Tim Growers (Cambridge University mathematician) talks with Bryan Crump on Radio NZ, Monday 30 July, about how his refusal to submit or review papers for publishing house Elsevier led to demands for open access to scientific knowledge.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2526643/unlocking-science.asx
Tim’s blog also features details of a new open access venture for Cambridge University Press.
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/a-new-open-access-venture-from-cambridge-university-press/
Thanks for posting this Simon. It was a really interesting interview, I thought Bryan Crump seemed quite shocked at some of what Tim had to say. The whole peer review system was brought into focus. I didn’t like the rating of someone’s works by the equivalent of “Likes” on Facebook, however. This feels like a trivialisation of years of work and thought. Maybe I am just too old for all this, but I do feel the pressure to publish has brought with it an increase in the number of publications containing non-reproducible data, so I can see that continual review of papers online could be useful. However who has time for this?