week 2blog reflection
Reflection on ‘How open science helps researchers succeed’
This article discusses the benefits of using ‘open’ publishing for science journals. ‘Open’ here mainly referring to the availability of the articles in question. Some articles or papers can be read only after paying a subscription or one-time fee to a publisher, which can limit the amount of people that have access. However, in another sense, ‘open’ here might also refer to the openness of data; as the authors encourage the sharing not just of results, but the availability of data used to achieve said results. This article discusses multiple benefits of using open styles of publishing, probably the most grabbing being that open published journals receive more citations. In a field where citation counts seem tantamount to celebrity status, this is a big draw for upcoming professionals who want their name to be noticed. The paper also provides quotes from professionals and data which demonstrate that the journal in which articles are published does not have as much of an impact on paper quality as many people seem to believe. One of the biggest benefits to being published in a ‘closed’ source of data is that one hopes to seem more legitimate; so by disputing this as speculation, open-source becomes more attractive, as this might be perceived as its biggest possible ‘drawback’. The number of openly published papers is increasing, and will probably continue to increase. Although some journals like ‘Nature’ or ‘Cell’, or other famous publications will likely persist for quite a while, one has to wonder the shape in which they will be, even twenty years from now; in order to survive, they may need to integrate some form of open publishing, when this happens, if this happens, perhaps it will be seen as the official dawn of the age of ‘openness’.