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Category Archives: Open access

eLife: Nothing new under the eSun?

Written on February 28, 2013 at 4:05 pm, by

I did my PhD at UCL in the early seventies when neuroscience was only just beginning to exist as a subject in its own right. It wasn’t until 1980 that the first neuroscience department was established in the UK, so to do neuroscience I had to spend most of my time hopping between the physiology Read more...

Impact of Open Access in different biomedical areas

Written on January 18, 2013 at 11:19 am, by

Following my last post, I have looked more closely at two of the biomedical areas used in the last analysis. I have used the search terms “epilepsy” and “genomics” to pull off all of the records in PubMed published in these separate areas since 2000. Then I consolidated these data so that I could compare Read more...

Open access – have we reached the tipping point?

Written on January 15, 2013 at 10:38 am, by

“Open access” only really gets interesting when users and product developers have access to a critical mass of content. I’ll leave the definition of “Critical mass” vague at this point, but it probably means something like 80-90% of the most cited content in a field such as biomedical research. But for this to happen the Read more...

Scientific publishing goes “Boink”

Written on January 9, 2013 at 11:49 am, by

A simplified picture of the scientific research process would include a cycle of events beginning with the identification of a new idea or hypothesis (A “known unknown” after Donald Rumsfeld’s definition) derived from a gap analysis of the literature, followed by competitive peer review of the corresponding research proposal and the release of funding and Read more...

Open access to federally funded research – a public debate

Written on January 2, 2010 at 2:53 pm, by

Currently, the National Institutes of Health is the only federal body that requires that research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. The US Administration is seeking views as to whether this policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, Read more...