RE: Open Access, journalism, & promoting the academy

[Jan Velterop <velterop@biomedcentral.com>]

Heather is right. Our experience at BioMed Central is that journalists are
very keen to see the original article when they pick up on any of our
science press releases. Can I also bring the item below (from Peter
Suber's Open Access News blog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html) to your attention?

Jan Velterop

____

OA helping bring science to the public  

An invisible hand? The Economist, August 19, 2004. An unsigned news story
on the Allais effect in physics, which seems to show a pendulum pick up
speed during a solar eclipse
(http://www.economist.co.uk/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3104321).
Excerpt: "If the effect is real, it could indicate a hitherto unperceived
flaw in General Relativity --the current explanation of how gravity works.
That would be a bombshell....So attempts to duplicate Dr Allais's
observation are important. However, they have had mixed success, leading
sceptics to question whether there was anything to be explained. Now Chris
Duif, a researcher at the Delft University of Technology, in the
Netherlands, has reviewed the evidence. According to a paper he has just
posted on arXiv.org, an online publication archive, the effect is real,
unexplained, and could be linked to another anomaly involving a pair of
American spacecraft." (PS: This is a nice case of a mainstream newspaper
reporting an interesting scientific puzzle for lay readers. Would The
Economist have noticed the story if the Chris Duif paper had not been OA
in arXiv? Maybe yes, maybe no. Would it have linked to the paper for
readers who wanted to follow up? No.)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> heatherm@eln.bc.ca
> Sent: 24 August 2004 01:24
> Subject: Open Access, journalism, & promoting the academy
> 
> Recently, there has been a lot of interest in Open Access, not only from
> within the academy, but to some extent, among journalists as well.  
> With significant legislation under consideration, is it possible that
> this attention will continue for a while and perhaps expand?
> 
> If so, will there be golden opportunities for those responsible for
> promoting our universities to highlight the value of the research they
> do?
> 
> Aside from the many other excellent reasons for switching to Open
> Access, there is one that may particularly appeal to journalists.  
> Investigative journalists, after all, are often involved in translating
> those research breakthroughs into information that can be understood by
> all of us. An openly accessibly scholarly literature will make this task
> easier regardless of the topic. Journalists are particularly likely to
> want to seek out important research at their local institution, however,
> as this may afford them opportunities for an in-person interview with
> the specialist, without paying for travel expenses.
> 
> Obviously, seizing this opportunity in the short-term will be easiest
> for universities which already have substantial OA activities, whether
> these are an institutional commitment to OA, substantial instiutional
> repositories, hosting of disciplinary repositories, alternative
> publication initiatives, and so forth. Any university, regardless of OA
> activities, could of course talk about the value of the research they
> do, because research does matter!
> 
> Heather Morrison
> BC Electronic Library Network
> heatherm@eln.bc.ca