<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Written by guest blogger Julie Browne, Senior Lecturer, School of Medicine, Cardiff University \/ Co-Chair of Cardiff University Press Editorial Board<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2005 I was the managing editor of a medical education journal that was published by one of the \u2018big five\u2019 publishers, with an annual turnover of hundreds of thousands of pounds. As part of my role, I was privileged to attend the fifth JAMA Peer Review Congress in Chicago, where participants discussed such contentious and important topics as pharmaceutical companies\u2019 sponsorship of published research, quality of peer review, scientific misconduct, publication bias, and so on. It was a great honour to hear a keynote from the late Eugene Garfield, the pioneer in bibliometrics who gave the world the impact factor. (He admitted frankly to the meeting that he\u2019d \u201ccreated a monster.\u201d) It was a fascinating and memorable experience (not least because I was mugged on the way back to the airport, but that\u2019s another story).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although I didn\u2019t realise it at the time, one of the most noteworthy\nthings that happened during that meeting took place over lunch. I found myself\nsitting next to a young German academic, who told me proudly that he was the\neditor of a \u2018platinum open access\u2019 journal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, I kept a straight face, but my first thought was to\nfeel a bit sorry for him. After all, I\nthought, everyone knew that open access (OA) wouldn\u2019t last because OA\npublishing was a \u2018cottage industry\u2019. We still had dial-up internet, for heavens\u2019\nsake! I imagined this rather geeky\ntechnophile academic struggling away in his bedroom at weekends to publish\nnot-very-good papers on a small and obscure platform that would never be read\nby anyone. How could he possibly hope to compete with organisations like my\npublisher, which employed many thousands of people in a multi-million pound\nglobal enterprise?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I couldn\u2019t help being impressed by his passion and\nfervour. He pointed out how unfair the traditional\nsystem was, particularly on readers in developing countries. He reminded me\nthat science should be for the benefit of the whole world, not just those who\ncan pay for it. He drew attention to something I hadn\u2019t previously noticed –\nthat the whole congress was based around concerns about how money can affect\nthe publication process, introducing vested interests that affect how science is\nreported and disseminated. And he argued that Universities were paying\npublishers twice over, both by supplying the free labour of the academics who\nresearched and wrote the work and also by having to pay enormous sums in\njournal subscriptions. He predicted that\none day, OA would sweep the world; Universities and academics would lose\npatience with the current publishing model and the publishers would need to\nchange or go out of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, I smiled politely at this optimistic vision of his,\nonly vaguely persuaded. Given the nature of my work at the time, I was rather\nhoping he was wrong. But his arguments had slightly shaken my confidence in\ntraditional publishing models. Over time, I began to see the justice of his\narguments, and in recent years I have come to realise just how right he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here we are, only 15 years later, and that young German\nacademic\u2019s predictions are coming true (Eysenbach 2019). There are more OA\npapers being indexed in PubMed Central than non-OA. Research funders and\ninstitutions, far from upholding the traditional system, are making OA\nmandatory for their staff. Open Access now forms a core part of the EU\u2019s\nHorizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (Tennant et al 2016). World-class\nUniversities such as Cardiff are setting up their own open access\npublishers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And here I am, co-Chair of the Cardiff University Press\u2019s\nEditorial Board, gamekeeper-turned-poacher, proudly and fervently promoting\nopen access as the best way to engage the public with academic research. At a\ntime when scholarly and scientific expertise is increasingly under attack,\ndemocratic open access to high quality academic outputs is not just desirable,\nit\u2019s an essential human right. Congratulations to Cardiff University for\nrecognising this and supporting open access through the work of the Press; we\nare in the vanguard of an open-scholarship revolution and I look forward to\nseeing where the next 15 years take us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eysenbach G. (2019). Celebrating 20 Years of Open\nAccess and Innovation at JMIR Publications. Journal of medical Internet\nresearch<\/em>, 21<\/em>(12), e17578. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2196\/17578<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tennant, J. P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D. C.,\nMasuzzo, P., Collister, L. B., & Hartgerink, C. H. (2016). The academic,\neconomic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review. F1000Research<\/em>, 5<\/em>,\n632. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.12688\/f1000research.8460.3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Written by guest blogger Julie Browne, Senior Lecturer, School of Medicine, Cardiff University \/ Co-Chair of Cardiff University Press Editorial Board In 2005 I was the managing editor of a […]","protected":false},"author":1507,"featured_media":713,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-openaccessweek","category-publishing","category-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/552\/2020\/10\/bookshelf-clipart-md.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":717,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}