Zzzoot

At the recent " 1st European Conference on Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine & Medicine - Open Access and Researchers, 21-22 April, 2006, Lund Sweden ", Tim Brody, Chawki Hajjem and Stevan Harnad presented a slide stack which contains a data tidal wave of evidence supporting Open Access. Multiple graphs from a broad range of sources, disciplines, sectors, timelines etc dealing with, and mostly convincingly slaying, many of the bugbears associated with Open Access. Of specific interest to the research community in my neck of the woods (Canada) are the statements on last three slides (#80-82): Canada is losing about $640 million dollars worth of potential return on its public investment in research every year. The Canadian Research Councils spend about $1.5 billion dollars yearly, which generate about 50,000 research journal articles. But it is not the number of articles published that reflects the return on Canada’s research investment: A piece of research, if it is w...