"[O]pen-access should be the ultimate goal for all publishers...
Given that research is, like any new discovery, a piece of intellectual
property, a system akin to patents might apply. Publishers [sh]ould have
time-limited control over the material they publish - but a short time,
perhaps no longer than 12 months, given that publishers, although they
do add value, are not the true originators of the work in question. Once
that interval has expired, research could be openly available to all."
The reason research is published is so that it can immediately be read, used,
applied, and built-upon: This is called research impact, and research
impact is what research productivity and progress are based upon and
measured by.
Although it varies from discipline to discipline, the growth region for research
begins at the moment the peer-reviewed final draft is accepted for publication
(in some fields
even earlier, with the pre-refereeing preprint) and in many
fields most impact takes place in the first 6-12 months from publication (see Hitchcock et al. references, below).
Richard Horton is here resurrecting the Shulenberger "NEAR" proposal
["Shulenburger on open access: so NEAR and yet so far"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3277.html] of
delayed-access instead of open-access, proposing to cut out research's most vital growth
region.
And for no good reason! For if toll-access journals fear that they will not be
able to make ends meet if they become open-access ("gold") journals, they can still
support open access and research impact by becoming "green" journals, i.e.,
journals that
officially endorse self-archiving by their authors .
References
Harnad, S. (2001) AAAS's Response: Too Little, Too Late. Science dEbates [online] 2 April 2001.
Hitchcock, Steve, Tim Brody, Christopher Gutteridge, Les Carr, Wendy Hall, Stevan Harnad, Donna Bergmark, Carl Lagoze (2002) Open Citation Linking: The Way Forward. D-Lib Magazine. Volume 8 Number 10. October 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october02/hitchcock/10hitchcock.html
Hitchcock, Steve, Tim Brody, Christopher Gutteridge, Les Carr & Stevan Harnad (2003) The Impact of OAI-based Search on Access to Research Journal Papers. Serials 16(3)
http://opcit.eprints.org/serials-short/serials11.html
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests:
No competing interests
03 January 2004
Stevan Harnad
Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Sciences
Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3C 3P8
Rapid Response:
Needless Pruning or Research's Growth-Tip
Richard Horton wrote:
"[O]pen-access should be the ultimate goal for all publishers...
Given that research is, like any new discovery, a piece of intellectual
property, a system akin to patents might apply. Publishers [sh]ould have
time-limited control over the material they publish - but a short time,
perhaps no longer than 12 months, given that publishers, although they
do add value, are not the true originators of the work in question. Once
that interval has expired, research could be openly available to all."
The reason research is published is so that it can immediately be read, used,
applied, and built-upon: This is called
research impact, and research
impact is what research productivity and progress are based upon and
measured by.
Although it varies from discipline to discipline, the growth region for research
begins at the moment the peer-reviewed final draft is accepted for publication
(in some fields
even earlier, with the pre-refereeing preprint) and in many
fields most impact takes place in the first 6-12 months from publication (see Hitchcock et al. references, below).
It was
in order to maximise
research
impact --
thereby putting an end to the needless
cumulative impact loss that was the legacy of the paper era and its
access-tolls -- that the open-access movement came into existence.
Richard Horton is here resurrecting the Shulenberger "NEAR" proposal
["Shulenburger on open access: so NEAR and yet so far"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3277.html] of
delayed-access instead of open-access, proposing to cut out research's most vital growth
region.
And for no good reason! For if toll-access journals fear that they will not be
able to make ends meet if they become open-access ("gold") journals, they can still
support open access and research impact by becoming "green" journals, i.e.,
journals that
officially endorse self-archiving by their authors .
References
Harnad, S. (2001) AAAS's Response: Too Little, Too Late.
Science dEbates [online] 2 April 2001.
Hitchcock, Steve, Tim Brody, Christopher Gutteridge, Les Carr, Wendy Hall, Stevan Harnad, Donna Bergmark, Carl Lagoze (2002) Open Citation Linking: The Way Forward. D-Lib Magazine. Volume 8 Number 10. October 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october02/hitchcock/10hitchcock.html
Hitchcock, Steve; Woukeu, Arouna; Brody, Tim; Carr, Les; Hall, Wendy and Harnad, Stevan. (2003)
Evaluating Citebase, an open access Web-based citation-ranked search and impact discovery service
http://opcit.eprints.org/evaluation/Citebase-evaluation/evaluation-report.html
Hitchcock, Steve; Woukeu, Arouna; Brody, Tim; Carr, Les; Hall, Wendy and Harnad, Stevan. (2003)
Evaluating Citebase, an open access Web-based citation-ranked search and impact discovery service
http://opcit.eprints.org/evaluation/Citebase-evaluation/evaluation-report.html
Hitchcock, Steve, Tim Brody, Christopher Gutteridge, Les Carr & Stevan Harnad (2003) The Impact of OAI-based Search on Access to Research Journal Papers. Serials 16(3)
http://opcit.eprints.org/serials-short/serials11.html
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests