About a week ago Lou Woodley (@LouWoodley) of nature.com asked on twitter what experiences scientists have with Open Access publishing. I was made aware of her tweet by Jon Tennant (@ProtoHedghog – thanks, Jon!), and wrote her a long email about one issue that’s lately been on my mind a lot. Lou turned this into a guest post at nature.com’s Spot On, a site on Science policy, outreach and tools online. You can find the post here.
My open access (OA) problem is between mine and my employer’s interests. I work at the Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz-Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity at the Humboldt University Berlin(MfN). A name like a tape worm, and it already contains the root of the problem. The museum is a member of the prestigious Leibniz Gemeinschaft – (sorry, their home page is German only, please see Wikipedia’s entry.)
Head over to read the full thing!
I’d like to thank Lou for making it possible for scientists to communicate their problems this way. Maybe, in the long run, we can move funding agencies to either forget about stupid IF lists, or at least give a “bonus” for publishing in OA journals. Ideally, they follow the recent examples from the UK and other places and mandate it 🙂
dinosaurpalaeo 
I´m complety agree with you!
In Spain, to “win” a postdoc, you need 5-6 IF papers. If the predoct grant is 4 years, then the predoct have to be a “machine” or have a good team that help him/her. This fact makes that these researchers only think in IF and quartils since the first day that they start to work.
Even one day I asked to a colleague if he/she really agreed with the ideas of his/her paper. He/she said to me, no at all, but a paper is a paper.
Good post!