Unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse<\/em><\/strong> of our discoveries that mostly were supported by public funds and hence deserve to be in the public\u2019s hands rapidly (and the NIH agrees).\u00a0 With digital access worldwide assured by the world-wide-web, we assure the second of the two basic tenets of modern science \u2013 dissemination (the first being discovery).\u00a0 What else is left to debate?<\/p>\nThis is the simple, honest motivation for me to publish in Open Access journals \u2013 rapid, worldwide dissemination.\u00a0 The profit-driven and slightly unsavory alternative has been well-discussed from the very first thoughts about the possibility of open access publishing; namely print publishers (in paper or digital format) who own the rights to the published articles, then charge fees for digital access, and who then require permission for reuse at a fee (they own copyright).\u00a0 (We\u2019ve all been through the copyright torture when we attempt to write a chapter in a book using figures from our published work.) \u00a0Clearly, these are the expected policies of a for-profit, bottom-line enterprise, and a partnership with scholars that worked to the advantage of both parties. \u00a0I accepted that early in my career.\u00a0 The model worked in its own perverse way, and it was the only game in town for world-wide dissemination, not to mention its role in career advancement through peer-review and the need to publish in high-impact journals for maximum gain.<\/p>\n
The burgeoning success of Open Access publication, along with digital media and the world-wide-web, clearly shows that it is time to move on.\u00a0 The remaining barriers to each individual scholar for deciding whether or not to publish in Open Access seem to be rooted in decisions about career advancement; that is, the need to publish in elite, supposedly high-impact journals.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Last year Prof. Bernd Fritzch wrote a wonderful entry to this blog site concerning the eroding utility of journal impact factors, and the ongoing evolution of newer ways of tracking citation impact of a scientist\u2019s work (such as the h-index and others).\u00a0 It would seem that with digital access (and digital searching), amplified further by open access, the impact of a paper is now less a matter of where it was published, and more a matter of the content of the paper (as it should).<\/p>\n
I too remember long days in the library with Index Medicus, tracking down papers, which then evolved into Current Contents mailed to your lab periodically.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have time to scour every possible key word or topic heading (remember, we were turning pages in a catalog and we couldn\u2019t use arbitrary key words and the magic of Boolean operators).\u00a0 We focused first on the keywords and terms that made the most sense (and were always amazed when someone turned up an important paper that escaped our search), and then on a subset of high-impact journals.\u00a0 Many of these journals were high impact because of the shared, tacit agreement amongst our peers to publish our best work in just the places where we all tended to look first.<\/p>\n
Folks, those days are over.\u00a0 With digital search across large, publicly supported databases, our work can be found just about anywhere, barring our poor choices of titles or keywords.\u00a0 That means your work will be found in Open Access journals, and it will be cited based on the merits of your scholarship and not just the reputation of the journal. This scenario continues to evolve, but the direction seems clear and we\u2019re building speed.\u00a0 Prof. Fritzsch asked the question \u201cAre we witnessing a revolution in information flow\u2026?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m wondering if Bernd asked the question as a rhetorical device.\u00a0 It seems to me the answer is a resounding \u2018Yes\u2019!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![\"Open](\"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2012-03-01-at-11.57.16-AM2-150x150.png\")
During the month of Open Access week (October 19-25) we will be highlighting a number of guest posts from University of Iowa Faculty and Staff who have personal experience with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4588"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5432,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588\/revisions\/5432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}