Open access is a broad international movement that seeks to grant free and open online access to academic information, such as publications and data. Open access is a publishing model for scholarly communication that makes research information available to readers at no cost, as opposed to the traditional subscription model. The Scholarly Kitchen brought this interesting topic to our attention in their article, “Feasibility, Sustainability, and the Subscribe-to-Open Model.”
The feasibility and sustainability of open access is constantly being challenged by the traditional institution. One of the most important advantages of open access is that it increases the visibility and reuse of academic research results. One of the biggest critiques of open access involves academia’s need to publish.
In science, medicine, and economics especially, researchers are rated by their ability to publish in journals with a high impact factor. However, it takes some time before new journals, both traditional and open access, can acquire an impact factor. Only then are they of interest to researchers.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
