Back in mid-March medinfo asked its readers to define "open access". Today it posted the results (in German), which are more about the benefits of OA than the definition. The most common answers were fairness to taxpayers (41%) and solving the serials pricing crisis (26%). Further down the tail, a few readers said profiting the cleverest publishers (6%), fulfilling an ethical obligation in clinical research (4%), and killing libraries (2%). Apparently no one mentioned increasing the audience and impact of authors.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/22/2006 08:33:00 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.
