Janice McCallum, The Lancet vs. PLoS Medicine Is No Open and Shut Case, Commentary (the Shore Communications blog), October 19, 2004. Excerpt: "It is no coincidence that Elsevier, the publisher of The Lancet, distributed a press release to announce that the number of registered users of The Lancet's website has surpassed 1 million on the same day that the Public Library of Science (PLoS) launched its new medical journal, PLoS Medicine. PLoS is headed by some of the leading proponents of the Open Access movement, and in its own words is 'committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource'. The primary target of the Open Access movement in its drive to change the current model for pricing and distributing scientific and medical information is none other than Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of STM journals....To end on an ironic note, it is quite likely that 'open' access to basic scientific and technical research information will occur with or without external intervention as an expected consequence of technological advances in digital publishing and the economics of Web distribution."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/19/2004 11:22:00 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.
