Summary: Nature reports that Open Access (OA) journals are having trouble making ends meet. This is because institutional publication funds are currently tied up in subscription costs. What is urgently needed now is OA, to maximize research usage and impact. Immediate 100% OA can be reached via OA self-archiving mandates. If/when 100% OA self-archiving should ever generate institutional subscription cancellations, those same institutional windfall savings will be the natural way to pay for institutional OA publication costs. If/when there are signs that that is approaching, then would be the opportune time for journals to convert to OA publishing. Right now, there are no such signs, and it is OA that we need, urgently.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/21/2006 04:45:00 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.
