In April 2008, the National Institutes of Health’s Public Access Policy took effect and requests that ” all articles arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication”. One year’s later, a bill, Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 was introduced, requiring other Federal agencies to develop public access policies relating to researches they funded as well. And recently, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) held an open discussion on its blog to collect comments from the public.
The US government spends tens of billions of dollars in funding basic and applied researches each year. For example, the National Science Foundation (NSF) alone funded 5183.10 million in research and related activities. Putting the public to the publicly-funded researches will not just enable taxpayers to see the fruits coming from their tax, but definitely be much beneficial to scholars and entrepreneurs in promoting innovations in various areas as well, especially in the cross-disciplined researches. But when trying to carry out the open access policy, we also need to protect the leading journals which rely on the subscription fees in the research areas, since they provide reviews of high quality to researchers, which greatly promotes the development in each research area. Maybe, certain awards could be introduced in the future, in order to encourage and reward the journals’ contributions.
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“we also need to protect the leading journals which rely on the subscription fees in the research areas, since they provide reviews of high quality to researchers, which greatly promotes the development in each research area.”
Very good point, peer review journals can be expensive. What other funding models besides prizes are available?
I think donations could also help to support journals. Besides, there will be several months before papers become free. Journals could still make some profits for this time span.