The global relevance of Open Access

Dr. Appy Sluijs is a researcher at Utrecht University, and member of the Young Academy of the KNAW (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences). His research focuses on climate and climate change in the geological past. In this short interview Appy Sluijs explains about Open Access journals that have an open reviewing system. Readers can comment on the first version of a paper and with this, the authors can improve the paper for final publication. Appy Sluijs is member of the European Geosciences Union, of which all journals are published Open Access. He talks about the grant he received from the European Research Council, and his obligation to publish Open Access and deposit his data. In his view Open Access is very important, since his publications have very often local relevance. 'I think Open Access is a very good thing, because it provides the opportunity for everybody on the entire world to look at scientific publications for free.' For a project financed by the European Research Council Appy Sluijs also has to publish his data online. He believes that this is the only way to transparency and reuse of science. It's something that researchers should want themselves instead of having to be forced to do this by the ERC. http://www.uu.nl/university/library/NL/igitur http://www.openaccess.org http://www.openacces.nl http://www.dejongeakademie.nl http://www.egu.eu http://erc.europa.eu