TUNZE USA, the newest and leading Gold Sponsor of MASNA’s Dr. Junda Lin Memorial Fund for Publishing Open Access Marine Aquarium Research
via Marine Aquarium Societies of North America (MASNA)
MASNA would like to thank Tunze, the newest supporter of the Dr. Junda Lin Open Access Memorial Fund for Publishing Open Access Marine Aquarium Research, for their generous $2,500 contribution towards providing industry, scientists, and hobbyists with freely available, open-access scientific research.
Tunze’s support will allow MASNA to offset the publishing costs for scientists and students that are working on research directly relevant to the marine aquarium industry.
As the aquarium industry grows, this research can provide industry and hobbyists alike with critical, up-to-date information about aquaculture protocols, trends in marine ornamental trade, novel equipment design, and a number of other relevant topics.
Dr. Junda Lin, whose passion for mentoring marine scientists inspired MASNA’s fund for supporting open-access journal publication of marine-aquarium related research.
In 2017, MASNA introduced the Dr. Junda Lin Memorial Fund for Publishing Open Access Marine Aquarium Research with the goal to offset the cost to students of learning how to publish a book, as well as publishing research as open access, freely available articles in order to promote the spread of scientific ideas to scientists and anyone who is interested in the research.
Dr. Junda Lin was a Professor of Biological Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology and the Director of the Institute for Marine Research (IMR). Dr. Lin’s Lab focused on the development of aquaculture technology for marine ornamental species to offset and replace wild collection. Dr. Lin’s lab studied the basic biological processes of several shellfish and fish species, evaluated their aquaculture potential, and developed cultivation technology.
Rather than in the traditional scientific publishing scheme, where the reader of the scientific article incurs a cost to access the article, with open-access articles, the article is available to the world, and the author is charged a fee when the article is accepted by the publisher.
Therefore, the Dr. Junda Lin Memorial Fund for Publishing Open Access Marine Aquarium Research is a fund supported by individuals, aquarium clubs, businesses, and universities that provides students with a financial offset to the costs of publishing a scientific article as an open-access article. More information on how to apply and donate can be found HERE.
Scientific research has historically been published and distributed by for-profit companies that require readers to pay to access content, comprising a 19.6-billion-dollar industry that results in inaccessibility for most hobbyists. Research institutions have begun terminating long-standing subscriptions to for-profit journals, and many independent researchers have taken an active stance on information dissemination by opting to publish in open-access formats.
MASNA fully supports open-access publishing and firmly believes that research relating to aquarium science should be available to anyone who wishes to read it. For more details on recent open-access publishing developments, see HERE.
MASNA would like to thank the donors that have contributed to the Junda Lin Memorial Fund thus far. Open-access publications allow the rapid dissemination of research to the non-scientific public that would otherwise not be able to access this information. The modern marine sciences increasingly recognize the importance of informed hobbyists and citizen scientists in data collection, volunteer work, and in their ability to drive changes in public outlook and policy.
MASNA welcomes donations from any business, organization, or individual who shares the belief that advancements in science should be freely available to the general public, and those that support MASNA’s mission to encourage the sustainability and ethical growth of the marine aquarium industry through the education of its members and the wider hobbyist community.
For more information and to donate to the fund, please click here: http://masna.org/masna-programs/memorial-publishing-fund/
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