Hi, it might be interesting to support
http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/
And to have a look to their license for articles
http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/license.htm
I included the license at the end of this email, note that they have an email license@publiclibraryofscience.org for comments about the license.
Am Die, 17 Dez 2002 schrieb Laurent Guerby:
Hi, it might be interesting to support http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/
Well, the open letter (that was signed by 30.000 scientists) has not strongly affected overall journal policies as they might have hoped. PLOS is not about free software but open access, indeed these two subjects are related. Two days ago they have received a $9 mio. grant to launch a scientific publishing venture--glad to hear it.
Academic publishing resembles some strong similarities to free software. Some recent initiatives (as PLOS) have come into existence that base on free software to back their work. Other important sites about open access include the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/), and Peter Subers Free Online Scholarship Weblog (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html).
It is not easy to compete with established commercial publishers, so these initiatives need support. I think there are some interesting things under way, and we will see lots of free software involved. It would be good to follow these events from our side.
BTW, this year I finished my thesis in librarianship dealing with some of these models and how they may affect the academic libraries (and their heavily stressed budgets). Unfortunately it is in German, but those interested may access the full text next month.
Regards, Daniel Zimmel
On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 02:52:49PM +0100, Daniel Zimmel wrote:
It is not easy to compete with established commercial publishers, so these initiatives need support. I think there are some interesting things under way, and we will see lots of free software involved. It would be good to follow these events from our side.
BTW, this year I finished my thesis in librarianship dealing with some of these models and how they may affect the academic libraries (and their heavily stressed budgets). Unfortunately it is in German, but those interested may access the full text next month.
Hi, I'd like to know your opinion on http://arxiv.org/ which since 1991 has become a very important scientific reference in some fields of Physics and Mathematics.
Cheers, Jaime
I'd like to know your opinion on http://arxiv.org/ which since 1991 has become a very important scientific reference in some fields of Physics and Mathematics. Cheers, Jaime
In these disciplines the acceptance of electronic distribution has ever been very high. ArXiv has sprung into existence because physicists gladly accepted this way of getting their papers spread around. It serves as an preprint server since 1991 (!). The Open Archives Initiative with its Protocol have undoubtedly shaped the way scientists communicate with each other. So I am think this is a very successful effort.
But there are things to remember: Lots of this literature is preprints published in a commercial journal afterwards. This is essential, but as we have Microsoft on operating systems, we see publisher monopolies in academics, think about recent mergers happening around the giant Reed-Elsevier. Unless there are ways of evaluating scientific research (the peer-review process) effectively *without* being forced to pay horrendous journals prices--peer reviewing is done by the publishers--the use of the net will be limited to a small portion of high energy physicists. Some faculties in the humanities dont even think about electronic publishing, though.
ArXiv is a good thing, but I think there need to be more efforts in setting up more publishing platforms that are not focused on maximising their shareholder value. PLOS is going to do exactly that. The fact that more academic institutions are setting up their institutional archives is good news.
For those of you interested in these things:
The most important forum about these issues is the September 1998 American Scientist Forum (http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/archives/september98-forum.html)
There have been some SW-related discussions too, as well as very interesting discussions on peer-review, copyright and open-access.
Regards, Daniel