Siewert-Jan Marrink

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), provides from February 2010 onwards their Incentive Fund for Open Access Publications. The criteria of this fund have recently be widened. NWO pays each project a contribution for publication costs. The University of Groningen (RUG) welcomes the growing trend of Open Access publishing, since it will enlarge the visibility of its research. Siewert-Jan Marrink was one of the first researchers of the RUG to make use of this fund.

Esther Hoorn and Frank den Hollander interviewed Marrink for Pictogram, the information bulletin of the University of Groningen. Read the full interview here (in Dutch).

Quotes from the interview:

“It’s a substantial amount. But our group is fairly rich. And in the end you receive extra exposure. The amount of citations, the extra attention for your paper outweigh [the costs].” (On the conscious choice of publishing OA in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in spite of the extra money to be paid)

“Formerly you would go to a library to browse through journals. Nobody does this anymore; I never visit a library nowadays. I view everything online. When something is not online available for me, it’s quite frustrating. In that sense it is very important that others can also see your papers.”

“It is common knowledge in my field that Open Access journals exist. I have the notion all researchers know about Open Access by now.”

“I don’t have any reservations [on Open Access]. Certainly with the existence of this fund. When you see how easy it is to promote your own articles... I will certainly make use of it in the future.”