11 May 2012
Over 11 000 researchers globally have pledged to withdraw their research articles from Elsevier journals, the world’s biggest journal publisher. Journals charge large amounts for online access to articles and research that has mostly been funded by taxpayers. Many people believe that publically funded research should be freely available in the public domain.
In some countries, government agencies now insist that government funded research articles must be available free of charge within 12 months of publication. In Australia, the National Health & Medical Research Council will change its rules later this year to ensure academic work that it funds is made freely available but the Aust. Research Council has been less supportive. The push for open access publishing has been dubbed “the academic spring” by many supporters.
3 May 2012: The great publishing swindle: the high price of academic knowledge http://theconversation.edu.au/the-great-publishing-swindle-the-high-price-of-academic-knowledge-6667
15 Feb 2012: Academics line up to boycott the world’s biggest journal publisher http://theconversation.edu.au/academics-line-up-to-boycott-worlds-biggest-journal-publisher-5384
Open access solutions
2 May 2012: Wiki founder to build open access site for UK research
http://theconversation.edu.au/wiki-founder-to-build-open-access-site-for-uk-research-6797
“Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales will help the UK govt design a platform where all taxpayer-funded academic research will be freely available online – regardless of whether it is also published in a subscription-only journal….Leading members of Australia’s open access movement are less than optimistic that Aust. will follow suit”.
A report will be prepared this year in the UK that will chart a course for academic articles to be freely and openly available at or around the time of publication. The project will begin with a Gateway to Research website.
The Wellcome Trust, the world’s second largest non-govt funding body for medical research, is nearly ready to release its world-class open access journal called eLife, which will compete with prestigious journals such as Nature and Science.
http://theconversation.edu.au/funding-giant-toughens-support-for-open-publishing-6339
ANU Digital Collections database: a free online repository of academic research
https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/
Members of the ANU share their research with the wider community – journal articles, conference papers, theses, book chapters, working papers and other scholarly communication. It also has digital photos from the uni collections.
ArXiv (pron. Archive)
http://arxiv.org/
An archive for online preprints of scientific papers in maths, physics, astronomy, computer science, biology, statistics & finance. Owned by Cornell University Library; began 1991. Although the articles are not peer reviewed (as they have not yet been printed in journals), moderators review submissions & there is also an endorsement system. Most works are later published in journals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv.org