The Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity

This week witnessed a major development in open access as a number of major American universities agreed to support open access through the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity. As I understand it, this move would mean more support for projects such as the Public Library Of Science journals where funding comes from author fees (according to an article referred to below, such fees are quite rare) or other types of support, rather than subscription fees to a conventional publisher.

Here is a quote from the Compact’s website:

Scholarly publishing is going through a transformation as a result of digital means of communication, coupled with the financial predicament of libraries. With the most recent economic downturn, access to scholarly articles, so important to research progress and public advancement, will no doubt suffer.

Open-access scholarly journals have arisen as an alternative to traditional subscription scholarly journals. Open-access journals make their articles available freely to anyone, while providing the same services common to all scholarly journals, such as management of the peer-review process, filtering, production, and distribution. Since open-access journals do not charge subscription or other access fees, they must cover their operating expenses through other sources, including subventions, in-kind support, or, in a sizable minority of cases, processing fees paid by or on behalf of authors for submission to or publication in the journal.

You can also read an open access article that explains this development in further detail: Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing. I love the idea of open access and the potential it offers to support greater learning and scholarship. The article linked to above delves into the economics of open access, including the problem of moral hazard. Currently, five universities are signatories to the Compact: Harvard, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT and UC Berkeley.

Related posts:

1. York University Adopts Open Access Policy for Librarians and Archivists
2. University of Ottawa adopts open access
3. Open Access Week, October 19-23
4. New iSchool Podcast episode is online: Open Education Round the World