On how open access improves accessibility to ecological science: does it?
Recently, I attended (if virtually) the Annual Meeting of the British Ecological Society (BES), termed this year,“Festival of Ecology”. A really nice meeting, amazingly well organized and with an attractive program. Among a variety of activities which I was interested in, there was the obvious one: a visit to the BES stand where societal publications are traditionally exhibited. Because of my interest in applied ecology, I was rapidly attracted to a new journal aimed at improving the linkage between science and solution of the increasing environmental issues related to anthropogenic activities. This is the 7th BES journal which states that the way in that scientific data and information may reach practitioners is, among several changes, by including new article types (such as “Data Articles”) in a flexible format1. An additional aspect in this sense, is avoiding the paywall by making the journal fully open access. This latter issue got me thinking. In fact I have been ruminating on O