Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Sunday, October 23, 2005

Not your father's business model for OA publishing

MedRounds subsidizes its OA journals and books with revenue from an ecommerce portal. It has now generalized the portal system and is offering it to other non-profit organizations as a fund-raising device. See Andrew Doan, Fund Raising Opportunity for Schools, Churches, and Non-Profit Organizations, MedRounds Blog, October 21, 2005. Excerpt:
MyFundRazor.org will create your own e-commerce portal that sells the exact same items with the exact same prices found on major e-commerce websites like Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Buy.com, Sony.com, and other name brand suppliers. Because Internet commerce is shifting to a horizontal distribution of wealth via affiliate and associates programs, companies like Yahoo! makes billions of dollars yearly by directing traffic to major retailers and distributors without packaging or shipping a single product...MyFundRazor.org...is owned and operated by MedRounds Publications, Inc....[which] was created by academic entrepreneurs to use advertising and marketing revenue to support FREE academic publishing.