The purpose of this post is to highlight two reviews (and an article) about Open Access (OA). The first review is: The year 2016 in open access. Cracks in the mainstream – a subjective review, by Witold Kieńć. Topics include the popularity of Sci-Hub, the fall of the impact factor, and the common roots of OA with the open source movement.
The second review is: Open Access Rewards Passionate Curiosity: 2016 in Review by Elliot Harmon. It begins by noting, with approval, the OA publication of the first direct detection of gravitational waves. It then continues with comments about some OA-related activities during 2016 by the publishing giant Elsevier. Following a summary of some noteworthy recent OA-oriented issues in the USA, the final paragraph includes this excerpt: “…open access publishing rewards the passionate curiosity of readers and researchers all over the world, regardless of their institutional connections“.
An article that merits attention is: In Montreal, a wee opening in the closed world of science research, by André Picard in The Globe and Mail newspaper. He provides an eloquent report on a pioneering Open Science undertaking that’s being initiated by the Montreal Neurological Institute. Two excerpts from his report:
Is the best way to nurture that process – to accelerate the accumulation of knowledge – to have individual researchers hoard their findings in the hope they will hit paydirt someday, or is it to share discoveries openly to spur others?
And,
In the long run, it’s hard to imagine how people will not benefit more from openness and sharing of knowledge than from secrecy and hoarding of findings
.Comments about these, or other developments in 2016 related to OA, would be appreciated.
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Be openly accessible or be obscure 
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