Challenges for Open Publishing Models
I've written previously of the challenges that the scientific community has had in shifting to an open publishing approach for scientific research.
Companies such as Public Library of Science, Nature and others have been exploring these models, but take up has been slow.
My assumption has always been that the biggest obstacle to these models have been the efforts by the traditional publishers to thwart them. And while those efforts have certainly been extensive, it seems that part of the problem is that the tenure and promotion system used by universities may discourage faculty from using the newer approaches.
That's the finding of a new study conducted by Greenhouse Associates on behalf of the University of California Office of Scholarly Communication. The study, of University faculty, determined that while faculty expressed a desire for change to the system, they continued to use the traditional journals for publishing their research.
A summary of the study can be found at Alacra's new Research Recap site. The full study is available on the OSC website.
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