Molecular Cancer 2004, 3:23 contains a nice article by Paul J. Chiao and Christian Schmidt, Open Access gains attention in scholarly communication, outlining some of the many benefits of Open Acces to Scholarly Communication. The authors conclude that:
Open Access has following broad benefits for science and the general public:
- All articles become freely and universally accessible online; so an author’s work
can be read by anyone at no cost.- The authors hold copyright for their work and grant anyone the right to
reproduce and disseminate the article, provided that it is correctly cited.- A copy of the full text of each Open Access article is permanently archived in an
online repository separate from the journal, such as PubMed Central, the US
National Library of Medicine’s full-text repository of life science literature, the
repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in
e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands’ digital archive of all electronic
publications.- Authors are assured that their work is disseminated to the widest possible
audience. This is accentuated by the authors being free to reproduce and
distribute their work, for example by placing it on their institution’s website. It
has been suggested that free online articles are more highly cited because of
their easier availability.- The information available to researchers will not be limited by their library’s
budget, and the widespread availability of articles will enhance literature
searching.- The results of publicly funded research will be accessible to all interested
readers and not just those with access to a library with a subscription. As such,
Open Access could help to increase public interest in, and support of, research.
Please note that this public accessibility may become a legal requirement in the
USA if the proposed Public Access to Science Act is made law- A country’s economy will not influence its scientists’ ability to access articles
because resource-poor countries (and institutions) will be able to read the same
material as wealthier ones, although creating access to the internet is another
matter.