Abstract: In the WWW Galaxy Open Access publishing is the superior model. The physical and life sciences have moved first to innovate their scholarly communication and publishing through Open Access, enhancing accessibility for scientists, students and the interested public. Among the social and cultural sciences, only economists have matched these efforts. Open Access e-publishing is technologically feasible and economically efficient. Despite resistance from corporate publishers who seek to maximise their rents, OA publishing is unstoppable unless the OA coalition commits major strategic blunders. Open Access has become vital to secure the continued advancement of knowledge claims. Historians, legal scholars, political scientists, cultural scholars and sociologists would do well to understand OA publishing and participate in it. The rise of comparative and trans-national research requires OA. Moreover, public and philanthropic funding will flow in the future only if public visibility and academic impact of the research results can be demonstrated. This article systematically compares innovative moves in Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) and Social and Cultrual Science (SCS) to show that the innovative logic of the situation is the same while the publishing solutions vary.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/20/2005 09:59:00 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.
