[GOAL] The future of open access and academic publishing

[Richard Poynder]

Forwarding from SCHOLCOMM.

 

 

From: Glenn Hampson [mailto:ghampson at nationalscience.org] 
Sent: 06 September 2014 18:19
To: SCISIP at LISTSERV.NSF.GOV; sts-l at ala.org;
RESADM-L at lists.healthresearch.org; scholcomm at ala.org;
JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] the future of open access and academic publishing

 

Hi Folks,

 

A number of interesting conversations have been happening these past few
weeks in the listserv-o-sphere. And they seem to be converging on a single
theme, which is also interesting.

 

On the one hand, scholarly librarians have been discussing the gap that
exists between the dreams and the reality of open access. What's working
well, what could work better, and what can be done to close this gap? A
number of fascinating observations, ideas, and even solutions have already
been tossed into the fold. These are particularly timely in light of the
AAAS's decision this week to no longer advance OA.

 

On the other hand, the "science of team science" folks have been discussing
the tendency toward reductionism between fields (e.g., considering sociology
to be applied psych, psychology to be applied biology, and so on).
Integrative and team science approaches are trying to bridge these gaps and
add value, but improving the communication infrastructure inside science
will also play a critical role in connecting the dots.

 

And this is where these conversations converge. For both, improving science
communication is at the center---which sounds both reductionist and
self-serving (sorry). Breaking down the communication barriers inside
science will go a long way toward allowing a more natural flow of ideas
across the barriers that currently exist---language differences,
impenetrable writing styles and terminologies, secrecy and intellectual
property concerns, paywalls, data invisibility, institutional practices and
inertia, and so on. As I wrote last week to the science of team science
audience, the ability of scientists in other fields, and even colleagues in
the same field (not to even mention lay scientists, educators, policymakers,
and the public) to find new ideas, find the connections, and integrate work
can be extraordinarily limited because the communications push behind
research work is most often insignificant, and quite often invisible. 

 

Add to these conversations another piece of news that you'll hear about in
more detail soon: changes are coming in the online availability of journals.
I can't say more until the press release is approved, but this is a
development we've been working on since December, involving a major Internet
player, and it will probably create a good deal of excitement.

 

At this important juncture, we need to keep pushing these conversations
forward. What are the gaps and issues in perfecting open access? How can we
do this? What are the communications-related needs, gaps, and issues in
lowering the barriers between different fields of science, and even within
fields? Is moving toward a single, common, "full lifecycle" system of
publishing for all disciplines (that includes peer review, editing,
archiving, cross-referencing, and creative commons licensed open access) the
eventual destination of these two lines of thinking---especially for any
work that is funded by federal dollars---or is this too utopian?

 

We're convening an off-list working group to keep digging into the issues
and solutions here.  If you're interested in being part of this discussion,
please sign up on this email list
<http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0B49AAAB22A1FF2-open1>  by October 1st
(the signup entry code is OSI-2014). The primary objective will be to create
a working paper, send it back to full groups for comments and changes, and
then see if we can turn this into  an action plan (or several action plans)
that we can work on together with our institutions in 2015.

 

Thank you and best regards,

 

Glenn Hampson

 

 

Glenn Hampson

Executive Director

National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)

 

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133

(206) 417-3607 | ghampson at nationalscience.org
<mailto:ghampson at nationalscience.org>  | nationalscience.org
<http://nationalscience.org/> 

 

 

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