Bioline International (Bioline) is one of the Open Access (OA) success stories. The main goal of the project is the “global exchange of essential research information published in developing countries,” research that its founders argue is little known and under-used. Specifically, the goal has been to improve the “South to North and South to South flow of information.” Bioline has long been considered one of the OA pioneers and a model of how scholarly publishing could be changed. Thus it came as a surprise when the University of Toronto (U of T) announced that it was going to cut its funding for Bioline, given that the need for it services was growing. More significantly, the money that was pledged until 2011 was meant to allow Bioline time to develop a new business plan that would allow it to expand its coverage....
Bioline is not a publisher, but an aggregator that offers a free platform for 70 journals from 16 countries....Last year, an additional 70 new journals applied to join Bioline.....
To make possible the incorporation of other journals waiting to become part of the system, Bioline is implementing a new business plan that will use a Membership and Sponsorship drive as its backbone. According to [Leslie Chan, Program Supervisor for the Joint Program in New Media Studies and the International Studies program at the U of T at Scarborough, and Associate Director of Bioline], from 2002-06, 80% of the budget came from U of T. “As of next fiscal year, the Dean has promised only $10K out of the $100K we budgeted, so we have to raise the 90K externally. We are about half way there already, so the membership drive is crucial.” ...
Like other open access initiatives, Bioline faces the challenge of overcoming the common misunderstanding that open access means “cost free....The frustration is that librarians will often say that they support open access, forgetting that to produce the content and continue the service someone has to pay," Chan notes. “The librarians that ’get it’ are still in the minority....”
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.
