What is it about?
Open access to academic research is important because it ensures that the general public and other groups who do not have expensive journal subscriptions can remain informed on important topics. One way to achieve this open access is for authors to upload early versions of their articles to the web (called "self-archiving"). These versions offer an alternative method of access for those without subscriptions to the journals. In this paper, I offer a few suggestions about how to self-archive.
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Why is it important?
Self-archiving has the potential to open up research (often funded by taxpayers) to a far wider audience, and this is an important step towards making research more accessible to the general public.
Perspectives
As well as publishing in ecology and evolutionary biology, I am also interested in how that publishing industry works. There is a clear need to disseminate information as widely as possible in order to accelerate the rate of testing of new theories and discovery of new information. However, some publishing models (and some publishing companies) hide scientific research away so that most people do not have access to that work. Self-archiving is a way for researchers to make available certain forms of their research without breaking copyright (which is almost always handed over to the publishers).
Dr Christopher Hassall
University of Leeds
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: "Going green": self-archiving as a means for dissemination of research output in ecology and evolution, Ideas in Ecology and Evolution, January 2012, Ideas in Ecology and Evolution,
DOI: 10.4033/iee.2012.5b.18.f.
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