Publish And Be Free

from the one-step-closer dept

One topic that has come up for debate around here a few times, is the issue of whether published academic research should be free online. Currently, most such research ends up in very expensive journals, whose business model is to sell copies to university libraries. However, people point out that providing that information for free online would help jumpstart additional research building upon what others have learned. Some even point out that research should clearly be freely available when any part of it is funded with public money (as quite a bit of academic research is). Over in the UK, they've moved a step closer to this goal of freely publishing research online. To keep the publishers going, there will still be a "submission fee" for the writer to cover the costs of editing and peer reviewing the research. However, the end results will be available to everyone for free online.

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