Four in five scientific articles for free
More and more publications by Dutch scientists can be read for free. Over the past five years, the percentage of open access articles has almost doubled from 42 to 82 percent according to figures from Universities of the Netherlands (UNL).
The figures give an impression of the trend, but the association maintains a disclaimer: the underlying measurements are not all equally reliable. This is due to sources, definition differences and measurement moments.
Universities receive money from the Dutch government to conduct research, but often the results of that research end up behind the paywall of an expensive journal. The government and the universities find this undesirable and aim to make publications by Dutch scientists freely available to everyone. Articles can be freely accessible in different ways. Some journals are completely open access, so that there is no payment wall at all. That is the ‘gold’ variant. Or authors may post the article in an online archive of their university. That variant is called ‘green’.
Open access is part of the drive towards open science: not only publications, but also, for example, data and research design should be easily accessible, according to proponents. (HOP, BB).
Comments are closed.