open access

one of the big issues in academia nowadays is the question of whether open access journals are going to supplant traditional publication venues and cause a sea change in the way research as a whole is conducted and reported. a lot of the best academic journals nowadays are commercial, having been bought over by various monstercorps of the kind that take over the galaxy (think k-mart for universities). unlike k-mart, however, these entities typically make you pay out the wazoo for subscriptions and individual articles, all in the name of ensuring that you get the best possible science, i.e. facts you can trust. open access journals, of course, make use of the magic of the interw3b to bring all that stuff to you free of charge, so that any hillbilly with a 56k modem can logon and learn about the cytotoxicity of timosaponin AIII.

proponents of open access cite the argument that information wants to be free, and not just that -- academics have a responsibility to make the information they generate free, so as to encourage greater accountability and availability, and the more rapid progress of research as a whole. there is, in fact, some evidence that open access boosts citations, although i'd take that with a grain of salt until more and better data start rolling in.

now, i really do buy these arguments, and i feel that those against open access are generally old fogies who don't understand that video always kills the radio star, you can't stop the beat etc. now that i'm on the cusp of actually submitting something to an open access journal however, i do feel a little twinge of unhappiness about it, and for the very ignoble reason that it just doesn't feel as good. it feels something like editing an article on wikipedia, except that instead of 20 minutes it's taken me 20 months. there's very little nervous anticipation -- as long as you've done real science your paper's going to be accepted. there's no smug satisfaction in engaging in the dick-measuring contest of who-has-papers-in-journals-with-higher-impact-factors. it's platonic. it's how science should be reported, and it's utterly joyless.

at least there are rating systems and opportunities for peer commentary. trust that i'll be logging on every day to see if anyone's said anything new about the article. for that matter i have an idea: SCHOLARLY HOT OR NOT. every day, a new paper on the main page, scale of 1 to 10. is it HOT or NOT?