"The Conference closed with a keynote from Dr. Stephen Choi, an emergency room physician and editor of Open Medicine. As a former editor at the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Choi spoke about the failures of Canadian medical publishing which makes huge profits from publicly-funded research; the influence of big pharma; successes such as the growing open access movement and challenges (about funding not-for-profit journals).
Discussion after Choi's presentation focussed on sustainable ways to fund OA journals. Suggestions from librarians included charging small fees for article downloading (until publishing costs are recovered, then free in perpetuity) to author pay models (already the case for some journals) to institutional subscriptions. Although Choi knew these strategies, he did not embrace them because Open Medicine relies on donations at the moment. For me, this signalled a commitment to maintaining free, open access (as much as possible) to medical information. Choi also made a point of mentioning the editorial team of Open Medicine consisted of many health professionals including a health librarian (Dean Giustini)....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/07/2008 10:14:00 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.
