Freedom of the scientific press

In the world of science, academic journals have ruled the roost for decades. Citation indices and the number of publications serve as key indicators of the significance of a work, and its appearance on the cover of a prestigious publication is no less important for a scientist than for an artist - a photograph on the front pages of a glossy press.

Only with the development of the Internet the situation gradually began to change. More and more publications appear freely available on special online resources before they appear on the pages of Science or Nature - primarily on the famous Arxiv.Org . However, for now, such reports are not considered completely official, and scientists prefer to wait for their appearance in one of the well-known peer-reviewed journals.

In fact, a report in a reputable publication is necessarily vetted, researched and evaluated by leading industry experts. However, try reading it - you will need to pay for access, and pay a lot. Archives of academic publications, including electronic ones, are closed; universities and laboratories pay quite a lot of money for access to them. According to many experts, in such a situation the exchange of ideas and data becomes difficult, and at the same time scientific research slows down.

Large associations of researchers have repeatedly tried to somehow come to an agreement with publishers and achieve open access to their own results. Particularly active in this area is SCOAP3, an association of scientists working in the field of particle physics. The other day they reported that after six years of grueling negotiations, an agreement had finally been reached. Soon, articles on this topic (about seven thousand were published last year alone) will be made available free of charge. That is, for nothing.

Achieving this turned out to be quite difficult. The association proposed a special algorithm that takes into account the prestige of the journal, its distribution formats and other factors, on the basis of which a certain reward is awarded for each publication - on average, 1200 euros (SCOAP3 allocates a special budget of about 10 million euros per year for these purposes) - but in the future no fee will be charged for viewing.

Not everyone agreed to such prices: for example, the well-known Physical Review Letters is now asking authors $2,700 for providing individual free access to their articles. Negotiations with these conservatives will continue, but 12 major publications, on whose pages about 90% of publications in the field of elementary particle physics appear, have already joined the agreement.

SCOAP3 receives the necessary funding not only from charitable and educational organizations, but also from thousands of scientific libraries around the world. In other words, instead of paying for subscriptions, libraries use part of the funds to support free access to publications - both for themselves and for others. Of course, the scheme is somewhat more complex and its final implementation should begin to work only in 2014. However, as a result, individual groups of researchers will be able to use the results of their colleagues for free immediately after publication. And this is just the beginning.

According to the SCOAP3 association, six out of 12 magazines are planning fundamental changes in their business models and a transition from classic paid distribution to other forms of profit. Perhaps in this area too, the scientific environment will become a flagship and a model for others - above all, for the mass of paper journals that are experiencing serious difficulties due to the pressure of online journalism and cannot find new forms of work in a rapidly changing world.