Tuesday 6 March 2012

Is free inevitable in scholarly communication? The economics of open access

an article by Caroline Sutton (President of the Open Access Publishers Association) published in College and Research Libraries News Volume 72 Number 11 (December 2011)

Opening paragraph

In this article I would like to make the case that a change in the delivery of scientific content and in the business models for delivering scholarly communication was inevitable from the moment journals moved online, even if much of this change is yet to come. By applying a thesis put forth by Chris Anderson in his 2009 book Free1 I will argue that given that scholarly journals are now digital products, they are subject to very different economic principles and social forces than their print ancestors.

1 Chris Anderson, Free. How today’s smartest businesses profit by giving something for nothing (Hyperion: New York, 2009).

Full text (PDF 4pp (A5))
Contains a useful bibliography


No comments: