<$BlogRSDUrl$> Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Internet Happenings, Events and Sources


Tuesday, August 17, 2004  

Open Access STM Literature
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3061258

The more than 2,000 publishers offering STM (scientific, technological and medical) literature collectively publish 1.2 million articles a year in about 16,000 periodical journals, but their success is being challenged by the "open access" movement. In the U.K., the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee says that the country's universities should be required to ensure that all their research papers are available free online, and that government-funded research grants ought to include free access to the findings a condition of the awards. In the U.S., the House of Representatives' Committee on Appropriations approved a provision in a bill that backs open access to material published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and the leading research associations of Germany, France and Switzerland have signed the so-called Berlin Declaration calling for free access to research findings. Barbara Meredith, a vice-president at the Association of American Publishers, a trade group, says that the open access movement could undermine the sustainability of the publishing industry, even though the entire open access literature currently represents less than 1% of what is published. The Economist magazine comments: "Prestige has its uses and the open-access journals will, no doubt, establish a pecking-order among themselves fairly quickly. But for prestige at any price, time is probably up.

posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:15 AM
archives
subject tracers™