The December issue of AccessInformation is now online. This is a newsletter for non-academic information professionals. The December issue includes an introduction to OA. Excerpt:
As knowledge workers, you are aware of the widening availability of peer-reviewed and scholarly literature accessible from the Web. Google was a catalyst in this content explosion when it gained the permission of database companies and individual publishers to crawl and index publications contained in commercial databases such as JSTOR. Frequently, however, Google links to an abstract of an article with an option for purchasing the full article (pay-per-view). While we applaud this increased awareness and access to scholarly publications, we are also concerned about the rising costs involved. Many fees are $30 or more for a single article and some have risen as high as $50 per article in recent months. When trying to acquire a list of 150 articles necessary for a court case, this can add up to a very high price tag!
While we recognize the convenience of purchasing specific articles on demand and understand that most publishers are commercial enterprises, we strive to search for alternative, price-sensitive sources of authoritative information. One such alternative is the growing number of open access journals available on the Web.
Peter Suber, a policy strategist who specializes in open access to scientific and scholarly research literature, firmly believes that increased prices for subscriptions and pay-per-view options will continue to be obstacles for some time. “The best hope is open access, not decreasing prices,” states Suber. Open access will continue to expand as more and more taxpayers demand access to the results of federally sponsored research....
Following we have provided some background information on the open-access movement as well as a brief list of some open access sources available....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/19/2007 11:22:00 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.
