Cambridge, MA (November 18, 2024) - Today the MIT Press is releasing a workshop report on what additional information is needed to ensure that open access publication benefits research, entitled "Access to Science & Scholarship 2024: Building an Evidence Base to Support the Future of Open Research Policy." The report is the outcome of a workshop funded by the National Science Foundation and held at the D.C. headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on September 20, 2024.
The implementation of open access has resulted in consolidation of the publishing industry, an explosion in unreviewed articles, and new costs that may be hard for researchers and universities to bear-especially those in less affluent countries. The workshop was designed to examine how open access may affect research and researchers in the future, how to measure that, and what to do about it going forward.
The workshop brought together leading experts to discuss critical issues in open scientific and scholarly publishing. These issues include:
- The impact of open access policies on the research ecosystem
- The enduring role of peer review in ensuring research quality
- The challenges and opportunities of data sharing and curation
- The evolving landscape of scholarly communications infrastructure
The report identifies key research questions in order to advance open science and scholarship. These include:
- How can we better model and anticipate the consequences of government policies on public access to science and scholarship?
- How can research funders support experimentation with new and more equitable business models for scientific publishing?
- If the dissemination of scholarship is decoupled from peer review and evaluation, who is best suited to perform that evaluation, and how should that process be managed and funded?
"This workshop report is a crucial step in building a data-driven roadmap for the future of open science publishing," said Dr. Phillip Sharp, Institute Professor and Professor of Biology Emeritus at MIT and faculty lead of the working group behind the workshop and the report. "By identifying key research questions around infrastructure, training, technology, and business models, we can ensure that open science practices are not only accessible but also sustainable and contribute to the highest quality research."
The full report is available for download here .
About the MIT Press: The MIT Press is a leading academic publisher committed to advancing knowledge and innovation. It publishes significant books and journals across a wide range of disciplines, including science, technology, humanities, and social sciences.
