Research Information has published a supplement called Special 2003 (either print-only or not yet online) in which major scholarly publishers write first-person accounts of their businesses. Most of these are disguised advertisements in which the companies boast about revenues and impact factors rather than access, usefulness, or service to researchers. David Mort wrote an article to introduce the collection, "European online revenues on the rise", in which he gives exactly one paragraph to open access: "There is no consensus yet regarding the impact of emerging alternative publishing models, such as BioMed Central, but most academic information professionals are at least offering titles from these services to their users. It is likely to be another two or three years before the role of these new models becomes clearer. Some initial user concerns about the quality and range of titles available on these services suggest that they will be supporting services to the commercial publishers and vendors unless the range of titles on offer expands." (PS: Note to David Mort: open-access publishing delivers primary literature free of charge, not free add-ons to priced journals, not free spice to priced aggregations, not "supporting services" to "commercial publishers".)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/03/2003 03:40:00 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.
