Helen Frankish, Publishing Wars, The Lancet, October 16, 2004. Excerpt: "Open-access movements are winning increasing support, aided in no small part by souring relations between librarians and traditional publishers. But can open-access advocates win over the academic societies that depend on publishing revenue to survive?...[W]inning over scientists and funders is just part of the battle. Some of the most vocal criticism of open access has come from the non-profit society publishers who depend on revenues from their journals to fund activities such as conferences, educational outreach programmes, and provision of scholarships and grants. Varmus says that some academic societies are being inattentive to their members' needs by sticking with the established business model. He suggests societies can raise funds in other ways 'such as increases in membership fees and increased rates for meetings and other activities'. But William Rosner, professor of medicine at Columbia University, New York, and member of the Endocrine Society Council, counters that it would be 'an enormous mistake' to prevent societies from supporting their other non-profit activities through publishing....There are easier and quicker ways, however, to bridge the information divide, argues Subbiah Arunachalam, an information scientist at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India. 'Rather than frittering away our energies setting up new open-access journals or trying to persuade existing journals to go the open-access way, one can make the playing field very nearly level if all researchers in the world self-archive their papers in institutional archives. Then everyone with internet access can access everyone else's papers.' "
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/16/2004 01:36:00 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.
