RE: predatory journals and conferences article in NY Times

I have frequently performed a Web search on some technical subject and found
papers that appear to address my technical interest - only to find that the
paper was published by some company that charges for access to the paper.
Since I'm not sure if the specific paper contains information that is
actually meaningful to my inquiry, I normally won't pay to read it. I
believe this process of charging to read technical papers is a serious
problem for the advancement of scientific exploration and discovery. In
general the internet, and specifically the Web, has opened the door to
immense amounts of new information. However, the (IMHO) money-grubbing
efforts of scientific Web publishing companies to charge for access to what
would otherwise be public documents is closing the door to the wide
distribution of ideas that could spark an even greater acceleration of new
technical discovery. I doubt if there is any way to stem the activities of
these "free enterprise" publish-for-money endeavors other than encouraging
researchers who write technical papers to also make their documents
available in the public domain. 
 
From: ProjectParadigm-ICT-Program [mailto:metadataportals@yahoo.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2013 9:38 PM
To: David Booth
Cc: Gannon Dick; leon@dcs.shef.ac.uk; Phillip Lord; public-lod@w3.org;
semantic-web
Subject: Re: predatory journals and conferences article in NY Times
 
The way science and research in general is financed has a great influence on
academic and research publications.

For scientists and researchers with tenure, those at work in independent
research institutes and students and other staff often times demands are
placed on publications in terms of "where and what" to contribute both to
personal and institutional prestige and reputation.

The European Union in its Horizon 2020 research funding program is espousing
open science, which somehow changes the playing field for publishing.

There is a similarity albeit superficial with intellectual property issues
with audiovisual content (movies, videos and audio CDs).

Maybe someone should start an iJournals store with articles costing a fixed
amount and come up with a formula to pay each contributing journal for
content.

A radical idea, but definitely worth investigating, and an idea which I
suspect both open access and traditional peer-reviewed academic journals
would embrace.
 
 
Milton Ponson
GSM: +297 747 8280
PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
Project Paradigm: A structured approach to bringing the tools for
sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide by creating ICT tools
for NGOs worldwide and: providing online access to web sites and
repositories of data and information for sustainable development