Thomas Brante, Modes of Publication and Scientific Quality. Excerpt: '[O]pen access publications would be a powerful tool for improving scientific discussion and quality per se. And quality should be measured with several criteria, including perhaps more difficult and cumbersome [than journal impact factors] but also much more valid criteria such as originality and depth. The standards of science should not be sacrificed on the altar of bureaucratic rationality!'
Frederick J. Friend, The Why and How of JISC Support for Open Access. Excerpt: 'Why does JISC support open access?...The open access model provides an opportunity to make available to lecturers, researchers and students all the content they need on open web-sites. Of particular concern to the JISC Scholarly Communication Group has been the fact that much of the content produced by the UK’s own academic community has been locked away behind subscription barriers, and its use by UK lecturers, researchers and students restricted under licensing terms favourable only to publishers and not to authors and users....How does JISC support open access?...Support for open access journals....Support for open access repositories....Support for fact-finding.'
Sara Gidlund, The Simple Book. Excerpt: 'The universities present a large part of their research via open access. Anything else would be unthinkable. In theory, you may gather knowledge enough for a master’s degree without unfolding a single [print] book....By allowing open access to digital versions of our publications [at Gidlunds Förlag], we obviously diminish the amount of sold and lent books, which will in turn increase the need for funding. I therefore think that the author and the publisher ought to agree at an early stage which form of publication should have priority.'
Tom Wilson, Trials and Tribulations? Editing Information Research, an Open Access Electronic Journal. Excerpt: 'The production of a free electronic journal has certain benefits in terms of costs: it is not necessary to keep records of subscribers, no accounts need to be kept or audited, no letters have to be sent to subscribers urging them to renew, we pay no commission to other businesses to act as agents, we have no offices within which all of these activities are carried out and employ no staff to perform them. These costs are quite significant for both paper and electronic subscription journals....If you do not have subscribers, but only readers, a significant overhead costs is clearly removed: in the case of CJTCS [Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science] these were calculated at $31,050.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/15/2005 08:15:00 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.
