‘Who takes the plunge?’: keen discussion of stakeholders

During the meeting organized by Radboud Reflects on October 19^th a keen discussion was held by scientists about scientific publishing in open access.

The interest of affordable access to scientific publications is obvious and is endorsed by all present. But the road is not yet clear to make the transition. Not lastly that is the systematics by which scientists are judged. The necessity and ease by which the transition to open access can be made, differs by discipline. This issue was discussed in various ways.

Sarah de Rijke, researcher at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, states that  a great commercial interest is knit with the way quality judging of scientists is done. This troubles the radical transition to open access.

PhD student Machteld van Egmond concludes on the base of a research done among PhD’s of Radboudumc, that PhD students basically are in favor of open access: free availability of the results of research paid by the government. Nevertheless  they choose in relation to their career for publishing in journals with a high impact rate. So a hurdle must be taken to come to open access.

Linguist Johan Rooryck tells about LingOA and the inherent fair open access model. Editorial boards completely transfer their linguistic journal from an expensive publisher to  a cheap platform. He has the opinion that also other scientific disciplines can do this.

Chairman of the Board Gerard Meijer emphasized the role of scientific publishers and stated that the present publication model with substantial price-rises is no longer bearable for universities in the future. We must regain authority and control over the system. Open access is a substantial part of the negotiations with big publishers.

The meeting was visited by more than 120 persons interested. Many people also followed the discussion via livestream.