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posted by
Fnord666
on Tuesday February 26 2019, @04:08PM
from the dogs-and-cats-living-together dept.
from the dogs-and-cats-living-together dept.
What happens to research that is funded by taxpayers? A lot ends up in subscription-only journals, protected from the eyes of most by a paywall.
But a new initiative known as Plan S could change that. Plan S focuses on making all publicly funded research immediately fully and freely available by open access publication.
It sounds like a good idea – but there are possible downsides. This model could potentially undermine peer review, the process vital for ensuring the rigour and quality of published research. It could also increase costs of publication for researchers and funding bodies. So let's do Plan S right.
Taxpayers will have the right to see the research they paid for?
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All Publicly Funded Australian Research Could Soon Be Free for You, the Taxpayer, to Read
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-- Ingmar Bergman
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday February 27 2019, @04:24PM
Absolutely, I just figured I'd make it personal.
As for the crap - I'm reminded of the phrase "Of course 90% of X is crap. 90% of everything is crap." And publishing potentially suffers worse than most, as the "publish or perish" mentality around academia encourages a lot of gratuitous publishing. And worst of all, publishing of duplicate or negative results seems to be a difficult and unrewarding activity, which means that some of the most important aspects of science - independent confirmation and limiting duplicate dead-end research, is actively discouraged by the current system.