{"id":19455,"date":"2013-12-18T11:59:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T10:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naider.com\/naiderlab\/por-un-conocimiento-abierto\/"},"modified":"2023-04-24T13:40:33","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T11:40:33","slug":"for-an-open-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"naiderlab","link":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/naiderlab\/knowledge\/expert-analysis\/for-an-open-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"For an open knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3007623878_76000fc4e2_n\"<\/a>The brand new winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Randy Scheckman<\/a> has declared his boycott of the three most prestigious scientific journals: Nature<\/a>, Cell<\/a> and Science<\/a>. Scheckman has stated that his laboratory will no longer submit its articles to these journals (see “>here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

His arguments against the three major journals enter fully into the current debate on the valuation of science and are widely shared by a large part of the academy: Fashion or media coverage is excessively valued for the publication of articles, the Journals maintain an artificial limitation of publication space as a way to further qualify their own product and the impact factor is an indicator that has important contraindications to objectively measure the quality of research.<\/p>\n

It is also true, however, that many researchers do not agree with this criticism and that many, even sharing the arguments, consider the appraisal procedure a lesser evil since they see no better method to objectively assess the merit of the research carried out. . Let’s not forget that the publications and journals in which it is published are the main criteria for hiring researchers, chairs, merits, awards, etc.<\/p>\n

For someone outside the academy like me, it is difficult to give an opinion, but the system of publication and evaluation of scientific quality is, at least, extremely striking. Quite simply, because it is a system that arbitrarily makes research itself more expensive, since it forces the Universities, research centers and researchers to pay a monopolistic and exaggerated price for accessing the journals in which their own research is published.<\/p>\n

With an increasingly fast and accessible Internet, it does not seem logical that the scientific publishing processes and standards of the last century continue to be maintained without taking into account that the global distribution of the results is carried out “on line” and with a marginal price that tends to steel. Within the framework of the new information society, the only limitations to scientific publication should be exclusively linked to the talent of the researchers and the evaluation of their quality, and not to an unreal scarcity artificially created by the publishing groups that end up enslaving the researcher. that it has no choice but to jump through the hoop, assuming the transaction costs in terms of time and bureaucracy and giving in to the interests set by the big publishers (Elsevier, Springer, etc.). In fact, Scheckman himself published in the magazines that he now criticizes, the articles that have earned him the Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n

Would it not be more profitable and reasonable for the universities and research centers or consortia of this type of institution to take charge of publishing their research, regulating the requirements and establishing the criteria and also doing so based on shared and open access licenses? that would allow a more flexible, rapid and less expensive dissemination of knowledge?<\/p>\n

I sincerely believe that things and individual initiatives like Scheckman’s or others like “The Cost of Knowledge<\/a>” by a group of academics or Harvard University<\/a> who are clamoring to promote open access to knowledge clearly show the way. Logically, the advances will be very small as long as publishing in prestigious journals has the same incidence that it has on the CV of the researchers.<\/p>\n

Photo<\/a> by Paul Joseph<\/a> on Flickr under Creative Commons License<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The brand new winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Randy Scheckman has declared his boycott of the three most prestigious scientific journals: Nature, Cell and Science. Scheckman has stated that his laboratory will no longer submit its articles to these journals (see<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7916,"template":"","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":""},"hashtag-lab":[],"naiderlab_tag":[156],"naiderlab_category":[50],"ppma_author":[198],"class_list":["post-19455","naiderlab","type-naiderlab","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","naiderlab_tag-rd-and-innovation-policies","naiderlab_category-expert-analysis"],"taxonomy_info":{"naiderlab_tag":[{"value":156,"label":"R&D and innovation policies"}],"naiderlab_category":[{"value":50,"label":"Expert Analysis"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/naider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/3007623878_76000fc4e2_n.jpg",250,166,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Naider","author_link":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/author\/sirope-naid3r\/"},"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naiderlab\/19455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naiderlab"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/naiderlab"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"hashtag-lab","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag-lab?post=19455"},{"taxonomy":"naiderlab_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naiderlab_tag?post=19455"},{"taxonomy":"naiderlab_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naiderlab_category?post=19455"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naider.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=19455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}