A Wellcome change
As a “usability professional”, it’s sometimes very frustrating that I can’t easily get hold of academic research papers in my field. I’m not affiliated with a University in any way, so I have to pay a LOT to download a paper. As a result, it’s tricky to keep up with latest developments. It’s actually estimated that the lack of access to publicly-funded research costs the UK around £1.5bn per year. So it’s great to hear that the Wellcome Trust are going to start allowing open access to all publications resulting from research that they fund. Just a shame that the Royal Society seem to consider their own interests over and above the rest of society…
I’m not quite sure how this will affect access to HCI-related journals, but it’s definitely a really big step in the right direction.
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I'm Stuart Church, a user experience consultant with Pure Usability in Bristol, UK. Sensorydrive is my personal blog and covers user experience design, information architecture, product design, psychology, research methods, perception and pretty much anything else that takes my fancy! You can find out a bit more about me if you want...
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[...] Having previously bemoaned the fact that, as a UX practitioner rather than academic, there aren’t too many academic journals that I can easily lay my hands on, it’s great to discover that there’s a Directory of Open Access Journals. There are currently more than 2400 journals online and, while this is still scratching the surface, it’s obviously a very positive thing. [...]