....The industry must be thankful, then, that Oxford University Press (OUP) has, like all publishers, studied the effects of OA, but unlike many others it’s chosen to share them. Reading the results of the OUP study and discussing the recent changes in policy at Elsevier, it looks like OA suits certain titles and not others....
In the study ‘Determining the impact of open access publishing and users: a deep log analysis of Nucleic Acids Research’, researchers discover that the NAR journal is relatively unique, with a unique community. OUP carried out research and knew that the community around this journal would welcome OA with, excuse the pun, open arms. The genetics community that reads NAR is a hot subject area of research at present. But not all scientific fields will be attracting the funding genetics does, thus OUP research indicates there is still a need for the non-author-pays model.
With Elsevier entering the fray with its Sponsored Articles service, the debate widens. Elsevier is adamant that its new model for its nuclear physics journals is no U-turn and that by calling its service Sponsored Articles, it believes it is adding clarity. It now wants to influence the industry and define journals and articles by different terms, rather than the generic term open access. This is a good point, but as anyone who has dealt with the IT industry knows, too many vendors cook up their own terms for the same product – and standards disappear. The publishing industry needs to offer clarity both in definition and understanding of accessing content, rather than creating division and confusion.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/10/2006 10:53:00 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.
