Peter Suber, Unbinding Past Medical Journals: A proposal for providing open access to past research articles, starting with the most important, a preprint. I put this online now partly to benefit from reader comments and partly to stir interest in the idea it describes. Abstract: "If an authoritative scholar or organization assembled a bibliography of the most important previously published research articles on a subject of urgent public need, such as the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, then the journals that published those articles might be persuaded to provide open access to them retroactively. This article discusses the costs and benefits to journals that participate in such a project and calls on scientists, journals, public-interest organizations, and foundations to experiment with such projects in order to accelerate research on topics where it is most needed."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/03/2004 03:12:00 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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
