Marla Misek, HighWire Press: Keeping the Scholars in Scholarly Publishing, EContent, July 1, 2004. Excerpt: "The goals of [Highwire Press], which today serves roughly 150 client publishers, were twofold: 'to improve the delivery of scientific research articles through the Web and to help reputable, small- to medium-sized scholarly publishers make the transition to the online environment both efficiently and economically.' Nine years later, the urgency of these goals is palpable. 'The basic problem set is unchanged,' [Michael] Keller laments. 'The aggressive consolidation of journals into a very small group of for-profit publishers, the unjustifiable pricing policies of certain publishers, the inefficiency and inadequacy of small-scale Web publishing efforts for professional journals, the inefficiency of editorial processes, the delays in publishing results, and the gross inadequacy of library acquisition budgets to maintain subscription levels in a hyper-inflated and expanding market' all fuel HighWire's mission....No matter how you slice it, 'there is an urgent, dramatic, critical struggle under way,' he says, 'between the needs of the academy and the dynamics of leveraged greed which controls scholarly publishing.' "
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/16/2004 09:27:00 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.
