Open Access Journals Create New Opportunities

In the April/May issue of Research Information Matthew Cockerill, publisher of BioMed Central, argues that the open access publishing model facilitates the creation of new types of journals that could not be published under the traditional subscription model:

For many years, publishers, scientists, academics, librarians, funders and government officials have debated the value of greater public access to the results of scientific research. The internet has fundamentally changed the economics of distributing scientific research results, and has made the idea of universal access to research a realistic prospect. The number of open-access journals continues to increase rapidly, as does the proportion of scientific research that is freely available online. . . .

Scepticism and debate are healthy, especially if the debate is informed by evidence. In the case of open-access publishing, the track record of existing open-access journals now demonstrates that the open-access model can succeed in the real world. In particular, open-access journals have demonstrated their ability to operate as a sustainable business, and to publish research of high quality – validated by the industry’s leading metrics. . . .

Perhaps more importantly, the success of open-access publications is also stimulating the research community to rethink the parameters of scientific publication, and to consider how the open-access model can provide a channel for the rapid publication of more research results in formats that allow their effective compilation and reuse. . . .

This evolution of the scientific literature promises to allow the findings of researchers and practitioners all over the world to be made available like never before. . . .

Lastly, open access, by making the underlying research articles freely available and reusable, opens up myriad possibilities for enhancing and extending that research. This includes the use of computational techniques to mine research articles for information, and the use of Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, tagging and wikis to allow the research community itself to enrich articles with additional content and connections. . . .

By providing an optimal combination of quality and quantity, open access delivers a new model of publishing that can meet the challenges of 21st century science.. . . MORE