“Soft” infrastructure includes the services, policies or practices that keep academic research working and open. Without a funded, coordinated national approach the private sector may take control.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Open access
Displaying 21 - 40 of 115 articles
Even though you don’t think of your mobile phone as being anything like a microscope, it’s got almost all the parts you need.
Universities in New Zealand spent close to US$15 million on subscriptions to just four publishers in 2016, data that was only released following a request to the Ombudsman.
A focus on collaboration among African universities and research institutions is crucial in developing national policies that meet the principles of open data while keeping it safe from exploitation.
In our institutions of higher education and our research labs, scholars first produce, then buy back, their own content. With the costs rising and access restricted, something’s got to give.
Could the real open access please stand up? If more research was published according to true open access principles, we’d see better application of evidence for everyone’s benefit.
A critical part of attaining universal health coverage is access to published research.
South Africa has become the first country on the continent to purchase a national licence to the Cochrane library – giving everyone access to evidence-based information about health care.
Partly in response to the so-called ‘reproducibility crisis’ in science, researchers are embracing a set of practices that aim to make the whole endeavor more transparent, more reliable – and better.
Biologists have a centuries-old tradition of publishing on rare and endangered species. But poachers are using open-access information to target valuable and fragile new species.
A leading website that monitored predatory open access journals has closed. This will make it harder to keep tabs on this corrosive force within science.
It’s not enough to do groundbreaking research if the results are kept from the public. So CERN is making its results available to everyone via open access, showing how science should be done.
The outgoing president leaves behind some solid accomplishments in the world of science, tech and medicine. But the biggest departure from his predecessors might have been in his approach.
The public pays for academic research and then again to read the published results of that research. A new initiative proposes a radical Open Access model. Can it work?
Medical entries on Wikipedia are widely consulted across the world. Doctors and medical researchers need to make efforts to ensure the content on the online collaborative encyclopedia is accurate.
The public loses when their only choices are inaccessible, impenetrable journal articles or overhyped click-bait about science. Scientists themselves need to step up and help bridge the divide.
The academic medical community largely views Wikipedia with suspicion. But some traditional journals are starting to take the site more seriously – and some journals work very closely with it.
Sci-Hub, a free online repository of academic articles, is the subject of a battle at the heart of open access.
When it comes to accessing online learning materials, university students don’t think much about whether their downloads might amount to piracy or copyright infringement.
An open access textbook model is gaining traction in the US and Australia and shaking up the publishing industry.
Top contributors
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Visiting Fellow, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University
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Director, Open Access Australasia, Queensland University of Technology
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Professor, School of Psychology, University of Sydney
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Associate Professor, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney
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Professor Emeritus, The University of Queensland
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Program Lead, Innovation in Knowledge Communication, Curtin University
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Emeritus Fellow, Australian National University
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Senior Lecturer in Literature, Technology and Publishing, Birkbeck, University of London
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Secretary-General, International Human Frontier Science Program Organisation; Emeritus Professor, Monash University, Monash University
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Adjunct Professor Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology
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Former Associate Vice Provost, The University of Texas at Austin
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Lecturer in History of Medicine/Life Science, The University of Melbourne
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Researcher in Medical Sciences, Wilfrid Laurier University
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University Librarian, Australian National University
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Distinguished Professor, University of Johannesburg
