Open Parkinson's - Parkinson's UK pushing (and funding) openness #brilliant

Just a quick post here on my new theme of Openness in Parkinson's research in honor of my father in law Carlos Benito who is, unfortunately, dying from this disease.  I did a google search for open access and Parkinson's to see whether any organizations out there were pushing for more openness.  And the good news is that there are a few.  One I highlight today Parkinson's UK.  I highlight them because of their position on Open Access publishing: Parkinson's UK - Open access publishing - (formerly Parkinson's Disease Society)

From their site:

"We expect authors of research papers to maximise the opportunities to make their results available for free."

But that is not all - they do offer to help support OA publishing fees on top of the research money they dole out.  Truly putting one's money where one's mouth is.

Open Parkinson's - need for more progress on Open Access for papers on Parkinson's

I have a new aspect of open science I am concerned about. It is research on Parkinson's. This comes from having a family member with Parkinson's who is not doing so well. And I am getting frustrated with trying to read up on some Parkinson's related research but hitting a paywall for much of it. Uggh. This is so incredibly annoying and, in many ways, immoral. If we want to speed up the work towards cures, treatments and prevention strategies, we need to share more broadly everything we know about this disease. Yes, I know - publishing costs money. And yes, I know, open access and open science does not in any way solve all the problems associated with scientific and medical discovery and research. But I do know that openness can accelerate the pace of progress.

If you look at "openness" in relation to Parkinson's studies it is pretty disappointing. For example, of 60,400 publications that come up in Pubmed with a simple search for "Parkinson's" 9053 have free full text available. That's is just not enough. One thing that is interesting (and disconcerting) is what it looks like over time: