[{"id":196,"title":"Favoring open access when evaluating academic merits","sha":"bc7afeede25c80cf5defe6096e46f945","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"A survey conducted in 2010 found that 89 percent of the 38 000 active researchers that answered the survey are convinced that open access is beneficial for their research field, directly improving the way the scientific community work. Still only 8—10 percent of articles are published yearly in open access journals (Dallmeier‐Tiessen et al., 2011 http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1101/1101.5260.pdf). \r\n\r\nOne of the main advantages of the various open access journals operating on the Internet is that they make original scientific research available also to laymen, the taxpayers who finance scientific research in the first place. There is, however, a need for carrots to induce scholars to publish in open access journals. I would toss the ball to the Ivy League and other prestigious universities. They could take the first step by favoring open access journals when evaluating academic merits. I am confident that the rest of the academic world would follow, it usually does. The advantage of this approach is that it would lift up researchers with more interest in the societal impact of their research, as it would favor researchers valuing accessibility of their research over the prestige of the outlet of their research.\r\n","created_at":"2015-08-03T12:07:21.722Z","updated_at":"2016-02-13T12:26:29.284Z","zenodo_id":42396,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22710","subject":null,"tags":["open-access"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":false,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":197,"title":"2 solutions to escalating prices of scientific journals","sha":"d355b3d2408363e353e1ce5448da6abd","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"A major financial problem for research libraries is the escalated subscription prices of scientific journals. A year's subscription for a journal of neurology might be 20 000 dollars and the average price for a chemistry journal is 3500 dollars (Darnton, 2009 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281). I bring forth 2 solutions to these skyrocketing prices:\r\n\r\n1)\tA higher status given for open-access journals in the recruiting and promoting process would in the long run create downward pressure for the escalated subscription prices. \r\n\r\n2)\tA categorical cancellation by libraries of the most expensive journal in each subfield. This would punish the greediest publisher, and create a downward spiral in the pricing where each publisher would try to price its journals below the price of their competitors. In case of a draw, both journals should be cancelled in order to hinder pricing agreements between publishers. \r\n\r\nTo avoid an cancellation of high-quality journals in order to support lower quality journals, or cancelling much-used journals in order to support little-used journals. We could also consider dividing the price of the journal with its impact factor, taking into account different alternative impact factor indexes, and then cancel the one with the highest price/quality–index. Alternatively, we could calculate a price/use-index. \r\n","created_at":"2015-08-03T12:23:57.984Z","updated_at":"2015-09-04T06:00:29.322Z","zenodo_id":42596,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22801","subject":null,"tags":["open-access","subscription prices","scientific journals"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null}]