Q: With commercial publishers wanting to raise their prices, what about the growing trend toward open access journals that are providing free access to scholarly journals on the Internet? The initiative seems to be gaining momentum.
A: It is gaining momentum, but it's still a long way from achieving critical mass, in my view. I think the commercial publishers have to appreciate how their business models may have to change if they are to retain their position --which they certainly can, even in a changing world. At the most basic level, there is a cost to produce a journal. Whether that cost is covered by submission fees or by access fees is a less important issue. In either case, the publisher can have a role.
Imagine a publisher that has already licensed content to all the library consortia in the U.S. The publisher could, at a stroke, say that the license will now confer rights for the academics in those institutions to submit content rather than to access content. The publisher would have successfully flipped its business model completely, to being an open access business. So I think it's possible to see a transition from where we are now to a completely open access world without fundamentally destroying the existing scholarly publishing business.
(PS: See my own interview with Rowse on open-access issues in FOSN for 8/8/02.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/03/2003 01:04:00 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.
