Lisa Ennis has written a review of John Willinsky's book (The Access Principle, MIT Press, 2005, print edition, OA edition), forthcoming from the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Thanks to William Walsh for the alert and, since I don't have access, for this excerpt:
One of the most interesting sections of the book looks at the role of professional associations in journal publishing. For instance, Willinsky explains that although the American Psychological Association produces over fifty journals, research by Tenopir and King shows the number of personal subscriptions held by scientists has halved, and that these scientists are doing a third of their reading online (p. 56). As more scientists read more online and allow print subscriptions to lapse, associations are having a difficult time managing their journals and are selling them off to commercial publishers. Willinsky argues that association journals can move to an online open-access model without losing any revenue. For example, he points to the Journal of Clinical Investigation published by the American Society for Clinical Investigation as a success story. The journal is published completely online and is free to whoever wishes to read it.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/17/2007 01:03:00 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.
