So I don’t know if
you’ve heard of open access or if you know much about the science publishing
industry, but basically at present scientists are beholden to a vampiric bunch
of arseholes which are the science publishing industry who care for naught but their
bank balances and a whole bunch of people want to break this cartel with a
thing called open access. Whoever wins this fight will have huge ramifications
for the world so it’s kind of a big deal and you should probably know a bit
about it.
First let me
introduce the establishment, that is the publishing industry or vampires as I
here refer to them. These are a bunch of “esteemed” journals which publish
scientists work (which is most frequently publicly funded) at a hefty price to
the scientists and then charge extremely exorbitant amounts of money to view
the contents of the journals (see the price quoted to me in the picture above),
which is other scientists work also funded by the public. So they charge money
at both ends and give nothing to scientists other than a shared forum. Scientists
are dependant upon sharing each other’s work, which means they have no option
other than to deal with these nefarious fuckwits if they wish to achieve
anything.
It gets richer
though, scientists gain prestige depending on which journals accept their paper,
the more expensive a journal to publish in and the more expensive to read, the
more kudos you have for appearing in their catalogue. This prestige association
is a neat trick, and in my view the one thing that stops a run on the entire
publishing industry. Generally my senior colleagues I’ve talked to believe the
publishing industry sucks, presents serious ethical dilemmas and contributes
little financial benefit or otherwise to science(they merely publish, all the
other work is undertaken by scientists at their own or institutions cost) but
are worried how other scientists will know how cool they are without it.
If you’d like to
hear the industries mealy mouthed explanation of why they are so valuable, go here, and if you’re interested in good explanation of why the publishing industry
is a rort, follow this link.
Anyhow, a bunch of
intelligent and talented individuals have created a concept known as open
access, where published work is free to read, which means everyone has access
to it, whether your rich or poor or have only a passing interest in science. This
is nothing short of pure genius, because should they succeed, the world will be
wiser for it. Scientists in the developing world will have access to research
equal to their peers in the developed world, and anyone seeking to learn about
a topic will have the opportunity to educate themselves, regardless of their educational
background. This last point has the possibility of changing the public
perception of and engagement with science and liberating many great minds to
participate in the world of science.
The idea has
substantial merit and therefore has had some significant wins of late. In
Australia, the UK and the U.S., the governments have started to demand that
people have access to the research they have funded, and therefore in various
forms and guises demanded with legislation that new publically funded research
should be published open access. NEW RESEARCH, not the significantly vaster
troves that exist under lock and key, suggesting that governments don’t have
the courage to truly stand up to this mafia and demand the return of our
publically funded research.
Most recently, a
famous programmer and online activist by the name of Aaron Swartz, attempted
to liberate a swath of this literature into the public domain, the result of
which was such a terrible prosecution by the U.S. government, that the anxiety
associated with the court case led him to take his own life.
Though some good has
come from the tormenting of Aaron Swartz to the point of suicide,
and that is that many more people now know about the publishing rort and the
enormous potential and therefore the importance of open access. If you truly
hope for equality in the world then you should incorporate open access into your actions, hopes and dreams.
