Scholarly Associations and the Economic Viability of Open Access Publishing

After a decade of Internet scholarly publishing, roughly two-thirds of the current academic journals have gone online, even as they continue to publish in print, while more than 1000 peer-reviewed journals are going it alone in digital form. While most journals have carried forward some version of print's subscription model into this new medium, some are pursuing a new model for the dissemination of knowledge known as open access.

Journal of Digital Information, volume 4 issue 2 (2003-04-09)
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i02/Willinsky/

Open access journals, which may currently make up 10-20 percent of online journals by some estimates, provide free access to their entire contents. In addition to open access journals, there are open access indexes, as well as open access eprint archives, in which researchers deposit copies of their work which may be published in fee-based journals. What has driven this development of open access publishing is not only the availability of new technologies, but a desire among researchers and scholarly associations to bring some relief to the decades-long "serials crisis" which has eroded library access to journals as a result of increasing subscription costs. The open access model is also seen as a way to improve public, educational, and political impact of research, ensuring that it serves the democratic "right to know" when it comes to governance, health, and other areas of public concern.

Posted by Tom on October 01, 2003