Course Syllabus
Course
How To
My Gradebook

Munroe_OpenScience.jpg

PSY 210: Basic Statistics

A single-panel comic. One question posed is ''How much science is there?'' The comic says, ''Scientific publishing has been accelerating–a new paper is now published roughly every 20 seconds. Let's imagine a bibliography listing EVERY scholarly paper ever written. How long would it be? If we can fit 140 citations per page...100 pages per book..and then we start stacking books..a list of papers published in 1880 would fill 100 pages. By 1920, the list would be growing by 500 pages per year. The 1975 section would fill four huge volumes. Today, we're up to 15 volumes per year–a page every 45 minutes. This is what the full list would look like.'' The comic then shows a timeline from 1880 to 2013 filled with books to symbolize the number of publications that year. The number of books drastically increase around 1970. A stick figure standing a little before 1880 says, ''All scholarly articles from before 1880 fit in just a few volumes.'' The timeline has additional donations. In 1869, the first issue of <em>Nature</em> was published. In 1880, the journal <em>Science</em> was founded. In 1987-89, the first online journals appeared. In 1991, Paul Ginsparg launched Axiv for physics preprints. In 1999, the NIH director proposed an archive of free BioMed papers. In 2000, PubMed Central debuts and PLOS was founded. In 2001, 30,000 scientists called to boycott journals that don't allow free access on PubMed within 6 months. IN 2002, BioMed Central began charging a $500 author fee, and HHMI agrees to pay author fees for open-access publications. In 2003, PLOS Biology launched and charged $1500 author's fee. In 2006, U.K. Medical Research Council mandated free access within 6 months, and PLoS raises the top author fee to $2,500, launched PLoS ONE, which reviews for scientific rigor, not importance. In 2008, HIH requires that papers it funds be made free within 12 months, and Harvard faculty agree to post papers in a university repository. In 2010, PLoS becomes profitable, and PLoS ONE becomes the world's biggest scientific publisher by volume In 2013, the White House ordered all science agencies to plan to make papers free within 12 months. IN 2014, the European Commission requires free access within 6-12 months.'' The comic also asks, ''How open is it?'' It says, ''Since the advent of the web, much of scientific publishing has been moved to Open Access. According to Science-Metrix, open access reached a 'tipping point' around 2011: more than 50% of new research is now made available free online.'' In a section titled ''Open-Access Papers,'' the comic continues, ''As journals move to open access and digitize their archives, old papers from every period move up here..in addition to the flood of new papers being published here directly. 25% of open-access papers are freely available on publication. The rest become free within 12 months on journal websites or other repositories.''

Daily Dose of Statistics