Jan Velterop, Necessity is the Mother of Innovation, Neuroinformatics, 3, 1 (2005) pp. 11-14. Also see the OA edition. Excerpt: 'But curiously, there is something missing from the debate. We heard little about the health and effectiveness of science [as opposed to the financial health of publishers]. Yet that has to be the prime concern. Publishers and scholarly societies derive their raison d'être from serving science. It is the obligation of all participants in this debate to put science first. That does not seem to happen, however....The NIH, as responsible financiers of research, have come to conclude that barrier-free access --open access-- to the published output of the projects that they fund is the proper and appropriate finishing touch to a research project, especially because open access, now that the Internet makes it possible, seems the best way to "expand the knowledge base in medical and associated sciences in order to enhance the Nation's economic well-being and ensure a continued high return on the public investment in research" (point 3 in the NIH mission statement). The intellectual property resulting from research, virtually all of it now exploited exclusively by publishers, is property that is heavily "mortgaged" with public investment, and what the NIH are proposing is, in essence, that the mortgage be paid back to the public....[E]ven though the financial health of publishers and scholarly societies can hardly be the responsibility of the NIH, they are accepting that organizations heavily dependent on subscriptions cannot be weaned from it overnight, and so they have been very understanding and lenient by allowing a delay of half a year before the articles resulting from research that they fund can be openly available....[After summarizing the economics of OA journal publishing:] It seems that sustainability of the open-access model is only questioned in an attempt to discredit that system. In fact, sustainability is intrinsically more secure in an open-access model than in a traditional subscription model, simply because publishing activity is directly proportional to research activity and therefore eminently scaleable if the amount of research increases. In the subscription model, increased research and publishing activity has thus far lead to a vicious cycle of higher costs, lower affordability of comprehensive journal collections, and the resulting subscription attrition (i.e., shrinking circulation), as we have already witnessed for at least a decade.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/18/2005 12:55:00 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.
