Richard Wray/ Friday November 25, 2005/ The Guardian
The Royal Society,
Britain's national academy of science, yesterday joined the debate
about so-called open access to scientific research, warning that making
research freely available on the internet as it is published in
scientific journals could harm scientific debate.
The Royal Society
fears it could lead to the demise of journals published by
not-for-profit societies, which put out about a third of all journals.
"Funders should remember that the primary aims should be to improve the
exchange of knowledge between researchers and wider society," The Royal
Society said.
Its position is a thinly
veiled attack on proposals by Research Councils UK - the umbrella body
for Britain's eight public backers of research. The body has said
researchers should be obliged to place a copy of their work in an
online archive, usually connected with a university, preferably at the
same time as the work appears in a subscription-based journal.
The
Royal Society, which publishes one of the world's oldest journals,
Philosophical Transactions, called on the research community to carry
out further investigation before adopting any position.
Open
access proponents said the Royal Society position statement confuses
open access publishing, in which authors pay for their research to be
published on the web, with author self-archiving. The latter, which has
already been carried out in some disciplines for years, relies on
academics publishing on the internet articles that have been accepted
by journals.
A
spokesman for the Royal Society said: "We think it conceivable that the
journals in some disciplines might suffer. Why would you pay to
subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?"
Source: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,16781,1650370,00.html
