual aliens is incidental and does not express the views of the author on what surely are peace-loving creatures.)

However, John might well find a certain Quote of a certain Doctor from a certain Civil Rights Movement quite interesting: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  In other words, it DOES matter.  The OA discussion DOES matter to John, not only for the sake of justice itself, but also for the improvement of science as a whole, which will inevitably improve John’s life in one way or another.

So now I make my plea.  I call on all the Johns of the world, all of the Jills, all of the non-scientists and all of the public.  This fight is your fight as well.  Make your voice heard and throw your support in for the OA movement.  Disregard the myopic assumption that not caring is for the best faring.  Call your Representative, write a letter to the editor, throw a fundraiser for PLoS, do ANYTHING.  Just don’t do nothing at all.

Nathan

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Obama and Open Access

Nov 23, 2008 Discussion

With Barack Obama’s historic election to Presidency of the U.S. on November 4th, new opportunities for advancing OA arise.  With fresh faces and new insights in the White House and Congress, further critical legislation either supporting or mandating OA can come about.

The mandate concerning NIH-funded research represents the first step in a very long journey toward complete OA for all.  The interconnectedness between government and research is quite tangible.  Therefore, government policy can be a major impetus for greater momentum for the OA movement.

For this reason, I encourage all of you to contact the President-elect to demonstrate your support.  If we can bring OA into the spotlight in Obama’s science policy, these next four years may bring many great victories for the movement.

Nathan

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PubMed Central and arXiv

Nov 10, 2008 Discussion

PubMed Central (or PMC) is a digital archive of biomedical research that makes these papers freely available to the public.  It is owned and operated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and thus is a public resource.

PMC lends itself to comparison with arXiv: both are free digital archives of research papers helping advance the cause of OA.  However, the differences abound.  Firstly, PMC emphasizes the biomedical aspects of research while arXiv focuses upon the physical and quantitative sciences.  Secondly, PMC is a resource funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH) but arXiv is operated by the private Cornell University.

Thirdly, papers are added to PMC by the journals that publish them; manuscripts are uploaded onto arXiv by the authors themselves.  Finally, PMC ensures that the papers it archives have been subjected to thorough peer review (thus making Indexing by PMC a mark of validity).  In contrast, arXiv does not impose any sort of review onto uploaded papers.

PMC and arXiv offer unique strengths and limitations and emphasize different fields of scientific endeavour.  However, it appears clear that they are two very different approaches to the same ultimate goal: increasing access to scientific literature.

Nathan

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Spotlight on arXiv

Oct 31, 2008 Discussion, Highlight

In my most recent post, I noted the disproportionate emphasis of OA publications on the biomedical sciences.  However I failed to mention one critical player in the field of open scientific publishing: arXiv.  The X represents the greek letter chi, thus making the pronunciation of the site “archive,” which is exactly what it is.  Researchers may deposit e-prints of their manuscripts on arXiv in order to make them freely available for all to see.

While this is certainly a great positive, the more interesting aspect of arXiv is its emphasis.  Its focus encompasses those areas often not found in many OA publishers, such as mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics.  It does not impose any sort of peer review, it truly is an archive of e-prints, a very successful one at that.  According to its homepage, as of the 3rd of October arXiv has posted over 500,000 articles online under open access.

Cornell University currently owns, operates, and largely funds arXiv, however it does recieve some funding from the National Science Foundation.  Paul Ginsparg established arXiv in 1991, and it was originally hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratories.

Nathan

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OA Emphasis on Biomedical Research

Oct 19, 2008 Discussion

I could not help but notice, in my perusal of the internet wealth of OA, that the majority of OA publishers emphasize either biological or medical sciences.  The evidence abounds.  BioMed Central, an OA publisher, makes no attempt to obfuscate this focus — its very name demonstrates its approach.  Of course, while BioMed Central also has PhysMath Central and Chemistry Central, these two wings constitute a total of four journals.  Compare this to 194 under the BioMed name.  The emphasis is clear.

However, BMC is by no means the only OA publisher with such an approach.  The Public Library of Science clearly leans toward the biomedical sciences as well.  PLoS currently publishes seven journals, six of which are biomedical and one is general.  However, while on its face it may be general, PLoS ONE in fact publishes the great majority of its papers in the biomedical fields.  In fact, only 184 papers have been published under the categories of Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics combined.  To put this in perspective, PLoS ONE has published around three times that many in Neuroscience (551 papers) alone.

Regardless of the specific reason, it is clear that OA has in general focused heavily upon publishing biomedical scientific research.  Perhaps in order for OA as a movement in general to succeed, we must expand its base of support to include more completely the entire spectrum of scientific inquiry.

Nathan

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Education and Open Access

Sep 30, 2008 Discussion

While most Universities around the U.S. contain a plethora of scientific journals freely available to their students, the vast majority of U.S. public high schools do not.  While some (those students uninterested in research pursuits) are not directly impacted by this problem, many student researchers feel the squeeze of being limited to a small fraction of the vast scientific body of knowledge.

In fact, this issue extends beyond those high school students engaged in research.  Many instructors assign their pupils research reports that must cite published papers.  Being directed to a payment page after reading an exciting abstract can be a very frustrating experience for a pre-college student, or any person in general for that matter.  This frustration may even turn some students off from scientific research in general, especially if their only experiences with it have involved pulling out their hair.

In other words, the lack of OA has far reaching consequences, extending far beyond the relatively limited scope of academia.  In order to continue scientific advances, young budding researchers must be exhilirated and enthralled by science, not annoyed and frustrated by its pecuniary red tape.

Nathan

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The many manifestations of OA

Sep 18, 2008 Discussion

Open Access is not a strictly defined term.  It has many interpretations, representations, and manifestations.  It is most like the term democracy — there are direct democracies, representative democracies, democratic republics, etc.  Similarly, there are a variety of applications of the OA idea.

One primary distinction is between Green and Gold OA.  Green OA is the option to self-archive a paper, while Gold OA inolves paying a publication fee in order to make the paper freely available when published in the journal.

An additional dimension of this discussion involves recently introduced terms: gratis and libre.  Gratis means that the paper is free to access.  Libre describes the situation in which the paper is both free to access and free to use.

Regardless of the outward differences, the fundamental goal of all types of OA remain the same: to improve access to papers and thus accelerate advances in scientific research.  As long as this basic mission is preserved, the semantics are largely irrelevant.

Nathan

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The Blogosphere — 4th Estate of OA

Sep 6, 2008 Discussion

The role of the independent media as a watchdog of government operations has been a time-honored tradition in any open governmental system since its inception.  With the dawn of the internet came significant shakeups in both the media and scientific publishing.  The blogosphere and Open Access are the older and younger children, respectively, of the internet, and thus the elder must keep the younger in constant check.

In other words, it is critical that investigative journalists such as Richard Poynder (as featured in an earlier post) keep up the pressure on OA publishers to stay true to the spirit of the movement, in spite of (often unfounded) legal threats such as from Scientific Journals International (SJI).  I applaud the courage of the whistleblower who recently posted revealing details about SJI’s unsavory practices on this blog.

Without the noble efforts of Poynder and his investigative colleagues acting as watchdogs over the open access movement, it could quickly devolve into disarray.  I would also like to encourage any employee of an illegitimate “OA” publisher to come forward and help keep OA true to its original purpose.

Nathan

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Peer Review — What exactly does it mean?

Aug 18, 2008 Discussion

There has been significant debate recently as to the exact definition of “peer review”.  Depending upon who you ask, you will likely get very different opinions.  A commonly accepted definition involves the anonymous review by two selected reviewers with expertise in the area, and then a final decision by the editor in charge.

However, with the dawn of the OA movement, it is necessary to open up the discussion again.  Several OA publishers focus on technical scientific soundness as opposed to perceived importance.  As many peer review methods focus on weeding out the “unimportant” papers, new methods were developed.  Unfortunately, some OA publishers take advantage of the movement (as discussed in Publishers Tarnishing OA), and quality control is critical in order to maintain the good image of the entire OA movement.

In other words, while we must understand that one strict definition is insufficient given the broad spectrum of journal focuses, it is also critical that rigorous scientific standards are upheld.  Without these standards, OA could devolve into a pseudoscientific profit-making venture for unethical publishers.

Nathan

Publishers Tarnishing OA

Aug 7, 2008 Discussion

As all of you know, I have lavished extensive praise upon the entire Open Access movement.  However, some recent reports have greatly worried me.  The entire movement is only as strong as its weakest link, at it appears that some of these weaker links have been engaging in less-than-honorable practices.

A recent report by Richard Poynder examined Bentham Science Publishers, which had recently begun publishing several open access journals.  While on its face this development seems quite positive, the methods through which Bentham recruited authors and editors seem rather questionable.  According to Poynder, several researchers were receiving bulk mail invitations to submit research to, or even edit for, journals entirely outside of their fields of expertise.

Unfortunately, the list of questionable OA publishers is quite longer than Bentham alone.  Poynder has now focused his efforts on Scientific Journals International, another OA publisher apparently engaging in unsolicited bulk mail and other offenses.  If any of you have more information on Scientific Journals International, please contact Richard Poynder.

The truth is that OA publishers engaging in questionable activities are harming the entire Open Access movement, as they provide OA opponents with greater ammunition to criticize the movement.  It is quite possible that unethical OA publishers are greater enemies of the movement than closed access publishers themselves.

Nathan