Open Access
"Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge." –Budapest Open Access Initiative, http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml, 15 September 2009
Open Access is a worldwide movement to encourage unrestricted availability of high-quality peer-reviewed research for the greater good of science and society.
The Internet has the potential to disseminate knowledge and research farther and faster than ever before, but the drastic price increases imposed by publishers (despite the decreasing costs of providing electronic access to research material) limit the potential exposure of valuable research materials. With journal prices increasing, many university libraries, particularly smaller institutions and those in developing countries, are being forced to cancel subscriptions to scholarly journals, which can diminish the dissemination and quality of those institutions’ own academic output. Open Access provides a solution by offering an alternative to these subscription based access policies.
Open Access provides an alternative to these subscription based access policies, especially in these times of economic difficulty.
Learn more about Open Access:
Wikipedia-Open Access (publishing) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_%28publishing%29)
Open Access Directory (http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page)
Open Access Week (http://www.openaccessweek.org/)
Sir Richard Roberts, Ph.D., F.R.S., joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993, explains why he supports Open Access.(http://blip.tv/file/1406960)
"Open Access: Scientific Publishing and Developing World" (http://www.firstauthor.org/Downloads/openaccess.pdf)