On the Embargo Watch blog, Ivan Oransky writes:
“eLife, the new open-access journal funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust, announced its media policy earlier this week. … I love this policy.
From the policy’s preamble:
First, we are encouraging authors whose work has been accepted for publication to discuss their work with colleagues as much as they wish. If writers or journalists hear about the work and wish to write about it, we encourage authors to discuss their work with the writer(s) concerned, and we suggest that authors make the accepted manuscript available at a suitable repository or their own website. eLife is therefore not applying the Ingelfinger rule, which strongly discourages interaction with the media ahead of formal publication. Second, given our policy to allow open discussion with the media and others ahead of publication, we will not issue embargoed press releases. Instead, eLife will promote articles at the point of publication.”
He ends with what he says is “another advantage of eLife’s policy:
“Bloggers who aren’t part of mainstream media outlets won’t have to jump through hoops to get embargoed copies of papers. Many of those bloggers are doing an outstanding job of writing about science with skepticism and tough questions, and some of them have dedicated audiences who might care about studies in eLife that no one in the mainstream media will cover.
In other words: Journalists — particularly those who allow themselves to be slaves to embargoes — don’t have to be the middlemen anymore. Excellent. Let’s all let quality — not access and all of its potential for too-cozy-for-comfort relationships — win.”
Comments (2)
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Stevan Harnad
November 1, 2012 at 12:37 amTOAST JOURNALS THAT ENDORSE GREEN OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS, NOT JUST GOLD ONES
Elife is a Gold (pay to publish) OA journal, which is fine, but most journals are subscription journals. Sixty percent of subscription journals, however, are Green, meaning that they endorse immediate, unembargoed self-archiving of the final refereed drafts in their authors’ institutional OA repositories (Green OA). Hence they too renounce the Ingelfinger Rule, and not just for unrefereed preprints but for refereed post prints.
Harnad, S. (2000) Ingelfinger Over-Ruled: The Role of the Web in the Future of Refereed Medical Journal Publishing. Lancet Perspectives 256 (December Supplement): s16. http://cogprints.org/1703/
Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Nature Web Focus. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
Harnad, S (2012) The Optimal and Inevitable outcome for Research in the Online Age. CILIP Update September 2012 http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/342580/
Stevan Harnad
November 1, 2012 at 12:37 amTOAST JOURNALS THAT ENDORSE GREEN OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS, NOT JUST GOLD ONES
Elife is a Gold (pay to publish) OA journal, which is fine, but most journals are subscription journals. Sixty percent of subscription journals, however, are Green, meaning that they endorse immediate, unembargoed self-archiving of the final refereed drafts in their authors’ institutional OA repositories (Green OA). Hence they too renounce the Ingelfinger Rule, and not just for unrefereed preprints but for refereed post prints.
Harnad, S. (2000) Ingelfinger Over-Ruled: The Role of the Web in the Future of Refereed Medical Journal Publishing. Lancet Perspectives 256 (December Supplement): s16. http://cogprints.org/1703/
Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Nature Web Focus. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
Harnad, S (2012) The Optimal and Inevitable outcome for Research in the Online Age. CILIP Update September 2012 http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/342580/
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like