Bongani M. Mayosi, SAMJ - Africa's top open access medical journal, South African Medical Journal, November 2005. An editorial. Not even an abstract is free online, at least so far. (The journal is OA, so I think the access problem is due to the fact that vol. 95, no. 11 is not yet online.)
Update (12/26/05). The article is now online and OA. Excerpt:
A revolution is taking place in the world of scientific
publishing. In the traditional model of publishing scientific
articles, the author raised money to conduct the research
project, then submitted the paper to a scientific journal for
consideration for publication; if the manuscript survived the
brutal peer review process, the author would be required to
assign copyright to the publisher and pay ‘page charges’ for
publication of the article. Finally, the author (as reader) had to
pay a subscription fee to the publisher of the journal in order
to have access to his or her published paper! Authors, members
of the public and funders of research are understandably
in revolt against this apparent exploitation of authors and
readers by traditional publishers who extract substantial profits
from the production of scientific knowledge through the efforts
and investments of others. This unfavourable situation has led
to the rise of the ‘open access’ movement in scientific
publishing....The winds of change are also sweeping through the South
African Medical Journal and its publisher, the Health and
Medical Publishing Group. The first step, taken several years
ago, was to drop the page charge costs to authors. More
recently, the full text of articles published in the Journal has
become available on MEDLINE immediately on publication,
free of charge to all readers. The SAMJ’s modernisation into a
‘free to publish’ and ‘free access’ publication has already had a
noticeable impact on the quality, quantity, and international
reach of papers submitted for publication....The SAMJ’s impact factor has been rising continuously over the past five years....The SAMJ
is ranked number 1 among peer-reviewed medical journals in
Africa, number 2 among comparable journals from Australasia
(Medical Journal of Australia – impact factor 2, and New Zealand
Medical Journal – impact factor 0.554), and number 44 among
the 103 journals grouped in the ISI Medicine, General and
Internal list.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/15/2005 11:38:00 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.
