By now, it is public knowledge that subscription prices for scholarly journals have been rising beyond inflation for decades (i.e., the serials crisis): A superficially very similar graph was recently published for APC price increases: When not paying too much […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Archive for science politics
117 results.
Yesterday, cOAlition S published their updated principles and implementation guidelines for #PlanS, together with the rationale behind the update. This constitutes a very much welcome effort, as evidence of the increasing awareness among funders as to their potential leverage in […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Posted on May 31, 2019
at 10:55
Comments Off on Improved Plan S principles raise hope of more effective policies soon
Scientists are used to vested interests disputing scientific claims. Tobacco corporations have tried to discredit the science about lung cancer and smoking, creationists keep raising always the same, long-debunked objections against evolution, climate-deniers claim the earth is cooling, anti-vaxxers believe […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
With about 2 years delay, US President Donald Trump hired Kelvin Droegemeier as director for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in February 2019. In a recent interview Dr. Droegemeier made the following broad, categorical statement […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Posted on May 2, 2019
at 12:31
Comments Off on New OSTP director caught lying in interview
The New England journal of Medicine has come out strongly against Open Access. Apparently, this journal does not seem to value access to medical information very highly. This lack of valuation could be due to several reasons. For one, the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Time and time again, academic publishers have managed to create the impression that publishing incurs a lot of costs which justify the outrageous prices they charge, be that US$11M p.a. for an Elsevier Big Deal subscription or an article processing […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Since cOAlition S is asking for recommendations from the community for the implementation of their Plan S, I have also chipped in. In their feedback form, they ask two questions, to which I have answered with the replies below. With […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Posted on January 17, 2019
at 09:36
Comments Off on Providing recommendations for Plan S implementation
Over the last ten years, scientific funding agencies across the globe have implemented policies which force their grant recipients to behave in a compliant way. For instance, the NIH OA policy mandates that research articles describing research they funded must […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The recent publication of the “Ten Principles of Plan S” has sparked numerous discussions among which one of several recurring themes was academic freedom. The cause for these discussions is the insistence of the funders supporting Plan S that their […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It’s now been 24 years since Stevan Harnad sparked the open access movement by suggesting in his “subversive proposal” in 1994 that scholars ought to just publish their scholarly articles on the internet: If every esoteric author in the world […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
