Fiona Godlee, Swept along by the tide, BMJ, January 14, 2006. A short elaboration on the new BMJ access policy. Excerpt:
One unwelcome change for some readers has been the closure of access to the BMJ's non-research articles, which up until now were free for the first week of publication. The change was necessary to maintain subscription revenues. The peer reviewed research articles remain open access (free from the day of publication on bmj.com as well as being on PubMed Central), and the whole journal remains free to most countries in the developing world (those on the HINARI list). Non-research articles become free to all after a year of publication. It is always hard to be asked to pay for something that has been free, but we hope that those readers who don't get the BMJ free through their institution will see enough value in it to pay £20/$37/€30 for a year's full online access.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/13/2006 11:21:00 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.
