The Voice of America, 'Open Access' Science Journals Challenge Pricey Publications, August 28, 2004 (scroll to the third story). The full transcript is free online. You can also hear the broadcast in RealAudio or as an MP3. Excerpt from the transcript: "This month, a top publisher of biomedical journals, Cell Press, announced a new policy to allow free, on-line access to articles in its journals beginning one year after they first appear in print. The move was welcomed by some, but others described it as a defensive move in a growing battle over the cost of subscribing to scientific journals, particularly the cost charged to university libraries. 'On average we spend $5 million a year on journals, and for that we get about 11,000 [titles], so you can see that they average around four or five hundred dollars each,' said Bill Potter, who runs the University of Georgia library. 'We simply can't continue to afford those. Or if we buy these journals, that means we buy fewer books or fewer journals in the humanities and social sciences.'...Some scientists and the institutions who buy the journals they publish in, think its time for a new model for disseminating research. 'Our goal is to make the world's scientific and medical literature a freely-available public resource,' says Michael Eisen, co-founder of the Public Library of Science....'Traditionally, and largely today, [journals] recover their costs - and often make a healthy profit - by charging people to access the papers they have published,' said Dr. Eisen. 'And the problem with the model in which you charge people to access information is that you have to prevent access for people who haven't paid.' " (Thanks to Rick Johnson.)
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.
