Academic publishing is a multi-million dollar business dominated by just a few major publishing houses. Many academics and open access advocates believe that’s unfair—publishers simply take researchers’ work and sell it back to them, they say. Stan Correy takes a look at the state of play.
•
In 2001, I did a story for RN’s Background Briefing called Knowledge Indignation: Road Rage on the Information Superhighway.
That rage was aimed at companies in the STM industry—science, technology and medical publishing. Leading the charge against these commercial publishers were scientists, doctors, university librarians and other researchers concerned about restrictions on access to publications and the cost of journals.
Fourteen years later, the war continues and the battlefield resembles the Western Front in WWI: a stalemate. Both sides have won significant victories and suffered significant defeats, but the key questions remain the same. Who owns scientific information? How much does it cost to access it? Who should be able to access it?
↧