Lars Wenaas

Lars Wenaas is an externally funded PhD candidate at the TIK centre and writes about Open Access and Open Science and how these concepts changes the research system. 

Access to research literature is limited and a barrier for researchers in their quest for new knowledge, as for usage outside academia.  This has an economical side as access to scientific literature is achieved through increasingly expensive subscription schemes. 

The proposed solution to this challenge has been Open Access, now a political hot topic in Norway. However, does Open Access deliver as promised and how does Open Access affect the research system in a wider context? One of the focal points of the project lies in the incentive structures in the science system, especially the one surrounding the academic literature and seemingly conflicting interests between dissemination of research and the "academic credits" which follows publishing preferably in high ranking journals.