Last week I wrote about the dangers of ‘pay to publish ‘open access’ models , and as I got one more paper to review , written in an unintelligible English from one of those predatory journals, I diligently agreed and then immediately regretted as soon as I got to read just how bad it was… Then I reviewed it and really tried to go beyond the English and get to the science, well the math, and even struggling to understand the equations because nowhere in the paper they described the terms or put unit of measure for them. So I rejected this. Any serious scientist would have. I even tried to be nice and understanding and spent some time writing a nice rejection … and then I saw the letter from the other reviewer . ‘Accept in its present form’.
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Today I want to touch on a topic that I has been nagging me for a while : open access science .
There are indeed benefits to it , at least theoretically. Imagine everyone being able to access all of the scientific articles for free! Perhaps still not so useful for the general public , because let’s face it , scientific articles are sometimes even illegible if you are coming from a slightly different discipline , let alone if the last time you were close to science was high school… But still, I hear you say: it could be very useful for other scientists, maybe some from institutions that don’t have the means to subscribe to journals (something that costs various hundreds thousands, or more, because accessing this information is far from open access…) . Let’s assume then that open access is good. But we should remember that appearances can be deceitful, and that oftentimes good things come at cost… At what cost? People. When we talk about sustainability, we often think about the health of the planet, rarely that of people. 'People' are usually implicated on the left side of the equation, the cause, but are rarely on the right, the outcome. Which is weird, cause a sustainable use of resources would also inevitably lead to people wellbeing.
Should we shift the narrative? Yes. But could we go even beyond? Yes. One week in 2022 has passed already.
Have you made any ‘resolution’ yet ? And if you did: are you already struggling to keep going? Maybe to help you, you have decided to join a challenge for the month. So many to choose from.. Veganuary, Red January, Dry January.. I became curious on the statistics, to try and understand whether these ‘one month’ challenges could be enough to make some shifts in lifestyle, and, particularly for the Veganuary, what could this mean for the health of the planet.. Today I just want to wish the best for the year ahead to all of my readers
While I know that 00:00 on the 1st of January is not magic , I do like to start the year with some hope and positivity, knowing that of course some efforts must be put towards the goals that one wants to achieve |
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