Welcome to the grand Improbable Research experiment. We are putting the entire magazine online for free.
Beginning with the current issue — vol. 13, no. 6, November/December 2007, the special Ig Nobel issue — the Annals of Improbable Research will be available online in three forms. Several years of back issues are also online (though not in quite as many forms).
Comment. At the risk of being a wet blanket, let me point out AIR has to be serious about its business model even if it's not serious about anything else. It's making new issues available in four forms: priced print, priced hi-res PDF, free low-res PDF, and free HTML. I don't know whether this system will pay the bills, and AIR probably doesn't either. But I'm fascinated by it. It lets AIR provide free online access to 100% of its new articles without embargoes, abridgments, or publication fees. Is there any reason why "serious" journals shouldn't experiment with the same model?
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/29/2007 09:20:00 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.
