While it is not an entirely new phenomenon, the open access movement is worth discussing as an example of modifying business models to take advantage of new technological innovations. In the past, the vast majority of scholarly journals have used a subscription-based model that was relatively expensive for individuals to afford, a tab that institutions, firms and libraries were expected to pick up or subsidize. To bypass this cost prohibitive nature of accessing journals, organizations such as the acclaimed Public Library of Science, charge the author alone for publication costs rather than other users. The prospective research still undergoes the scrutiny of the scientific peer-review process; however a twist is that upon publication, it also becomes immediately and freely viewable to the public at-large under an open content license. Conditions permitting, this experimental development may fizzle out. However by certain statistical/empirical measures this effort could be deemed a budding success if compared to its competition. Originally launched in October 2003, after only 3 months of existence, PLoS Biology was assigned a high impact factor of 13.9 — "placing it above such established journals as EMBO Journal, Current Biology, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, in ISI"s category of general biology journals, PLoS Biology is ranked number 1. In 2004, PLoS Biology articles were downloaded more than 1 million times."...While the jury is still out, both open-access along with open-review have the potential to drive down the costs and eliminate altogether another barrier to scholastic participation; professional and amateur alike.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/25/2006 01:50:00 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.
