Open Acess Scientific Journals

It is very exciting to see the development of open access online taxonomy and related scientific journals. A great barrier to the dissemination of scientific information both amongst scientists and the general public is the old paradigm of very expensive journal subscriptions. One very new journal showing great promise is ZooKeys and I have placed it in an rss feed on this site. An additional rss feed on this site is for First Monday which was one of the very first open source peer reviewed journals avilable online.

Another great open access journal is PLoS One which should not be missed. You can even add comments and engage in discussions on papers which evolves the whole publishing concept even further.

Of course some traditional Zootaxa articles are available online for free which makes it a hybrid of sorts however few writers pay for the right to have their article appear in that journal free of charge to readers. I hope that scientists will adopt the new completely open access format with enthusiasm as I strongly believe it will increase our rate of scientific development by making access to data quicker and easier. For a detailed examination of the hybrid journal format and the limitations of this approach by an academic check out Peter Suber's newsletter and related blog.

I have a deep interest in Arachnology and am a keen keeper of approximately 30 tarantulas. My interest extends to all aspects of tarantula biology, ecology, habitat, breeding habits, distribution, and especially taxonomy with a particular interest in Australian species. I know from experience how hard it is to gain access to peer reviewed work as an outsider who does not have easy access to paid subscriptions through a university science department. Access for a private researcher is too expensive to be of use even for a well off individual unless he or she is only interested in a limited number of articles. There are workarounds such as requesting papers direct from authors however this is a very time consuming process. By way of note I have never had a scientist knock back a request from me for a paper and for that I am grateful. I am keeping my fingers crossed that open access journals will simply become the defacto model and will have an effect on peer reviewed paper publishing much like the net and mp3's have had for the music industry where the old paradigm users are simply bypassed to the point of irrelevancy. See links on Peter’s article referred to above and read his blog for ways to encourage the uptake of the open access paradigm especially if you are writing and publishing peer reviewed work.