Patrick Barrett, Reed revels in bumper profits, The Guardian, February 19, 2004. Excerpt: "Anglo-Dutch publisher giant Reed Elsevier enjoyed its most profitable year ever last year, recording profits of more than £1bn for the first time....Turnover for 2003 increased 1% to £4.925bn and the group reported strong growth from its science and medical business, where revenues were up 8%, and in its legal unit LexisNexis, where revenues rose 3%....Reed Elsevier executives are unlikely to be celebrating for long though. With growing interest in a new system of publishing scientific research papers called 'open access', where scientists pay for their work to be published and in return receive free access to journals, the company's lucrative scientific publishing business is being challenged....In a joint statement the Reed Elsevier chairman, Morris Tabaksblat, and the chief executive, Crispin Davis, said they saw no need to change. 'We remain firmly of the view that, whilst the market will always accommodate a variety of different initiatives and funding approaches, subscription-based journal publishing is the most effective and efficient way to deliver to researchers a huge volume of high quality peer reviewed research. We will however continue to monitor initiatives such as the 'author pays' publishing model and assess how effectively they serve the needs of the scientific and research communities.'"
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/19/2004 08:48:00 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.
