Well, 2006 is over and in terms of Open Access to Biomedical type publications, I think it was a pretty good year. The papers being published in Open Access journals continue to get better and better and there are more Open Access journals too. Perhaps to biggest new thing from last year was the start of PLoS One, which is not only an Open Access journal but one that is experimenting with a new type of peer review system.
But of course, more needs to be done. So I am posting here my personal list of Open Access New Years resolutions. These are things I hope to do and hope to convince others to do too (these are in no particular order).
1. Convince more collaborators to publish papers in Open Access journals.
2. Release more of my labs data in a more usable format to Open Data archives (see Bill Hooker's Open Reading Frame blog for more details about doing this).
3. Discuss Open Access to publications and data in all my scientific presentations/talks.
4. Write more blogs about Open Access and its benefits.
5. Convince some existing journals to switch to a more Open Access stance (e.g., I wish this would happen with Journal of Molecular Evolution --- I resigned my position as an Academic Editor when they would not shift but there is still hope).
6. Submit as many of my past papers that were not in Open Access journals to self-archiving repositories (see the comments on my previous blog about this - it seems that this is possible even for Nature papers).
7. Work with Pubmed Central to make self archiving possible there for more papers. Right now it is only possible to submit your own work to Pubmed Central if it was NIH or Wellcome Trust funded.
8. Discuss Open Access with more scientists. Some still have notheard about it and some do not realize what the issues are.
9. Discuss Open Access with more non scientists. To get Congress to pass more rules regarding Open Access, it will help to have more pressure from non scientists. When I have described the current publishing system to non scientists, they are usually astonished by the (1) wasted money and (2) closed nature of much scientific work.
10. Work to get researchers who publish in Open Access journals "extra credit" in promotions, tenure review and grant proposal review. These people are frequently taking risks for the betterment of the scientific community and to advance scientific knowledge. They deserve credit for taking these risks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
I have a new friend in Google Scholar Updates I have written about the Updates system before and if you want more information please see... -
See Isolation and sequence-based characterization of a koala symbiont: Lonepinella koalarum Paper based on PhD thesis work of Katie Dahlha...
-
Just got this press release by email. I am sick of receiving dozens of unsolicited press releases, especially those in topics not related ...
I've been meaning to thank you for the comment on that entry, and the links here. I agree, Peter (MR) is really onto something with Open Data. Do you know anyone at Science Commons? I'd really like to know what they are doing with their Data Project, and what they think of the Open Data Addendum idea.
ReplyDeleteAlso, trackback.
I had never heard of Science Commons til your comment. But I am pretty clueless about the broader world of Open Access (just know my little nook of biomedical publications and genome data). It looks pretty reasonable (see their wesite here )
ReplyDelete