Welcome to Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica! Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica was founded in 1959 as a traditional print journal, but has now taken the novel step of moving to the open access model already used successfully by our publisher, BioMed Central. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica will be freely available online, and will continue to publish articles that encompass all aspects of veterinary research and medicine of domestic animals and wildlife....
Why 'open access'? Traditionally, readers pay to access research articles, either through subscriptions or by paying a fee each time they download an article. Escalating journal subscription charges have resulted in libraries subscribing to fewer journals, and the range of research available to readers is therefore increasingly limited. Having to pay to access research articles limits how many can read, use and cite them. Often only the title, keywords, and abstract are available for free. As a consequence, many researchers read only the abstract of the paper they are interested in, rather than the full article.
From a scientific point of view, a far better strategy is to offer all readers unrestricted access to the full articles. Such a strategy has at least three benefits. First, authors are assured that their work is disseminated to the widest possible audience and the authors are free to reproduce and distribute their work. Second, the information available to researchers will not be limited by their library's budget. Third, a country's economy will not influence its scientists' ability to access research....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/22/2006 05:11:00 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.
