This week’s topic is quite interesting for me and actually it is a very important problem for us because doing research for independent learning is what professors are able to teach us. And from Tiffany’s post, I found how important education is. The world even cannot make progress without education. Therefore, open access is absolute a good activity for readers. However, it is unfair for authors in the opposite. If open assess, authors cannot get journals’ subscriptions even have to cover the cost by themselves.
As Tiffany said open access was really an ethical issue and I think there is not definitely right or wrong, all we can do is to find the solution to balance them. At first, I thought only government willing to pay the money for authors, both readers and authors can get happy ending. Afterwards, I found it is impractically. As Nicole, who commented my blog said many journals’ subscriptions are really expensive and it is hard for government to pay for all of the open access. It seems drop an endless loop again. However, when I read Davina’s post, she gave a very good suggestion which is opening access should be selective and given broadly e.g. Universities, corporations or academics who require for their research. It is a good suggestion but I would like to slightly modify it because I think only open access in those public organizations is not enough. We cannot ensure people who are not part of these organizations do not need to access to do the research. Therefore, I think government should share part of responsibility and people who need to use can reduce the burdens. What is more, public organizations libraries could associate with government pay money to authors and let reading of journal becomes a freely service and provides to people at the named point of positions e.g. libraries.
Words count: 312
Comment link:
https://davinaheer.wordpress.com/2016/12/08/topic-5-open-access-can-save-lives/#comment-29
https://davinaheer.wordpress.com/2016/12/08/topic-5-open-access-can-save-lives/#comment-30
(I commented Tiffany’s post at the wrong site. Both two comments were posted at Davina’s blog.)
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