For many years, publishers, scientists, academics, librarians, funders and government officials have debated the value of greater public access to the results of scientific research. The internet has fundamentally changed the economics of distributing scientific research results, and has made the idea of universal access to research a realistic prospect. The number of open-access journals continues to increase rapidly, as does the proportion of scientific research that is freely available online.
As open-access publishing has emerged it has attracted both enthusiasm and scepticism in almost equal measure....
Scepticism and debate are healthy, especially if the debate is informed by evidence. In the case of open-access publishing, the track record of existing open-access journals now demonstrates that the open-access model can succeed in the real world. In particular, open-access journals have demonstrated their ability to operate as a sustainable business, and to publish research of high quality – validated by the industry’s leading metrics.
Perhaps more importantly, the success of open-access publications is also stimulating the research community to...consider how the open-access model can provide a channel for the rapid publication of more research results in formats that allow their effective compilation and reuse....
An example of open-access success can be seen in Malaria Journal....
BioMed Central’s much newer Journal of Medical Case Reports benefits from the open access publication model in a different way....
[A]n important aspect of many open-access journals is that they also encourage the publication of more incremental advances, and even negative results, if properly performed....[O]pen-access journals provide more raw data for researchers to use in subsequent studies....
Lastly, open access, by making the underlying research articles freely available and reusable, opens up myriad possibilities for enhancing and extending that research. This includes the use of computational techniques to mine research articles for information, and the use of Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, tagging and wikis to allow the research community itself to enrich articles with additional content and connections....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/18/2007 07:20:00 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.
