Katie Mantell, Open-access publishers reject unsustainability charge, SciDev.Net, March 9, 2004. Excerpt: "Last week, Britain's leading commercial scientific publishers, most of whom follow the traditional publishing model of requiring readers to pay to access content, lambasted the open-access model for lacking financial viability, and for threatening the integrity of the world's leading journals...But Harold Varmus, co-founder of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), an open-access publisher and advocacy group, told the committee yesterday that such arguments were 'completely false'. 'We have reviewers who [determine] what is accepted [in the journal],' he said, adding that the processes of peer review and editing scientific papers remain constant, however their costs are covered. 'We, as a publication, want our journals to be high quality – it's the only way we're going to be successful.' [The PLoS written evidence concluded that] 'In an open access system, these same parties would pay, but they would get far more for their money.'...Varmus encouraged other publishers to switch to an open-access model. 'Our goal now is not to take over the world but to make other publishers see the virtues of open access and experiment [with it],' he said."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/10/2004 09:04:00 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.
