If you’ve been following Twitter or the blogs, you’ll know that this has been Open Access Week. It’s been great to see many new open-access policies announced this week [Ireland, Belgium, Hungary], to read important explanations of why fully open (CC BY) OA is the way to go, and to see discussions from people like clinicians and librarians. It all contributes to the glorious sense that the transition to OA is beyond the tipping point.

Here’s what we at SV-POW! have been doing for Open Access Week:

Nothing at all.

We’re just carrying on, doing what we do — which is writing and reviewing papers for open-access journals, and of course writing an open-access science blog and writing about open-access issues. Because while open-access week is an excellent focal period, we believe in an open-access life, not just a week.

I’m actually not sure if I’ve ever stated this explicitly, but as of a couple of years back I am not submitting anything to non-open journals any more. Matt has made the same decision for himself.

Now we do understand that not everyone has the luxury of being so black-and-white about it — that most people, if they had a finding sexy enough to make it into Nature or Science would try that route. We do understand that papers in those venues can be career changers, and that lots of our readers are under heavy pressure to make the attempt. That’s all cool. But what I am sensing from more and more people is that they are shifting towards at least a strong preference for open-access venues — that they will prefer an open journal over an equally prestigious paywalled one, or even a rather more prestigious one. From some people, I pick up the idea that they’ve more or less promised themselves “all OA except Nature and Science“. It’s great to see that movement.

Come to think of it, nearly every time I read a comment on the necessity of publishing in non-open venues for career reasons, it’s those same two journals that come up. Trends in Ecology & Evolution has a much higher impact factor than PLOS ONE, but I don’t hear people saying “I have to publish in TREE for my career”. My sense is that Nature and Science are a special case — that people feel a publication there is somehow qualitatively different from one elsewhere. Is that an accurate reflection?

If it does, then maybe an “all OA except Nature and Science” pledge would be a good one for some people. (Not everyone: I know for example that there are also people who want to publish in JVP to support the society.)

Update (later the same day)

Richard Butler points out (see comments below) that the the career argument goes much further down the pecking order. It seems that naming Nature and Science in such arguments is just a rhetorical convention, and my suggested “all OA except those two” policy is a non-starter for career scientists. Shame.