Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, February 19, 2004

More on the OA challenge to Elsevier

Richard Wray, Open access threat to Reed's publishing empire, The Guardian, February 19, 2004. Excerpt: "There will be smiles all-round at Reed Elsevier today, with the Anglo-Dutch publishing group expected to report annual profits of more than £1bn for the first time in its long history. Yet again a strong set of results from the group's scientific and legal publishing divisions will have made up for continuing weakness in Reed's business and education markets. But storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. Reed's highly lucrative scientific publishing empire, which has a tradition stretching back to 1580, is under threat from the growth of a new system of publishing on the internet known as open access." Quoting Jan Velterop, publisher of BioMed Central: "The main difference between us and Reed is efficiency. Elsevier is cobbled together from a great many companies acquired over time. There is massive inefficiency in the system. We have started from complete scratch. We are a very much leaner and very much meaner machine."