Open Access supporters made some major strides in 2004, with new journals, including PLoS Medicine, new supporters and government initiatives in both the United States and the United Kingdom. However, it remains to be seen whether the OA gains in 2004 will translate into meaningful change in 2005. One thing, however, is all but certain–2005 will again be a big year for open access, says Peter Suber, Open Access Project Director at Public Knowledge. "There’s no going back," noted Suber. "I’m not saying that we’ll ever reach 100 percent OA, merely that we’ll never return to zero percent OA. The benefits to science and society are too great to give up." According to Suber, who also writes the SPARC OPEN ACCESS NEWSLETTER, 2004 was the year that OA moved "from the periphery to mainstream." Although relatively few journals or articles are yet being published under an open access model, he concedes, major progress is visible: post-print archiving took a major leap forward, with major publishers, including Elsevier and Springer, now permitting self-archiving. Also, OA journals began to register surprisingly good impact factors in ISI Web of Science, attracted further funding, and made it onto the minds of faculty everywhere. "Our forward strides took us further than ever before in 2004,"
Suber writes in his newsletter. Of course, challenges remain. "No doubt, OA is easier in some disciplines than others, but I’m confident that it can work in every discipline," Suber told the LJ Academic Newswire. "It brings compelling benefits to researchers, both as authors and readers, libraries, universities, foundations, governments, and everyone who depends on research advances."
But Suber notes that opponents also dug in their heels in 2004. So what will 2005 hold in store? For the third year Suber has listed his predictions. Among them, that the controversial National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy to mandate OA archiving of research it funds–now being considered for implementation–will inspire other agencies, both in the U.S. and around the world, to adopt similar policies. On the other hand, he also predicts that, even before the NIH policy has generated much freely accessible research, "at least one journal will claim the policy is causing them to lose subscribers." He also predicts increased competition among OA journals for research papers, the continuing emergence of hybrid OA/subscriber models, and the further proliferation of author and institutional archiving. Perhaps most interesting, however, is Suber’s prediction that OA supporters will need to learn to "cope with success." As OA initiatives become more accepted, a major challenge will be preventing "universities from using OA as an excuse to cut library budgets." That means, among other things, Suber notes, "clarifying the large and growing family of kindred forms of open access." To read more, visit: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-05.htm
Library Journal Academic Newswire, January 6, 2005
