Richard Smith, former editor of BMJ and an early and long-standing champion of OA, has joined the Public Library of Science Board of Directors. Excerpt from the PLoS press release: "Dr. Smith..is now calling for a complete overhaul of current biomedical publishing models. 'I thoroughly support universal free access to research,' he said, 'because the wonderful thing about ideas is more people being exposed to more ideas leads to still more ideas. I regret as somebody who has been running a medical publishing company for 13 years that publishers have made money by restricting access to research and so limiting the development of new ideas. We need a new model, and the Public Library of Science is providing one.' Dr. Smith's commitment to PLoS is a significant step in the movement toward open access to medical research. 'Under Dr. Richard Smith's leadership over the past decade, BMJ was consistently the most innovative and forward-looking medical journal in the world, and helped catalyze the open access movement,' states Dr. Patrick O. Brown, co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of PLoS. 'We are thrilled that he is now helping us to develop an innovative and outstanding open access medical journal.' "
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/28/2004 02:41:00 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.
