Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

May 28, 2007

Open Access and PLoS

In An Open Mouse, Carl Zimmer discusses the conflict between closed journals and those that support open access.

And what do I now hear from PLOS? Do I hear the grinding of lawyerly knives? No. I hear the blissful silence of Open Access, a slowly-spreading trend in the journal world. PLOS makes it very clear on their web site that “everything we publish is freely available online throughout the world, for you to read, download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish.” No muss, no fuss. If I want to blog about this paper right now, I can grab a relevant image right now from it.

His post mentions the recent bad publicity Wiley received. It seems to me the Journals still don’t understand that their copyright of research results paid for by public funds are not going to continue. And that open access science is clearly the way of the future that their continued failure to deal with is increasing the odds monthly that they will find themselves on the outside of those practicing science in the 21st Century.

PLoS on the other hand recently hired Bora Zivkovic as PLoS ONE Online Community Manager. He will be great and continue to build PLoS into an organization supporting free and open science. I loved PLoS proactive action recounted by Bora, he posted that he was interested in the job:

Next morning, I woke up to a comment by the Managing Editor of PLoS ONE asking if my blog-post should be considered as a formal job application. My comment in response was a Yes.

by curiouscat Tags: Open Access, Research, Science
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2 Responses to “Open Access and PLoS”

CuriousCat: More Dinosaurs Fighting Against Open Science Says:
June 15th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
It is sad that so many organizations distort behavior though poor management structures but that is the world we live in…
Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Science Journal Publishers Stay Stupid Says:
June 15th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
It is time for the scientific community to give up on these journals and start looking to move to work with new organizations that will encourage scientific communication and advancement (PLoS, arXiv.org…