William Woodall shared this wonderful article he wrote with George E. P. Box with me, Innovation, Quality Engineering, and Statistics. My thoughts on being able to read it online:
Thanks Bill, it is a great article. And thanks for having it openly available. I really wish professors would stop allowing their work to be published by those seeking to close access to the ideas we are trying to promote. I realize there are pressures to publish in historically prestigious journals.
For professors that have “made it” you will do a great service to others (and help promote the ideas in your field that you have devoted your life to) by refusing to submit to closed science journals (or closed professional society journals etc.). For those trying to secure full professorships I wish they would too, but I realize the hard choices they face.
The maximum closed-ness we should tolerate, in my opinion, is closed access for 1 year after which it becomes open. Require this in writing in the agreement, don’t just accept that the current practice is to promote the sharing of ideas; if it isn’t in writing some person may have the publisher adopt closed science later and block access to the content you wanted to share.
It is especially distressing, to me, when government dollars fund the time the professor spends and then the end result is closed to the public. Thankfully some universities and some government agencies paying for the writing of these articles are demanding that the articles be published in an open access fashion.
On the other hand if you want to publish on rate and rank, the value of annual performance appraisals, bonuses for hitting targets etc. feel free to use closed science publishers.
Related: The Future of Scholarly Publication (2005) – Fields Medalist Tim Gowers Takes Action To Stop Cooperating with Anti-Open Science Cartel – Harvard Steps Up Defense Against Abusive Journal Publishers – 25 provosts from top universities jointly released a letter supporting current legislation to require open publication of scientific research (2005) – Problems with Management and Business Books
