Vanessa Spedding, Will Learned Societies Signal the Change?Research Information, May/June 2004. On the competing pressures faced by society publishers when contemplating open access. Excerpt: "The debate has been advanced recently by a number of reports and high-profile initiatives (see box: 'Open access initiatives and investigations' below). Also fuelling the fire is a boat-rocking position statement from the Wellcome Trust - strongly in favour of open access - following its publication of a comprehensive (but not unanimously embraced) report on science publishing in October last year (see box: 'The Wellcome Trust's position' below). As it is the world's largest charity dedicated to funding scientific research, the Wellcome Trust's views on such matters are taken seriously. On the broader scale, what's coming to light from these exchanges is that the implications of a shift in publishing model are significant, not just for their impact on commercial publishers, or on the means of publication, but on fundamental aspects of scientific culture."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/17/2004 10:29:00 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.
