Europe’s open-access drive escalates as university stand-offs spread

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05191-0?utm

 

I presume this is a way of Nature publishers doing damage limitation - so that they can still make money with 'read and publish'. The truth is that they are redundant. It's like turkeys voting for Christmas to be in January. The end is nigh.

 

How would universal open access work, for example a university affiliated researcher uses their current university's subscription to access a paper, if its open access does the university already have it on file, is there a central database, are open access journals linked to a open access database for access?

 

Papers are just online with URL addresses based on the university of origin. At present we go to PubMed and it tells us there is a paper and whether the URL is feely accessed or through subscription. In an open system all Universities will have URLs for papers freely accessible. Nothing could be simpler. It is what SciHub does for us at present.

 

I see. So if a new journal is started i assume it is usually affiliated with a publisher and somehow gets a listing on PubMed?

 

Yes, I am not sure how this works but I think PubMed traditionally has attempted to list everything in what it considers a reasonable list of 'respectable' journals. I think it also includes some stuff from other sources but I don't think it makes any attempt to search for independent documents published online. Of course PubMed itself is redundant now in a sense because you can just Google for a topic and it often gives you more. And independent researchers should be able to make their work known. When Einstein published Special Relativity he was an independent researcher working in a patent office.

 

This is very interesting, thanks

Indeed, though a new medical journal wouldn't exactly be as earth shattering as Einstein's writings.

 

Hopefully (and probably) with the rise of open access, there will be a rise in the quality of search engines dedicated to the task. It wouldn't surprise me as the technology is known.

What are the types of costs associated with open access? There will be the cost of electronic storage, internet hosting, and the associated people to look after that, but is there anything else?

Also, do you think it will make it more likely for null results to be published?

 

All the costs and more are already covered by R & D department audit procedures. Every piece of research at UCL has to be logged in advance and a report has to be produced at the end. Documents can be automatically uploaded onto something like ORCID or IRIS (local database). People already upload their stuff on to three or four sites like ResearchGate or Academia or Archiv. I don't see any need for anything new, just a removal of the option of closed publishing.

With an automatic link between research reports and a public database all null results should be published automatically - as they should be.

 

Do grant giving bodies ever stipulate that all results must be published, whether null or positive?

And if not why not, surely that should be required of all researchers?

 

An interesting question. The problem at the moment is that a grant giving body cannot really insist on publication because journals might turn all papers down. At present publishing is a long difficult process because you have to second guess the foibles of the referees. That system needs to be abandoned. Then it would be reasonable for grant bodies to insist on publication.

 

That makes it sound as though the reviewers ought to be on the list of authors.

It makes one wonder who might have been reviewer for early papers by Wessely and White. The role might have been attractive to someone with a media image to protect.