So a few fellow students interested and I attended an National Union of Journalists debate on Open Access hosted by the Wellcome Trust.The discussion was on the importance of editorial quality in Open Access publishing.
There was a great line up of speakers:
Philip Campbell - Editor-in-Chief, Nature
Matt Cockerill - BioMed Central and Springer STM Professor
Stephen Curry - Imperial College and open access blogger
Peter Lee - Publishing Director, Cell Press
Mark Patterson - Managing Executive Editor of open access journal eLife
Pete Wrobel - NUJ, Magazines and Books
It was a really interesting discussion that raised a lot of questions about how people view Open Access. The main issue that came up was that some people feel that publishers no longer add that much value to articles but others argue that, especially with very technical STM articles, the editors play a vital role in making the content readable for the general reader.
So access isn't just a question of getting hold of the articles but being able to understand them as well and this is where editorial still have an important role.
A lot else was said and some people were voicing very passionate opinions because they felt this was their first chance to have their say (non-academic users of the content mainly). But there isn't space here to go into all the details but don't worry, the whole thing was filmed and posted on YouTube.
The one thing you will miss out by only seeing the video is the boozing and schmoozing at the end. We chatted with some big wigs from the NUJ and got some contact details so the evening was definitely a success, even if we may need to develop our mingling techniques to be a bit less blunt.
There was a great line up of speakers:
Philip Campbell - Editor-in-Chief, Nature
Matt Cockerill - BioMed Central and Springer STM Professor
Stephen Curry - Imperial College and open access blogger
Peter Lee - Publishing Director, Cell Press
Mark Patterson - Managing Executive Editor of open access journal eLife
Pete Wrobel - NUJ, Magazines and Books
It was a really interesting discussion that raised a lot of questions about how people view Open Access. The main issue that came up was that some people feel that publishers no longer add that much value to articles but others argue that, especially with very technical STM articles, the editors play a vital role in making the content readable for the general reader.
So access isn't just a question of getting hold of the articles but being able to understand them as well and this is where editorial still have an important role.
A lot else was said and some people were voicing very passionate opinions because they felt this was their first chance to have their say (non-academic users of the content mainly). But there isn't space here to go into all the details but don't worry, the whole thing was filmed and posted on YouTube.
The one thing you will miss out by only seeing the video is the boozing and schmoozing at the end. We chatted with some big wigs from the NUJ and got some contact details so the evening was definitely a success, even if we may need to develop our mingling techniques to be a bit less blunt.
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