Why does the magazine have to be open-access and independent?
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I support regulations because they provide a framework how people should work safely and effectively. However, regulations have taken over and instead of helping communities work better together, they restrict common sense, encourage wastage and also fear. Organisations are afraid to give official recommendation letters to employees because if they get employed and they do not work as described in the letter, the organisation can face a big lawsuit. Anyone can sue anyone for (almost) anything. Therefore (mostly) not-for-profit organisations have to build safety walls around themselves, not speak out nor act out because they cannot afford the legalities.
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I experienced the ‘senselessness’ of regulation of the university societies system. I do not approve of having to pay money for becoming a member of a student led society and encouraging these societies to follow more regulations in order to receive hundreds of pounds which eventually leads to them becoming member-focused small businesses.
When I approached the university about creating a magazine and newsletter I was told that sadly they have to follow data protection laws and a couple more regulation which permits me to do it.
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I am not in any way upset with the above organisations. I completely understand that everyone has to follow the rules.So I created my own rule and found a loophole around all these problems. Hence me starting from scratch and doing it independently.
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I am a huge fan of Open-Access (OA) Policies which enables information to circulate around the world. Only if all the scientific journals would be willing to say no to money and yes to knowledge circulation.
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“We’re facing a last-mile problem for knowledge. We’re pretty good at doing research, writing it up, vetting it, publishing it, and getting it to locations (physical libraries and web sites) close to users. We could be better at all those things, but any problems we encounter along the way are early or mid-course problems. The last-mile problem is the one at the end of the process: making individualized connections to all the individual users who need to read that research. The last-mile problem for knowledge is not new. Indeed, for all of human history until recently it has been inseparable from knowledge itself and all our technologies for sharing it. It’s only of interest today because the internet and OA give us unprecedented means for solving it, or at least for closing the gap significantly.”
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by Peter Suber, “Open access and the last-mile problem for knowledge,” SPARC Open Access Newsletter #123 (July 2, 2008)
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I would like to kindly ask the reader to have a think about open-access and the next time while visiting scientific journal publisher websites, please have a look at their policies and fees.