Whether you trust it or ignore it, Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world and accessed by millions of people every day. So would you trust it any more (or even less) if you knew people…
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Articles on Open access
Displaying 61 - 80 of 116 articles
Imagine you’re a scientist. You’re interested in testing the hypothesis that playing violent video games makes people more likely to be violent in real life. This is a straightforward theory, but there…
Two large Chinese funding bodies for scientific research are promoting so-called “open access” to research outcomes, according to an article in Nature. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National…
Last October, scientists in California sequenced the DNA for the “type H” botulinum toxin. One gram of this toxin would be sufficient to kill half a billion people, making it the deadliest substance yet…
The publishing giant Elsevier owns much of the world’s academic knowledge, in the form of article copyright. In the past few weeks it has stepped up enforcement of its property rights, issuing “take-down…
Having climbed all the way to the Nobel Prize on a ladder made of papers published in Nature, Science and Cell, biologist Randy Schekman has declared that he is now going to boycott these luxury journals…
Recipients of this year’s Nobel Prizes converged on Stockholm to receive their medals, dine with the King and Queen, and be treated like the scientific royalty. For most this time is, understandably, about…
Open access has become the catch-cry of academic science, demanding all research be freely available to anyone. But it leaves open the question of how publishers are to make money. Traditionally, libraries…
According to Peter Suber open access is academic literature which is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions”. Open access delivered by journals is called…
Dr Matthew Todd – leader of the Open Source Malaria consortium in Sydney, senior lecturer at the University of Sydney and Conversation author – was awarded one of three Accelerating Science Awards in Washington…
Is publishing academic books a dying trade? And if so, are free e-books from universities likely to deal the final blow? The future of book publishing in general is hotly contested, but particularly so…
In a sting operation, John Bohannon, a correspondent of Science, claims to have exposed dodgy open access journals. His argument seems to be that, because of their business model, some journals are biased…
The World Bank is to provide a $1.2 million grant to fund the Open Data Partnership for Development, a project with the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Open Data Institute. The aim is to help developing…
Few things are changing faster in the research world than publishing. The “open access” movement recognises that publicly-funded research should be freely available to everyone. Now more than a decade…
A report released recently has highlighted how out of step the UK has become with the rest of the world on open access policies. The UK has sought to be a leader in making publicly-funded research openly…
His eyes brighten and his voice rises as he tells me about his latest results. He is excited. He should be. His lab is unravelling the details of how new memories are formed in the brain. Then I ask him…
A recent article on The Conversation, “Busting the top five myths about open access publishing” is a spirited defense of open access (OA) publishing. The article, by ANU’s Danny Kingsley, outlined “myths…
Rather than lock up knowledge in costly journals, increasingly universities and governments are recognising that publicly funded research should be open to all. This past year has seen new open access…
Foundation essay: This article on the open access and science by Björn Brembs is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the UK. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment…
The New York Times dubbed 2012 the year of the MOOC. And for many, the seemingly unstoppable rise of Massive Open Online Courses – courses which are offered for free by prestigious universities – is where…
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
