SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Wellcome Trust has recommended that scientists publish their research in free, open access journals, rather than "hybrid" publications it operates:
Expensive research journal subscriptions could be on the way out, if the Wellcome Trust has its way. The moneybags UK research foundation has published a report favoring free, so-called open access, journals over those that charge a fee for access. The report reviewed the activities of research institutions that received funding from the trust. It found that it is cheaper, and thus a better use of grants, to place papers in freely available journals.
Meanwhile, the trust feels it's not getting enough bang for its bucks from hybrid publications. These hybrids charge scientists a decent wedge of cash to publish their work, charge people for journal subscriptions, and offer access to individual articles for free. In other words, the foundation would rather scientists submit their work to open-access journals, which are cheaper than hybrids in terms of publication and subscription costs. "We find that hybrid open access continues to be significantly more expensive than fully open access journals, and that as a whole, the level of service provided by hybrid publishers is poor and is not delivering what we are paying for," the trust said.
Related: Wellcome Trust and COAF Open Access Spend, 2014-15
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 27 2016, @02:51PM
From 2001: http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html [pdfernhout.net]
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."