{"id":19435,"date":"2014-05-11T18:27:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-11T18:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rknowlesuosm.wordpress.com\/?p=96"},"modified":"2014-05-11T18:27:44","modified_gmt":"2014-05-11T18:27:44","slug":"reflecting-on-the-open-access-debate-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/2014\/topic-5-2014\/2014\/05\/reflecting-on-the-open-access-debate-27\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on the Open Access debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Topic 5 provided me with the opportunity to further explore the debate around open access information, further than my own personal experiences alone, and look at the advantages and disadvantages from the content producer\u2019s point of view \u2013 rather than just the view of my own frustrations when trying to access a journal which is blocked by a paywall!<\/p>\n

Many of the posts this week, like my own, centred on academic journals. I did find it particular interesting to read Alysia\u2019s blog<\/a>, which instead focussed on Newspapers, which is something I did not consider in the open access debate. I also enjoyed considering Yee-Ping\u2019s<\/a> economist\u2019s perspective on open access, and how the internet can be seen as a marketplace to buy and sell goods.<\/p>\n

I believe that open access should be a widely adopted model, especially where the content published has been funded. As mentioned previously, Alysia\u2019s blog brought up the issue of newspapers, and this was reiterated with a comment on my blog from Evie. It is not something I had had the chance to consider during my blog post, and having considered it I agree with Evie that \u2018businesses who would usually charge for a service shouldn\u2019t feel pressured to now supply for it free simply because it\u2019s become digitalised\u2019 \u2013 we would pay for a paper newspaper \u2013 why shouldn\u2019t we pay for the online version? Therefore, my arguments on increasing the availability of open access now specifically apply to academic research journals.<\/p>\n

There was a very clear conclusion this week that making content freely available for all would be extremely beneficial for both institutions and individuals. Considering the pros and cons in terms of the content producer\u2019s point of view, I think the debate still remains unresolved. I think it is important to highlight some of the figures I presented this week, such as the fact that, according to the\u00a0Study of Open Access Publishing (2011), when researchers publish in fee-based open access journals, most of the time the fees are paid by funders (59%) or by universities (24%). Only 12% of the time they are paid by authors. Despite this, other disadvantages remain and have been highlighted surrounding the issues of quality control, decrease in revenue and association with lower quality work. There is clearly a need for balance when content is made freely available, and controls need to be put in place to maintain high quality work, which can be made freely available to all. At this current moment in time, I would argue that it is not possible to satisfy both parties.<\/p>\n

I still maintain my original viewpoint that, in terms of academic journals, open access should continue to grow, and I would urge anyone who hasn\u2019t seen my tweets or comments about the open access button to download it onto their browser. It\u2019s a tool which is being used to map the global effects of paywalls \u2013 and hopes to help enable access to more open access content! It can be downloaded at https:\/\/www.openaccessbutton.org\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Topic 5 provided me with the opportunity to further explore the debate around open access information, further than my own personal experiences alone, and look at the advantages and disadvantages from the content producer’s point of view – rather than just the view of my own frustrations when trying to access a journal which is […]\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93785,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1032745],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-topic-5-2014","column","threecol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93785"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19436,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19435\/revisions\/19436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}