...Open access to most of the world’s peer-reviewed scientific research is an inevitability Subscription-based access to the primary scientific literature is, quite simply, an anachronism of the print age; it’s dead–it just doesn’t know it yet. The enterprises that will be hurt will be those that cannot or will not alter their business models to reflect the reality of our always-on, just-in-time, just-the way-I-want-it, hyperlinked society....
Not surprisingly, the most powerful opponents of the open-access movement are the for-profit publishing houses. The major for-profit scientific publishers by no means rely solely on scientific journals as a source of revenues; they are diversified businesses. But journal subscriptions and advertisements remain an important source of revenues, and these firms will fight to maintain subscribers.
Why should Pharma get involved in the skirmishes that promise to get nastier as paid-access publishers fight for their survival? There is no doubt that pharmaceutical researchers and marketing strategists rely heavily on the scientific literature to create and sell their products, and they pay dearly for the privilege. But the relative cost of subscriptions and reproduction fees is small compared with the returns it generates. As open access papers proliferate, and paid-access journals feel the squeeze, journal subscription costs might rise. But I can’t imagine that most life-science are going to complain too loudly. Based on cost considerations alone, Pharma should probably sit this fight out.
The real reason Pharma (and related industries) need to get behind open access is that open access will benefit the scientific enterprise generally, by increasing the pace of scientific discoveries. A higher pace of discoveries means more fuel for industrial discovery, which means a faster rate of industrial innovations....
[I]t’s in Pharma’s interests to err on the benefits being ”substantially faster” and “substantially larger”, so as not to miss an opportunity that costs the industry nothing additional to take advantage of....
[P]harmaceutical scientists will benefit from enhanced scientific knowledge dissemination indirectly even if pharmaceutical scientists themselves do not alter their reading habits in response to open access....
It is in every industry R&D manager’s interests to eliminate unnecessary impediments to innovation. With the possible exception of angering some scientific societies, there is no downside to Pharma diverting some of the funds it currently invests in paid-access journals to the open access movement (e.g. PLoS).
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/29/2007 10:39:00 PM.
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.
