Stevan Harnad, Les Carr, and Steve Hitchcock, Letter to the Editor on Open Access, The Independent, July 14, 2004. Excerpt: "Publishers could convert their journals to an OA business model, so that rather than the user-institution paying the publication costs per journal subscribed to, they are paid by the author-institution, per article published. However, out of the 24,000 journals published today, only 5 per cent have so far made the transition to become open access journals, whereas around 80 per cent allow authors to make OA copies of their own articles. The only difference between the publishers therefore is that Springer offers authors the choice of paying for OA, and Reed Elsevier does not. But authors who want the benefits of OA now do not have to wait until they can pay their publishers to provide it for them. They can already do it themselves with a few keystrokes, for free, today."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/14/2004 08:30:00 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.
