Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Elsevier lets scholars post their work outside of journals...
This is pretty interesting news. Aparantly Elsevier is one of the big publishers of scholarly journals, and have recently stated that they'll alow authors to post a version of their findings on their own website and that of the institution involved.
Lately there's been some controversy in that with journals being so expensive (and only getting more so over time) that many libraries and others are having trouble affording them, causing a restriction to people being able to access the information.
In response, there have been initiatives like the Public Library of Science which aim to create quality journals while not charging for access or redistribution.
Elsevier seems like they are trying to head this sort of thing off by making their own system seem a bit more open. Of course it isn't totally open and finding the info could be tricky, but I'd hope that someone would make a resource which links to all the individual authors' and institutions' documents.
Still.... I'm not expert on how the system of review works in science circles, but it seems a shame that the current methods seem so restrictive. I know the journals provide and important resource by weeking out bad findings, but some of them are just so expensive (when Lessig was on TV a while back, I think he said some can be as much as 10k a year to subscribe to). Plus, if certain research is funded with tax dollars, I think the public should be able to view at least those findings in an easy way..
[via Copyfight]
Lately there's been some controversy in that with journals being so expensive (and only getting more so over time) that many libraries and others are having trouble affording them, causing a restriction to people being able to access the information.
In response, there have been initiatives like the Public Library of Science which aim to create quality journals while not charging for access or redistribution.
Elsevier seems like they are trying to head this sort of thing off by making their own system seem a bit more open. Of course it isn't totally open and finding the info could be tricky, but I'd hope that someone would make a resource which links to all the individual authors' and institutions' documents.
Still.... I'm not expert on how the system of review works in science circles, but it seems a shame that the current methods seem so restrictive. I know the journals provide and important resource by weeking out bad findings, but some of them are just so expensive (when Lessig was on TV a while back, I think he said some can be as much as 10k a year to subscribe to). Plus, if certain research is funded with tax dollars, I think the public should be able to view at least those findings in an easy way..
[via Copyfight]
