Some people think that Al Gore's movie about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is so important that they have banded together to pay the costs for anyone to see it. (Thanks to Lawrence Lessig.)
It's as if a pay-per-view article were so important that would-be readers could tap a network of willing donors for the fee. I don't expect to see this model spread to scholarly publishing, but who knows? It has a family resemblance to other OA business models: those with an interest in disseminating useful results (authors, funders, universities, governments) pay the costs so that readers/viewers needn't pay. Kudos to Eric Pan for coming up with the idea and organizing the network of donors. (BTW, the network is accepting donations.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/22/2006 09:49:00 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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
