Open Source Scholarly Journals

Holly Else reports on a government initiative sweeping Europe, which will require that the results of government funded research should be released as open source .

According to Else:

The 11 agencies, who together spend €7.6 billion (US$8.8 billion) in research grants annually, say they will mandate that, from 2020, the scientists they fund must make resulting papers free to read immediately on publication (see ‘Plan S players’). The papers would have a liberal publishing licence that would allow anyone else to download, translate or otherwise reuse the work.

Else shared a graphic depicting the rising percentage of research articles which become freely available to the public ("open source"). Approximately three-quarters of scholarly science is still locked behind paywalls, requiring association with a university or corporation library for access.

In the United States, certain Federal research and Gates Foundation research is required to be released as open source, but most academics strive to publish their research in prestigious (and expensive) peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

-DD