Imagine a world where anyone—from the student in Atlanta to the researcher in Port au Prince—can freely read the scientific papers they need to make a discovery, where scientific breakthroughs in energy conversion, sensors or nanotechnology are unimpeded by fees to access or publish research.

At ECS, that is our vision of the future. We’re working to provide open access to all ECS publications, while maintaining our high standards of peer-review and fast delivery of content.

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Please help us continue the important work of ECS by donating today.

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Photographs of Blaberus discoidalis (A), the transmitter circuit (B) and of a quarter coin (C) to compare the scales involved.

While browsing through the vast array of Open Access articles that ECS hosts in its Digital Library, one title in particular caught our eye here at headquarters.

I mean, it is pretty hard to ignore an academic article titled “Wireless Communication by an Autonomous Self-Powered Cyborg Insect.”

The article, published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society by researchers from Case Western Reserve University (one of the authors is ECS Board of Directors Senior VP Dan Scherson), details – to put it simply – how a cyborg cockroach can generate and transmit signals wirelessly.

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Open access allows free, immediate, online access to peer-reviewed research with full rights to reuse the work.

This week has been declared International Open Access Week. Here at ECS, we’re boldly moving toward open access (OA) publication to make scientific research results and the latest findings more widely accessible, and thereby speeding up the discovery process.

Still, open access can be confusing and controversial at times – specifically for publishers. In order to explain many of the issues and concerns revolving around open access, a few OA advocates have banded together and took to Reddit’s popular “Ask me Anything” series.

Head over there now to see what they had to say about all things open access.

On September 10th, sites across the web will display an alert with a symbolic “loading” symbol and promote a call to action for users to push comments to the FCC, Congress, and the White House.

Today a group of popular websites that rely on speedy Internet have launched an online protest against proposed changes to “net neutrality.” They call themselves Team Internet and are comprised of popular websites, such as Netflix, Vimeo, Reddit, and WordPress – just to name a few.

The protest aims to fight policy changes via the U.S. Federal Communications Commission that would overturn a 2010 ruling that required Internet service providers to treat all web traffic the same.

This from TIME:

Since May, the FCC has been weighing changes to its regulations on “net neutrality” — the 2010 rules requiring Internet service providers to treat all web traffic the same. The changes would allow cable companies to grant paying customers faster service, but ban them from slowing down, or throttling, the access of nonpaying companies. The FCC has already lost two court cases brought by cable companies who have challenged the legality of its existing net-neutrality rules.

Read the full article here.

ECS fights a similar battle in the realm of publication. In order to avoid the dissemination of science and research that creates a world of haves and have-nots, ECS fully supports open access publishing.

Find out more about open access and check out our Digital Library to find the latest published OA pieces.

Co-editor of Interface, Vijay Ramani, talks about open access publishing in this letter from the editor.

The following is an article from the latest issue of Interface by co-editor Vijay Ramani.

Late last year, I accepted the invitation to become co-editor of Interface safe in the knowledge that I would not actually be called upon to do anything for the foreseeable future.* Thanks to the outstanding ECS staff and conscientious guest editors and authors, this happy state of affairs has persisted until now. But just as “even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea,” so it is that the inevitable passage of time has brought upon a situation wherein actual effort is required on my part, viz. this editorial. The increasingly plaintive entreaties from our admirably patient Director of Publications seeking the contents of this column can no longer, in good conscience, be ignored or fobbed off with feeble excuses.

Read the rest.