Open Research Glossary

           

Increasingly, there are more and more resources talking about Open Research or Open Science. The Right to Research Coalition is a good example. 

They talk about mainly Open Access, and say that unfortunately, not everyone has access to the scholarly literature, despite advances in communications technology.  The high cost of academic journals restricts access to knowledge. Despite these high prices, authors of scholarly articles are not paid for their work. 

The profits from these publications go solely to the publishers of the journals. A vast amount of research is funded from public sources - yet taxpayers are locked out by the cost of access.

Also thay state that, at the same time, digital technologies have opened new opportunities for research. New tools facilitate faster discoveries, speed the development of new technologies, and accelerate the progress of science. Patients could have access to the latest medical research, citizens could evaluate scientific information on environmental impacts, and developing countries could apply the most recent scholarship to public health and development efforts. But access barriers leave these opportunities under-explored. 

Open Access has achieved remarkable success to date: more than 4,000 open-access journals are published today; millions of articles are made available via open-access repositories; and dozens of policies from universities and research funders support Open Access; but still more needs to be done. 

So, the undersigned of this coalition of student organizations endorse Open Access as the preferred model for scholarly communication, and they say that its because:

(a)    Open Access improves the educational experience. All students, regardless of their institution’s ability to afford subscriptions, should have access to the full scholarly record, whether for assigned reading, research for a term paper, or literature review for a dissertation.

(b)    Open Access democratizes access to research.  Students from around the world should have full access to the scholarly literature, along with patients looking for medical information and citizens seeking to learn about the environment or other scientific topics.

(c)    Open Access advances research.  Open Access helps researchers be more productive by facilitating access to the latest studies. Open Access also enables new techniques for computer-assisted research, paving the way for scientific advancements.

(d)    Open Access improves the visibility and impact of scholarship. Today's student is tomorrow’s scholar. Recent studies suggest that Open Access articles are downloaded and cited more frequently than articles that are accessible only through subscription. Open Access fulfills researchers’ professional responsibility to maximize the impact of their research.

So they publish a really interesting Open research glossary that you can access here, hope enjoy it!