DailyDirt: It's Time To Open Up Access To Academic Journals
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
It's kind of ridiculous when researchers actually have to pay to read journal articles about their own research online, but that's how academic publishing works. Even worse, the costs of access are obscenely high, limiting the readership to mostly people with access to libraries that can afford to pay the high subscription fees for journals. However, academics are starting to push back, and the good news is that there are at least a few efforts underway to create open-access online journals. Here are a few interesting links on the subject.- Did you know that in order to get access to the Arts and Sciences journal collection at an academic search engine company, like JSTOR, university libraries pay a one-time fee of $45,000, and then an annual fee of $8,500 to maintain that access? With tools like Google Scholar available, academic search engines just seem unnecessary. [url]
- A new open-access, online-only journal for biomedical and life science research will be launched this summer. Plus, the journal promises a faster turnaround time for the peer review process, which typically takes several months. [url]
- A website called "The Cost of Knowledge" has been set up so that researchers can take a stand against scientific and medical publishing company Elsevier's business practices. Elsevier also supports SOPA/PIPA and the Research Works Act, which aims to limit the free exchange of information. [url]
- To discover more interesting education-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]
Filed Under: academics, copyright, google scholar, journals, publishing, research
Companies: elsevier
