This a tricky problem. No one but the editors like the old (current) publishing system, where we (authors) are submitting our work for free. Sometimes we even have to pay for it. And then we (researchers) have to pay the journals insane amount of money to get access to the papers. Hence the rise of open-access (OA) journals. Nevertheless, we need a strong incentive to move to a dominant OA system. As long as the high-profile journals are not open-access, there is little incentive but goodwill to publish in OA journals.

A couple of years ago, the NIH made a bold move: every paper coming from NIH-funded money should be free to read to anyone, which makes senses since this is taxpayer money, after all. This turned out to be tremendously successful.

Now people are asking to go further, and want the same for all source of public funding (i.e., NSF, mostly).

That’s why we’re teaming up with libraries, universities, and patient advocacy groups to demand every publicly-funded publication be made open access.  If we’re going to be spending billions of dollars on research, the least they can do is let us read it.

I can only hope the same thing to happen in France (with the ANR) and Europe. Then open-access system will become mainstream overnight.

[Source: Boingboing]