Jan Velterop, "To be useful, it must be open," Research Information, Spring 2003, pp. 10-11. A succinct statement of the case for open access and the BioMed Central business model for supporting it --in a print journal with no online access to articles even for subscribers. Excerpts:
Wide dissemination and visibility are the most important things for scientists. They would be happy for their articles to be photocopied or attached to e-mails and brought to the attention of everyone interested. Restriction of circulation is the last thing they want.
The problem lies in the traditional business models used. Nobody would deny that science publishing costs money. Publishers have to recoup their investments, so they impost artificial scarcity on the material they publish by forbidding unauthorised further dissemination. They use copyright to enforce that scarcity, even though it is not in the interest of the articles' authors. Not in science, at least.[...]
At BioMed Central we expect the research establishments, universities, and research centres, to foot the bill. They pay for research communication now in any case by forking out large sums for subscriptions and licenses. What we offer them is the opportunty to have articles peer reviewed and published for an amount to be paid by them, on behalf of the author, in advance, at the input side of the publishing process. We then set the article free from any constraints as to its distribution or use, thus doing justice to the real requirements of scientific research literature.
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.
