Open access literature is a method of sharing scholarship that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes open access possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. This interesting topic came to us from The Scholarly Kitchen in their article, “Open Source for Scholarly Publishing: An Inventory and Analysis.”
It is important to remember that open access is entirely compatible with peer review, and all the major initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance. Just as authors of journal articles donate their labor, so do most journal editors and referees participating in peer review. However, open access literature is not free to produce, even if it is less expensive to produce than conventionally published literature.
Open access brings many benefits and is used in many corporations. With scholarly publishing, it is hard not to imagine that there are substantial opportunities to re-conceptualize the connection and relationship between pre-print repositories, manuscript submissions, and editorial/peer review.
As traditional and emerging publishers look to serve the many needs of their authors and readers and integrate some of the many open source options into their platform and systems planning, it could leave users wondering where are the business models for reinvestment?
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
