Marydee Ojala, Intro to Open Access: The Public Library of Science, EContent Magazine, October 10, 2003. Excerpt: "PLoS advocates open access to scientific literature. Open access means scientific papers are available online, free of charge, with no restrictions on access or use. Oh, and one minor detail. Once your paper is accepted, you owe PLoS $1,500. That might sound outrageous outside the scientific community, but authors must pay to publish under the other two models as well --plus they give up their copyright and frequently discover their library can't afford a subscription to the journal in which they've published."
Ojala slips twice in this generally good introduction to OA for the audience that follows the news about the conventional publishing industry. (1) She writes that PLoS "strikes a middle ground between traditional peer-reviewed scientific publishing and self-publishing." Wrong. PLoS Biology will be peer-reviewed and all PLoS journals in the pipeline will be peer-reviewed. (2) She argues that the CC attribution license used by PLoS is equivalent to the public domain. "[I]t's hard to see what types of rights the copyright holder retains." No, it's not hard; it's spelled out in the license. Authors do not consent to the making or distribution of misattributed or unattributed copies of their work.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/10/2003 03:41:00 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.
