If MIT wasn’t already a totally awesome school (which it is), then it definitely is now. Faculty at MIT have now voted that any publications that they receive should and will be open access.

From Ars Technica:

If there were any doubt that open access publishing was setting off a bit of a power struggle, a decision made last week by the MIT faculty should put it to rest. Although most commercial academic publishers require that the authors of the works they publish sign all copyrights over to the journal, Congress recently mandated that all researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health retain the right to freely distribute their works one year after publication (several foundations have similar requirements). Since then, some publishers started fighting the trend, and a few members of Congress are reconsidering the mandate. Now, in a move that will undoubtedly redraw the battle lines, the faculty of MIT have unanimously voted to make any publications they produce open access.

It is no secret that I am a huge supporter of open source software. Furthermore, I am also a huge supporter of open access publications.

I have argued in the past, that I believe that there is no reason why research publications, which are the key to scientific progress, should be withheld from anyone (the “anyone” being the people that cannot afford to purchase memberships to various journals etc.). One argument against the Open Access policy is that the cost for publishers to maintain a website, host articles, paper costs, etc., would somehow need to be covered.

I think to a certain extent, this is true. Clearly, it will cost publishers money to do all of the things mentioned above. However, with all of the money the government spends on research, it at least seems plausible that they could give a grant to an organization that could host PDF versions of the papers, and offer them for free. Maybe we could even create some new jobs in this process. Maybe publishers could be given a certain amount of government funding for the more “open” that they are. Publishers could still charge whatever they want for physical copies of the paper, and even for the PDF’s if they so choose, but everyone would have access to this free site. (Note: I realize that a potential counter argument is that there could still be people out there that would not have access to the free PDF’s [people that cannot afford computers]. However, I think in this day and age, this argument becomes weaker and weaker now that more libraries offer free internet access. Further more, this counter argument seems like it would also go against proprietary publications.)

I think the biggest problem with my above argument is that it requires only the U.S. government to do something. Everyone should be accountable for providing free access to publications, not just the U.S. All nations should work together to provide open access for the sciences.

jonnale Open Source MIT, Open Access, research