Frank Arnold, Access controls on bmj.com: Where's the evidence for restricting access?. Excerpt: 'Proponents of access controls for the electronic version of the BMJ based this policy on several grounds: that it was required for economic reasons (affordability); it would produce revenue (profitability); and it would not have serious adverse consequences for doctors or patients (harmlessness). Each of these statements is contentious. Now that restrictive practices have been put in place, they can be and should be subjected to a fair test. This is worth doing because the data may help to inform wider debates about open access to scientific and professional journals. In effect, the BMJ is conducting a social experiment, and we would be foolish not to examine the results.' Arnold then cites evidence against all three BMJ contentions.
Gunther Eysenbach, Access controls on bmj.com: Dual models are possible. Excerpt: 'Further to Chalmer's letter asking that true open access be restored to bmj.com, it is possible to make revenue (and be self sustainable) by having a complete open access policy and still having paying subscribers and members. In open source software such a dual business model is common. You can get the operating system Linux for free, but you can also buy it from a vendor, including some value added services. The journal I have been publishing since 1999, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, has such a model....Every article is freely available on the web, but we also offer value added services for personal or institutional members (subscribers), who pay a nominal fee to get additional services such as the ability to download whole issues as PDF files or to download topical collections of articles as electronic books ("eCollections"). We think that with this model and a "lean publishing" strategy (most processes are supported by open source software, requiring only 1.5 inhouse employees to run the journal) we may well be the first sustainable open access journal—other than journals such as CMAJ, PLoS, BMC, etc, which either have large grants or subsidies or are making huge losses.'
Gavin Yamey and Andy Gass, Prevailing publishing system is irrevocably broken. Excerpt: 'A group of researchers in Indonesia searches the online literature in preparation for a research project. Exorbitant journal subscription and download fees put the articles they need out of their reach. The director of the Wellcome Trust tries to read the results of an African study that the charity funded and is astonished to find that his access to the relevant article is denied. Libraries the world over, held hostage by commercial publishers who have had a monopoly over authors' work, are cancelling subscriptions to many journals, faced with annual price increases substantially above inflation. Patients who altruistically volunteered to be in trials, and who funded the studies with their own taxes, must battle to make the results freely available. Could this really be the "better system" of publishing that [Jeffrey] Aronson describes --a system in which the results of the global research enterprise are a commodity, owned by publishers and sold to those who can afford access, instead of being a global public good?...Open access "zealots" simply recognise the profound benefits that all of us would enjoy if our living treasury of scientific and medical knowledge were freely accessible from any networked computer in the world.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/20/2005 11:41:00 AM.
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.
