Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Sunday, May 11, 2003

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.)