Susan Mayor reports in the April 19 BMJ that libraries are thinking about open access as an alternative to skyrocketing journal prices. Quoting Robert Michaelson, head librarian of the Mudd Library for Science and Engineering at Northwestern University: "Elsevier is obviously trying to make a profit, but it is difficult to understand the enormous difference in the cost of some of their journals compared to similar journals published by learned societies." Mayor paraphrasing Jan Velterop, publisher of BioMed Central: Journal "monopolies could be broken by open access publishing, in which academic institutions pay for publication of their researchers' papers at input, and papers are then made available for free on the internet." (Thanks to ResourceShelf.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/11/2003 07:49:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.