Faculty Votes For Open Access Policy At UC San Francisco

Marian the Librarian writes "UCSF is among the first public institutions to adopt an open access policy, and is the largest scientific institution to have such a policy. The policy, voted unanimously by the faculty, will allow UCSF authors to put electronic versions of their published scientific articles on an open access repository making their research findings freely available to the public. Dr. Richard A. Schneider, who led the initiative, said, 'Our primary motivation is to make our research available to anyone who is interested in it, whether they are members of the general public or scientists without costly subscriptions to journals. The decision is a huge step forward in eliminating barriers to scientific research.'"

More of a suggestion than a policy

[codeAlDente]

So their "policy" is that taxpayers have the right to see published forms of research they funded, as long as it's OK with the journal publisher. From TFA: "Researchers are able to “opt out” if they want to publish in a certain journal but find that the publisher is unwilling to comply with the UCSF policy. “The hope,” said Schneider, “is that faculty will think twice about where they publish, and choose to publish in journals that support the goals of the policy.”

Re:Good, now...

[noh8rz3]

ahh, I see. gone AC to avoid the bad karma...

Here's your answer - open access is just one piece of the puzzle, and without a peer review certification process it is meaningless. If you're a senior academic and leader in your field, then your reputation precedes you and people will turn to your stuff regardless of peer review. But if you're a junior academic / post doc, perhaps your stuff is legit or perhaps it is crap and you're pushing it out the door to up your publication count. We need a certified peer review process for this.

FYI, these open access internet journals, you typically have to pay money for the paper to get peer reviewed. I'm fine twith that. as long as there's a process!