Adam Hodgkin, A topsy turvy e-world, The Bookseller, April 1, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). On recent changes that affect the fortunes of ebooks and electronic libraries. Excerpt: "The first sea change is that the 'open access' model (primary research being freely available without constraint) for content distribution is taking strong hold in the area of scientific, technical and medical publishing. While most publishers are worried by this --especially if they have profitable lists of specialist scientific periodicals-- it can be argued that the development is a hugely positive and encouraging one for the publishing and library community as a whole....If the open access model for STM periodicals takes over, there will be a redistribution of resources within institutions and between publishers....One of the effects of this substitution will be a lot more material being published. We may also predict a rapid growth in added-value services; among these, the provision of more secondary publications which abstract, assess, cite and measure or increase the accessibility of all the free, open access, primary literature. There will be yet more scope for added value from those publishers and aggregators who can provide access to textbooks and reference work in the broadest sense. There will be more interest and value in services that integrate, synthesise and digest the results of primary research. Libraries which, as a result of open access, spend less on providing access to high-quality scientific literature may be able to buy in secondary resources that review and distil the primary materials." Hodgkin is the president and co-founder of xrefer.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/07/2004 09:23:00 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.
