Making available scientific information in the third millennium: perspectives for the neuroscientific community
(2006) Making available scientific information in the third millennium: perspectives for the neuroscientific community
. Delivered at Institutional archives for research : experiences and projects in Open Access, Rome (Italy). Presentation.
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Abstract
[English abstract]
The rules governing the globalised process of sharing scientific information in the research
community are rapidly changing. From the 1950s, commercial publishers started owning a large
number of scientific journals and consequently the marketable value of a submitted manuscript
has become an increasingly important factor in publishing decisions. Recently some publishers
have developed the Open Access (OA), a business scheme which may help stopping such
tendency. Indeed, in the case of an open-access publication, the marketable value of a
manuscript may be not the primary consideration, since access to the research is not being sold.
This may push scientists to re-consider the purpose of peer reviewing. However, costs remain a
key point in managing scientific journals because OA method does not eliminate peer review
process. Thus, OA may not solve the problem of the market pressures on publishing strategies.
Furthermore, the OA has another strong point: everyone can read OA papers, including scientist
living in poor countries. But, will OA method create new discriminations on who can publish
on OA journals? Will it be possible to really exclude or strongly limit the influences of the
market from scientific publishing? The example of the non-profit e-print arXiv
(http://arXiv.org/), a fully automated electronic archive and distribution server for research
papers with no peer review will be discussed. For neuroscientists, the possibility to make
available scientific data, even in the case of negative results (usually, very difficult to publish)
is an important step to avoid purposeless repetition of costly experiments involving animal
subjects. The possibility to arrange internationally or locally peer reviewed papers in
institutional repositories (IR) is a necessity. However, access to IR should be regulated, e.g.
banning or limiting profit organizations and exploiting internet systems, professional
organizations or network groups.
| Keywords: | Open access, e-journal, ar-Xiv, institutional repositories, neuroscientific community |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | B. Information use and sociology of information. > BA. Use and impact of information. B. Information use and sociology of information. > BG. Information dissemination and diffusion. |
| ID Code: | 8273 |
| Deposited By: | Italian Staff, E-LIS |
| Deposited On: | 22 December 2006 |
| All fields: | Show all fields |
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