Open Access petition — an update
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One month after it was created (on May 13) and a week before it will be closed to signatures (on June 19), the White House Open Access petition (which I pointed Language Log readers to on May 23) now has 26,768 signatures — 1,768 more than the 25,000 threshold! By my calculation, the average rate was over 1,190 signatures a day from the first to the 25,000th signature (by "David L" of Holmdel, NJ, who signed on June 3 — three weeks after the petition was created); after that, the rate dropped to just shy of 177 a day. No reason to slow down the pace now! If you agree with the petition, please sign it and/or pass it on to your agreeable friends — send a strong message to Washington that "[e]xpanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our [public] investment in scientific research."
Ethan said,
June 13, 2012 @ 5:17 pm
The June issue of Physics Today contains an op/ed piece on this topic . It argues, not very compellingly in my opinion, that although the Open Access model adopted by the NIH works well for the biomedical research community it would not work so well for the physics community. New to me was mention that the NSF is "spearheading a possible plan" to have US funding agencies move jointly toward a universal author-pays scheme that would replace journal subscription fees.
If that link doesn't appear in the comment, you may be able to get there via "dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.1599"
Chris Waigl said,
June 13, 2012 @ 6:30 pm
Ethan may be referring to SCOAP3 http://scoap3.org/ , of which I heard only today. It is an initiative in high-energy physics in which funding bodies (of multiple countries) and libraries pool resources to pay open access publication fees.
It's a pretty interesting time right now for open access, with today's launch of the O'Reilly-backed venture PeerJ http://peerj.com/ (who seem to have their site overwhelmed by the interest right now).