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Articles on Academic journal debate

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Just make your access open, and do away with the silly wrapper. biblioteekje

Macmillan may now offer ‘free access’, but is it really open?

Earlier this week the publisher Macmillan announced (in somewhat breathless prose) that subscribers to 49 of its Nature journals would be able to share links to the full text of articles that would otherwise…
Sunlight is the best medicine. rishibando

What counts as an academic publication?

What is it that sets academic publications apart from articles on The Conversation? Peer review might be your first answer. While The Conversation is built around a journalistic model, there is a big growth…
It may not be to everyone’s taste, but open is the way of the future. biblioteekje

Open publishing is happening – the only question is how

Tectonic shifts are happening in the way scientific research is done. These changes, and the ways they may eventually affect us all, are chronicled in a new collection of articles commissioned by Nature…
Open-access journals are gaining credibility and prestige. rvm_71

Open access will change the world, if scientists want it to

While the Australian Research Council considers its policy on open-access publication and others within the scientific community call for the increased sharing of scientific data, the British are already…
Academic publishing firms have been all too keen to monopolise a crucial public good: academic knowledge. giulia.forsythe

The great publishing swindle: the high price of academic knowledge

One of the great outrages of academia in the modern age is the privatisation of the profits accruing to publicly-financed knowledge. One form is that of academic journals, a primary method of disseminating…
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales will help the UK government design a platform where all taxpayer-funded scholarly will be available for free. AAP/Yonhap News Agency

Wiki founder to build open access site for UK research

The British government has enlisted the services of Wikipedia in a push to make all taxpayer-funded academic research from the UK freely available online - regardless of whether it is also published in…
Publishers have made journal subscriptions prohibitively expensive, says Harvard Library. Frederik Questier, Yanna Van Wesemael

Harvard: journal subscription fees are prohibitive

Harvard Library says it can no longer afford the vast cost of academic journal subscriptions, and has advised staff at the university to support open access publishing instead. In a memorandum posted on…
The Wellcome Trust building in Camden, London. geograph.org.uk

Funding giant toughens support for open publishing

One of the world’s biggest science funding bodies will strengthen its support for free online publishing by sanctioning errant academics who take its grants but publish in subscriber-only journals. The…
Californian Republican Darrell Issa has dropped his support for a bill that would restrict free access to taxpayer-funded research. AAP/Francis Specker

Push to block free access to academic research falters in the US

A controversial US bill that was designed to block access to vast amounts of academic research appears to have collapsed after its co-sponsors renounced their support for it. The Research Works Act, introduced…
A boycott by researchers against the academic journal publisher Elsevier has reignited the debate about open-access to scholarly work. Flickr/limonada

All research funded by NHMRC to be accessible free of charge

One of the important benefits that the public expects from publicly funded health and medical research is access to the published findings of that research. Patient groups, health consumers, advocacy groups…
Traditional publishing methods could soon be a thing of the past. Unhindered by talent

Academic publishing must go digital to survive

Most forms of publishing across the globe are in a state of flux. But university-based scholarly publishing faces a set of challenges all of its own. How can an industry whose target audience is so highly…
Some journal editors demand academics boost the number of references to other articles published in their journal. Flickr/Spinstah

Unethical journals tell academics to pad their papers with citations

One in five academics from a range of fields say they have come under pressure from journals to pad out their papers with unnecessary citations to get published, a large survey has found. Analysis of 6,672…
If the US Research Works Bill passes, public access to US research will be restricted. Flickr/the Firebottle

A small bill in the US, a giant impact for research worldwide

Over the Christmas period, a short Bill was introduced into the US House of Representatives. The Research Works Act aims to make it illegal to require researchers to make their work publicly available…
Princeton University hopes its new Open Access policy will pressure academic publishers to stop requiring the copyright to the papers they publish. Flickr/Yakinodi

Princeton goes open access to stop staff handing all copyright to journals - unless waiver granted

Prestigious US academic institution Princeton University will prevent researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers, except in certain cases where a waiver may be granted…
Academic knowledge is boxed in by exclusive, expensive journals.

Scientist meets publisher: the video

Scientists – myself included – are increasingly frustrated by the outmoded academic publishing system. The situation as it stands made sense in the pre-internet era, when one needed a printing press to…
Much of academic publishing has shifted online but that has created new costs, the publishers say. Flickr/rosefirerising

Open access and academic journals: the publishers respond

Fees charged by academic publishers to access research journals have caused no small amount of consternation among readers of scholarly research and fuelled the rise of the Open Access movement. As part…

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