Q: What about existing threats?
A: Obviously, there is the open access debate, which gets muddled up with other issues. In fact, open archives should be viewed as complementary to traditional journals.
Q: So you have no problem with academics archiving their papers, so long as they carry on publishing with you?
A: Right.
Q: I guess you see greater threat from initiatives like the Public Library of Science (PLoS), which plans soon to launch a new author-funded journal [PLoS Biology]?
A: Right. PLoS has $9 million in funding and some very good people. Clearly, they will be trying to get good papers and to establish the credibility of their new model.
Q: David Prosser has been pushing a plan for the partial or gradual conversion of conventional journals to open access, where an author offers to pay an upfront fee in exchange for the journal providing open access to that author's article....Would Blackwell journal editors be free to follow this model if they wanted?
A: If we see a new way of disseminating research, we obviously want to learn about it and maybe do it. Indeed, we have talked to several societies about this, but none of them are that keen to try it—[not] yet at least.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/03/2003 08:06:00 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.
