Science journals should be accessible to all: Nobel laureate

Nobel laureate Randy Schekman today called for scholarly scientific journals to be devoid of subscription-based firewalls to make knowledge accessible to all for free, and said journal impact factor is not the right way to determine quality of a research paper.
"Commercial journals have sought to restrain free access because they rely on profit to sustain enterprise. They have sought over many years to prevent open access because they are trying to protect their business model," Schekman, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2013, said.
"These journals also promote a measure of scholarship through a measurement called journal impact factor. It is a false measurement of scholarship. The impact number is promoted by commercial concern, a measurement developed decades ago designed for libraries to decide which journal to subscribe to," he said.

Cell biologist Schekman was speaking at a session on biotechnology at a seminar in Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit.
"Journal impact factor has toxic influence on how we measure our scholarly influence. That's why we have decided to promote a document called Declaration of Research Assessment. It calls on all stakeholders to move away from the use of this ridiculous journal impact factor and instead find people who are capable of evaluating the content of a publication rather using surrogate measurement," he said.
"A new model emerged near the end of 20th century called open access - a model of publication that involves scholars paying necessary fee to have their works published and freeing libraries of subscription-based access," he said.

"With this, India and anyone will have access to work unencumbered by firewalls. This is enormously important for developing countries and even established industrial nations because this means you can read works online, without any neeed for affiliation with any library," he added.