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The Internet has become an indispensable tool for communication and coordination, yet the debate of Open Access (OA), free for all and holding back innovation is ever rife. While the purposes OA is to allow one to read a publication over the Internet, print it and further develop and/or distrbute the findings without any restrictions (Björk, 2004). We often find ourselves spending hours researching an academic essay, searching through online journals to find that perfect article on the topic, only to discover seconds later that the online material doesn’t comes with free access.
Why do researchers bother researching if the costs are made so high that only a handful in the society can benefit from it?
According to global pricing consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners, days where we enjoy free OA materials will not last much longer. Their recently conducted survey has found that in the coming years as much as 90% of online content will find itself behind a paywall (Lepitak, 2013). This is however, contrary to a article reported by the BBC News that the government are developing plans to make publicly funded research results freely available to all (Ghosh, 2012). This video will clearly explained the importance of OA to you.
(Shockey and Eisen, 2012)
What are the advantages and disadvantages to consider?
Advantages
Access to materials and learning. Promotes the sharing of knowledge, development of established ideas, and to enhance future materials.
Increased Readership / Circulation Speed. Widen the readership of the author’s work as the research is more discoverable online. Online information are also made available more readily ensuring the latest research is always available as compared to published journals.
Cost Saving / Convenient for Students. Beneficial to students who are self finance and most students now would prefer to access information online than heading down to the library for the hardcopy.
Disadvantages
Author’s Fear. Risk of information, research being misused, misinterpreted and/or plagiarism.
Recognition of Research. If not approved and published by a third party (journal publisher) it may lack reliability and lose trust by academics. As there is a myth that OA journals are much lower in term of quality as compared to paywall journal. However, this has been shown to be untrue as reported by The Guardian.
As a student, I am in strong favour of OA, as we can all relate to the frustration of having to read an interesting abstract to a journal, only to find that we get denied access to the full content unless we pay up to a certain sum and you have no idea if its actually useful until you purchase it. While OA also ensures greater accessibility to allow the progression and improvement of important research.
As digitization continues, I cannot envisage anything but a higher demand for OA materials and a greater resistance to pay-based restrictions.
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References
Björk, B. (2004). Open access to scientific publications – an analysis of the barriers to change?. [online] Information Research. Available at: https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10227/647/bjork.pdf?sequence=1 [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014].
Ghosh, P. (2012). UK science to be freely available. [online] BBC News. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-18860276 [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014].
Lepitak, S. (2013). 90% of online content to be held behind paywalls in three years media company survey suggests. [online] The Drum. Available at: http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/04/12/90-online-content-be-held-behind-paywalls-three-years-media-company-survey-suggests [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014].
Shockey, N. and Eisen, J. (2012). Open Access Explained!. [online] YouTube. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014].
Suber, P. (2013). Open access: six myths to put to rest. [online] the Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/oct/21/open-access-myths-peter-suber-harvard [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014].
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