A word is in order about the choice of references. With widespread adoption of policies that allow free access to material after a reasonable delay, the advantages to the scientific community for transparency in access have been made abundantly clear. In these circumstances, I do not regard publications in journals that neither adopt this policy nor are widely available (often because they are unreasonably expensive) as legitimate contributions to the scientific literature. I see no point in citing publications to which many readers will not have access.
A vast majority of references are available via PubMed (example).
Lewin has been an influential player in publishing. He founded Cell Press (sold in 1999 to Elsevier), and the web-based textbook company Virtual Text through which he publishes Genes.
(My thanks to Ed Sponsler (Caltech) for providing this clear example of one of the benefits of Open Access -- an author's confidence that all readers of a book will have access to the supplementary readings.)
Posted by
George Porter at 10/06/2004 07:20:00 PM.
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.
