Open access to research worth £1.5bn a year
Published Friday 16th September 2005 10:39 GMT
The Register
Academic cries freedom
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Friday 16th September 2005 10:39 GMT
The UK is losing out on its investment in scientific research to the tune of £1.5bn every year, according to advocates of open access publishing.
Professor Stevan Harnad from the University of Southampton argues that because of the tradition of locking the results of publicly funded research away in research journals the scientific community is not as free to build on and develop ideas as it should be.
He calculates that if all published work was self-archived (i.e. made available online, after publication in a journal), the research impact would be the equivalent of a further £1.5bn investment in UK science, every year.
He argues that only researchers working at institutions that can afford journal subscription fees have access to published research, and offers his backing to the Research Councils UK (RCUK) proposal that all publicly funded research should be made available on the research institution's website.
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Received on Fri Sep 16 2005 - 21:26:46 BST