Richard Poynder is an independent journalist and blogger specialising in information technology,
scholarly communication, professional
online database services,
open science,
e-Science, and
intellectual property. Richard takes a particular interest in the
Open Access movement, whose development he has been following for more than a decade. More information is available here.
Three interviews with Richard Poynder — here, here
and here
Interview Series: The State of Open Access
Recent Articles and Interviews
Paywall: The Business of Scholarship — a review
(Open & Shut?, Saturday, September 11, 2018)
My review of Paywall: The Business of Scholarship has been published in Nature. Below are the first two paragraphs. The full review can be read here.
Billed as a documentary, Paywall would be more accurately described as an advocacy film. Its intention seems to be to persuade viewers that the paywalls that restrict access to journal content online are an unnecessary hangover from the print era, and now serve only to perpetuate the excessive profits that legacy publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley and Springer Nature make from the public purse. Read more »
The OA Interviews: Virginia Steel, Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian at UCLA
(Open & Shut?, 2. Sunday, July 29, 2018)
Those wishing to go directly to the Q&A with Virginia Steel can access the pdf here and then click on the link at the top of the document.
Who would have thought in 2002 that the sixteen “open” enthusiasts who that year launched the Budapest Open Access Initiative were about to unleash on the world a chain of events that some believe will eventually upend the 350-year old scholarly publishing system, and has in the meantime thrown researchers, librarians, universities, funders, governments and scholarly publishers into what at times looks like a dance of death. Read more »
Falling prey to a predatory OA publisher: Individual failure or community problem?
(Open & Shut?, Friday, July 20, 2018)
Depending on whom you speak to, so-called predatory publishing is a serious threat to the scientific record, a minor irritant, or an elitist misunderstanding.
Thus, while some argue that predatory publishers represent “the dark dangerous force” of scholarly publishing, others insist that, by contrast, they have introduced valuable low-cost journals that have levelled the playing field for less privileged members of the research community. As such, the latter say, the journals they publish would be better described as “new wave journals” or examples of “innovation in publishing”, not predatory journals. Read more »
OA Big Deals: VSNU embraces greater transparency
(Open & Shut?, Monday, July 09, 2018)
Over three months ago (in March) the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) published a very brief news item announcing that it had reached agreement with Springer Nature on a new OA Big Deal.
Curious as to the details of the agreement, I invited VSNU to answer some questions, both about the Springer Nature deal and VSNU’s failure to reach agreement with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), concerning which another short news item had been published at the same time. Read more »
The OA Interviews: Taylor & Francis' Deborah Kahn discusses Dove Medical Press
(Open & Shut?, Tuesday, June 12, 2018)
The open-access publisher Dove Medical Press has a controversial past and I have written about the company on a number of occasions.
When Dove was acquired by Taylor & Francis last September it was assumed (by me at least) that controversy had become a thing of the past for the publisher. Read more »
Six questions about openness in science
(Open & Shut?, Monday, May 14, 2018)
Recently I was contacted by a student from a Russian university who is writing a dissertation on the influence of open access on modern scientific communication. She sent me six questions... Read more »
North, South, and Open Access: Jeff MacKie-Mason responds from California
(Open & Shut?, Friday, May 04, 2018)
This is the last part of an experiment in a matched interview process. It consists of Q&As with two OA advocates, one from the global North and one from the global South, along with their responses to each other’s Q&A.
The first Q&A was undertaken with Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, UC Berkeley’s University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer, and can be read here. Read more »
North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa
(Open & Shut?, Tuesday, April 24, 2018)
At the end of last year I was contacted by Jamila Jaber, Library Director at the Islamic University of Lebanon (IUL), who asked me if I would consider doing an interview "with two researchers, one from a 'developed country' and one from a ‘developing country’ (from the Arab world for example)."
The aim, she explained, should be to allow for a discussion about scholarly communication and open access from two geographically different points of view. Read more »
North, South, and Open Access: Mahmoud Khalifa responds from Egypt
(Open & Shut?, Thursday, April 19, 2018)
As I have previously reported, more and more countries in the global North are coming to the conclusion that if universal open access is to be achieved any time soon they are going to have to persuade or compel legacy scholarly publishers to convert all their subscription journals to gold OA, by means of a global "flip". Read more »
North, South, and Open Access: The view from California with Jeff MacKie-Mason
(Open & Shut?, Sunday, April 08, 2018)
As anyone who has followed the story of open access will know, a multitude of issues has arisen since the 2002 Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) adopted the term in order to promote the idea of research being made freely available on the internet. It has also led to a great deal of debate and disagreement over the best way of making open access a reality.
However, we seem to be arriving at the point where consensus is growing in the global North around the idea of persuading and/or forcing legacy publishers to convert (“flip”) all their journals from a subscription model to an open access model. Read more »
The Open Access Big Deal: Back to the Future
(Open & Shut?, Wednesday, March 28, 2018)
On a superficial reading open access is intended to do no more than what it says on the can: provide an internet-based scholarly communication system in which research is made available sans paywall – in other words, a system offering improved accessibility over the traditional subscription system.
On a deeper reading, however, we learn that the OA movement was a response to the unsustainably high costs of the subscription system and that it was based on a conviction that open access would be a more cost-effective way of sharing research – in other words, a system offering improved affordability. Read more »
The Intellectual Properties of Learning: John Willinsky discusses his new book
(Open & Shut?, Sunday, March 11, 2018)
Sixteen years ago, the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) predicted the dawn of a new age of scholarly communication. Its declaration begins, "An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet." Read more »
The OA Interviews: Ashley Farley of the Gates foundation
(Open & Shut?, Wednesday, February 14, 2018)
The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation (aka the Gates foundation) is a private foundation launched in 2000 by Bill and Melinda Gates. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest private foundation in the US, and currently holds $40.3 billion in assets.
The primary aims of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty on a global basis and, to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in America. The foundation is controlled by its three trustees: Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. Read more »
Q&A with FinELib, the consortium of Finnish Universities, Research Institutes and Public Libraries
(Open & Shut?, Wednesday, January 24, 2018)
On 17th January FinELib, a consortium of Finnish Universities, Research Institutes and Public Libraries, announced that it has signed an agreement with Elsevier to provide access to around 1,850 journals on Elsevier's ScienceDirect platform.
Valued at 27 M euros, the three-year contract applies to 13 Finnish universities, 11 research institutions and 11 universities of applied sciences. Read more »
Preface to a new book called Open Divide? Critical Studies on Open Access, edited by Ulrich Herb and Joachim Schöpfel
(Open & Shut?, Tuesday, January 02, 2018)
Last year I was asked to write a preface for a new book called Open Divide? Critical Studies on Open Access, edited by Ulrich Herb and Joachim Schöpfel. The book was sent off to the publisher at the end of last year. Below is a copy of the preface I wrote.
When the internet emerged open access to publicly-funded research appeared to be a no-brainer. The network, it was argued, could dispense with scholarly journals’ print and postage costs and allow papers to be shared more quickly, more cost-effectively, and in a way that would level the playing field for those in the developing world Read more »
Realising the BOAI vision, by disengaging from voluntary servitude. Q&A with Florence Piron, a professor in the Department of Information and Communication at Laval University in Quebec
(Open & Shut?, Friday, December 22, 2017)
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the meeting that led to the launch of the open access movement.
A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since 2002, but as 2017 draws to an end what should the stakeholders of scholarly communication be doing now to fully realise the vision outlined at the Budapest meeting? Read more »
Realising the BOAI vision: Peter Suber's Advice
(Open & Shut?, Thursday, December 21, 2017)
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the meeting that led to the launch of the open access movement.
A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since 2002, but as 2017 draws to an end what should the stakeholders of scholarly communication be doing now to fully realise the vision outlined at the Budapest meeting? Read more »
Realising the BOAI vision: A view from the global South. Q&A with Dominique Babini, open access advisor at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO)
(Open & Shut?, Wednesday, December 20, 2017)
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the meeting that led to the launch of the open access movement.
A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since 2002, but as 2017 draws to an end what should the stakeholders of scholarly communication be doing now to fully realise the vision outlined at the Budapest meeting? Read more »
Realising the BOAI vision: The view from PLOS. Q&A with
PLOS CEO Alison Mudditt
(Open & Shut?, Wednesday, December 20, 2017)
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the meeting that led to the launch of the open access movement.
A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since 2002, but as 2017 draws to an end what should the stakeholders of scholarly communication be doing now to fully realise the vision outlined at the Budapest meeting? Read more »
Open Access and its Discontents: A British View from Outside the Sciences. Q&A with Richard Fisher, former Managing Director of Academic Publishing at Cambridge University Press, and currently Vice-Chair of Yale University Press, a Non-Executive Director of Edinburgh University Press, and Academic and Policy Correspondent of the Independent Publishers Guild
(Open & Shut?, Tuesday, December 19, 2017)
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the meeting that led to the launch of the open access movement.
A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since 2002, but as 2017 draws to an end what should the stakeholders of scholarly communication be doing now to fully realise the vision outlined at the Budapest meeting? Read more »
Achieving the BOAI Vision: Possible Actions for Realization. Q&A with Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Professor/ Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library and affiliate faculty in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(Open & Shut?, Tuesday, December 19, 2017)
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the meeting that led to the launch of the open access movement.
A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since 2002, but as 2017 draws to an end what should the stakeholders of scholarly communication be doing now to fully realise the vision outlined at the Budapest meeting? Read more »
Open Access: What should the priorities be today? Q&A with Danny Kingsley, Deputy Director of Scholarly Communication & Research Services, and Head of the Office of Scholarly Communication, at Cambridge University
(Open & Shut?, Tuesday, December 12, 2017)
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the meeting that led to the launch of the open access movement.
A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since 2002, but as 2017 draws to an end what should the stakeholders of scholarly communication be doing now to fully realise the vision outlined at the Budapest meeting? Read more »
The OA Interviews: Judy Ruttenberg, ARL Program Director for Strategic Initiatives/Co-Director of SHARE
(Open & Shut?, Friday, October 27, 2017)
When the open access movement began it was focused on solving two problems – the affordability problem (i.e. journal subscriptions are way too high, so research institutions cannot afford to buy access to all the research their faculty need), and the accessibility problem that this gives rise to.
Today, however, there is a growing sense that what really needs addressing is an ownership problem. Read more »
Q&A with PLOS co-founder Michael Eisen
(Open & Shut?, Thursday, October 12, 2017)
Last month I suggested on Twitter that the open access movement has delayed the revolution in scholarly communication that the internet made possible. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my tweet attracted some pushback from OA advocates, not least from Michael Eisen, co-founder of open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS).
Eisen objected strongly to my assertion and later complained that I was not willing to engage with him to defend what I had said. For my part, I did not feel it was possible to debate the issue adequately on Twitter, so we agreed to do a follow-up to our 2012 Q&A.
Read more »
Has the open access movement delayed the revolution?
(Open & Shut?, Wednesday, October 11, 2017)
Last month I posted a couple of tweets that attracted some pushback from OA advocates. In the process I was accused of being a species of "Russian troll bot", of having an unspecified "other agenda", and then told that unless I was willing to engage in "constructive discussion" I should pipe down.
Amongst those to object to my tweets was PLOS co-founder, and feisty OA advocate, Michael Eisen Read more »
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