At 03:18 PM 1/4/2003 -0500, Jim Till wrote [in part]:
>I've just been reading Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point: How Little
>Things Can Make a Big Difference" (Little, Brown & Co., 2002 edition).
>The "Tipping Point" is "that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social
>behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire".
>
>I hope that the establishment of the BMC and PLoS journals will be seen,
>in retrospect, as "magic moments" when open access to the biological and
>biomedical research literature began to spread "like wildfire".
>
>Jim Till
>University of Toronto
Jim: I share your hope. The launch of the PLoS journals is definitely a
new milestone for open access. I don't know whether they will bring us to
the tipping point, but I'm sure they will bring us closer.
BTW, I argued in FOSN for 8/8/02, <
http://makeashorterlink.com/?W5B012CD1>
(second story),
[also
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2212.html]
that open-access eprint archiving --as opposed to open-access journals--
had reached its tipping point. I provided six months' worth of evidence
to show that its adoption and endorsement are accelerating.
Peter Suber
----------
Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy
Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374
Email peters_at_earlham.edu
Web
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
Editor, Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
Editor, FOS News blog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
Received on Sat Jan 04 2003 - 22:23:57 GMT