For Academic Publishing, Princeton Goes Open Access By Default 101
First time accepted submitter crazyvas writes "Princeton University will prevent researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers (except if a waiver is requested). The new rule is part of an Open Access policy aimed at broadening the reach of their scholarly work and encouraging publishers to adjust standard contracts that commonly require exclusive copyright as a condition of publication. Universities pay millions of dollars a year for academic journal subscriptions. People without subscriptions are often prevented from reading taxpayer funded research. This is a bold first step in changing the face of how research (especially when taxpayer funded) works in the country, and a step towards weakening the current culture of charging increasingly exorbitant prices to view academic research publications."
Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
Researchers and peer reviewers are not paid for their work but academic publishers have said such a business model is required to maintain quality.
The publishers are lying here to protect their cash cow. What maintains quality is the peer review system (which the journals do not pay for). The transfer of copyright to the publisher allows them to hold Universities to ransom - universities cannot function without access to the literature (present and past), and the costs of online access to journals have been spiraling over the past few years at a time when the publishers' actual costs are going down. After all, they don't pay for the research to be carried out, nor do they pay the academic editors or the reviewers, nor do they even need to typeset the document now that everyone submits a machine-readable copy.
Re:Pay to read (Score:5, Insightful)
and most importantly, paying not the author of the research, nor the institution that financed the author, but some random publisher who did virtually nothing.
The current publishing system really amazes me (and yes I'm an academic). This is wonderful news, I wish more institutions encouraged their researchers to go open access.
Re:It's not a first step (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why what Princeton is doing is such a great thing. It allows you to still submit and be published in a prestigious journal, but hide behind the university's legal team when it comes to posting your publication where everyone can access it. Google scholar does an amazing job of finding publicly available copies of scientific publications on a researcher's personal website, etc, so this is a big step towards open-access scientific publication without having to sacrifice your career.
Depends if the journals will accept this. It would be no great loss to any journal in particular to not accept work from Princeton - it may only (in the short term) harm their own researchers if other universities don't follow (though I see from the summary there is a waiver - will be interesting to see how that works out).
Although I'm in favour of open access I get a bit pissed off with Universities dictating publication policy like this. I got my own grant money so it should be between me and my funders how I spend it (and how I assign my own copyright).