Libertà vo cercando

• Main Author: Greco Pietro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sissa Medialab 2004-06-01
• Series: JCOM: Journal of Science Communication
• Subjects: Scientific Journals; open access
• Online Access: http://jcom.sissa.it/editorial/edit0302.pdf

Free information works. In the sense that Open Access Journals, scientific journals which can be accessed at no cost, thereby guaranteeing free access to everyone, are at the same time able to guarantee the same quality as –or even better than- that of traditional journals, which can only be read by those willing to pay a price, be it the cover price or a subscription. This item of news (we consider it good news) was delivered a few weeks ago by James Testa and Marie E. McVeigh. The two researchers from Thomson-ISI examined 148 natural science journals surveyed by ISI, which have the characteristic of being "open access", that is, they may be read, downloaded, printed, copied and distributed at no cost. These journals are electronic and regularly subject to peer review. Testa and McVeigh measured the Impact Factor (IF) of several articles published by each of them between 1999 and 2002 and found that, on average, it was not lower than that of traditional journals. In fact, for recent years it was even higher (albeit only just). This proves that free information works and that guaranteeing free access to scientific information does not in any way impair its quality. Why do we consider this good news? For two reasons at least. One is purely economic. The other is cultural.