Open access in medical publishing: trends and countertrends, Canadian Medical Association Journal, January 18, 2005. An unsigned editorial (also in French). Excerpt: 'Since July 1999 the full text of CMAJ has been available online without charge or restriction. We continue to experiment with online enhancements to our print content, and every issue of the journal published since 1911 will soon be available online....We've learned that there are a lot of potential readers "out there": in 2005 we expect traffic to increase to close to 20 million hits. We also know that open access through the Internet has expanded our readership. Our most recent survey of online readers shows that only 31% of those who access eCMAJ identify themselves as physicians and more than half of our online readers access the site from outside Canada....Promoters and detractors of free access agree that wider dissemination of scholarly and scientific content is a worthy goal. The disagreement concerns the economics of free-to-user access....Money is important, even though the marginal additional costs of providing content free on the Web constitute a relatively small portion of the budget of a major print-based journal....The economic question is, How big are [subscription] losses, and are they balanced by noneconomic benefits?...Subscriptions, although in modest decline with open access, are not yet in free-fall. For CMAJ, the noneconomic benefits have included making the journal more attractive to authors, who want their work to be read and applied widely. We've seen our manuscript submissions increase dramatically, allowing CMAJ's peer reviewers and editors to raise the bar for quality and to select from a much wider range of content. We've seen satisfying increases in our Impact Factor....One day soon, new Internet payment models may enable electronic publications to apply pennies-per-view charges that defray editorial costs without creating a disincentive for readers. Or advertisers may be more willing to advertise on the Web. In the meantime, we intend to stick with open (and free) access without fees for readers or for authors.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/19/2005 11:10:00 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.
