PLoS Guest Blogger's blog

Guest blogger: Ida Sim, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director, Center for Clinical and Translational Informatics, University of California, San Francisco, USA.

I’ve just started reading One Thousand and One Nights with my young son. He likes the Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor most, but I’d like to talk about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Ali Baba, of course, is the poor Arabian woodcutter who overhears the Forty Thieves as they intone “Open Sesame!” to gain access to their cave of ill-gotten treasure. Using this privileged information, Ali Baba avails himself of treasure, and soon after, I’m hesitating at the part about hot oil being poured on the thieves in their jars.

So is open access the modern-day equivalent of open sesame, prying open the rock that keeps scientific treasures in darkness? No, not if open access means only open access to articles about research rather than the real treasure, the research data itself.