Sophie L. Rovner, Opening Access: Publishers weigh the risks and benefits of free online journal access, Chemical and Engineering News, May 16, 2005. A report on the proceedings of the October 2004 workshop sponsored by the Chemical Sciences Roundtable on the question, Are Chemical Journals Too Expensive and Inaccessible? (See the previous blog entry.) Excerpt: 'The workshop was designed to address whether chemical journals are too expensive and inaccessible. Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was among the attendees who responded to this question with a hearty "yes" and who think that the expense and inaccessibility present a serious problem. The solution, Cozzarelli believes, is open access....On the other hand, others believe that open access is a solution in want of a problem. As Heindel put it at the workshop, "Chemists in general feel they have adequate access" to journals. "We're not in a crisis mode."...The argument that professional societies need journal profits to help fund their other programs doesn't wash with Cozzarelli. "It's a kind of extortion," he said at the workshop. A subscriber who wants the content of one of the society journals is forced to support these other programs, whether or not the subscriber wants to....ACS finds itself in an interesting dilemma, with some of its representatives pushing for open access and others hating the very thought. Charles P. Casey--who was ACS president at the time of the workshop and is now immediate past-president--was obviously reluctant to disclose his personal opinion at the National Academies workshop. When attendees pushed him to do so, he voiced his support of open access, no doubt startling some at the meeting. "Speaking for myself," he added, "I'd like to see ACS [give] more access to our journals than we have now. I'm lobbying for that internally."...If open-access journals are to succeed in chemistry and physics, it's quite possible that authors will have to drop their opposition to page charges, and they may even have to agree to manuscript submission charges.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/16/2005 07:54:00 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.
