Open Access
Open Access at CARL member libraries
Introduction
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Introduction
Over the past several years, scholarly journals have quickly migrated to the networked environment and most scholarly journals now offer electronic editions available over the Internet. But, there has not seen a corresponding reduction in the prices of journals. This is contrary to what has happened with many other types of online content, where the costs of content have decreased as it has gone online. In fact, commercial journal publishers have steeply increased the price of journals in certain fields, to such an extent that some of the larger commercial publishers are reporting profit margins of up to 40%.
Research libraries have struggled to keep pace: The average cost of a serial subscription for the largest research libraries has increased from $89.77 in 1986 to $283 by 2003. This is an increase of 315%, which far exceeds the rise in the Consumer Price Index of 68%.* In the view of many, the rapidly increasing costs of scholarly publications has created an unsustainable system in which it is impossible for any academic institution to adequately support the information needs of their faculty and students. The situation is particularly critical for smaller college and universities, and institutions in the developing world, which are having difficulty maintaining the journal subscriptions they need.
Open access is emerging model of scholarly communication that promises to greatly improve the accessibility of results of research.
Open access will create the conditions for the ‘effective global information system’, called for by Dr Arthur Carty, the National Science Adviser for Canada’s Prime Minister in an article. In this article, Dr. Carty describes this system as consisting of both infrastructure and “perhaps more importantly a culture of open access and sharing”.
What is Open Access?
Open access (OA) is the free availability of scholarly journal publications over the Internet. OA has the following characteristics:
- It applies to royalty-free literature, for which authors receive no direct financial compensation;
- It is free of price barriers, such as subscriptions, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees; and,
- It is generally considered to also be free of permission barriers, such as most copyright and licensing restrictions (although OA does require that proper attribution of works be given to authors).
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) was one of the first major initiatives in support of open access and CARL was an original signatory of this initiative. The BOAI definition of Open Access, prefaced above, has become the generally accepted definition of OA. However, there are other slightly differently characterizations of open access and the concept of open access continues to evolve.
* http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/monser05.pdf
